| Paw Colors | Points |
|---|---|
| Grey | 0-49 |
| Red | 50-149 |
| Orange | 150-299 |
| Green | 300-599 |
| Magenta | 600-1499 |
| Purple | 1500-4999 |
| Blue | 5000-9999 |
| Brown | 10000-24999 |
| Black | 25000+ |
Hi, I’m wondering about Rachel Ray Nutrish food. It’s actually a dog question, because I think it’s only a dog food. But what’s anybody’s opinion on it? It MUST be new because i’ve never seen or heard of it until just now while shopping. I bought a bag and my dog loves it!. It looks healthy enough; no by-products, wheat gluten, or bone meal etc….but i’m still not sure if it’s totally great for them. Any opinions?
Keywords: food
Answers to this question
2 Answers
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Well let’s look at the ingredients. Here is the list for the beef and brown rice:
Beef, Chicken Meal, Brewers Rice, Corn Meal, Soybean Meal, Animal Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Corn Gluten Meal, Brown Rice, Oatmeal, Dried Beet Pulp, Natural Flavor, Dicalcium Phosphate, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Dehydrated Alfalfa, Dried Peas, Dried Tomatoes, Dried Carrots, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Olive Oil, Iron Oxide, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Dried Parsley, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Mixed Tocopherols, Niacin, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Sodium Selenite, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (Source of Vitamin K activity), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Cobalt Sulfate, Folic Acid
Good things: Meat is the first two ingredients. Beef and chicken meal. That’s good. There’s no by-products either, which is also good. There don’t seem to be any of the “dangerous” preservatives or artificial food coloring.
Bad things: Brewers rice and Corn meal are cheap filler. Corn gluten meal is a *really* cheap method used to up protein percentage, and so is soybean meal and all of these ingredients are potentially problematic. I would feed a dog a food with maybe one of these ingredients but not all of them together since they are all highly allergenic and a dog that developed a problem would be difficult to pin down on a single ingredient without doing an involved elemination diet. Any plant gluten, wheat or corn, is something I would never feed a dog or cat. They are not digested well by carnivores and are prone to mold and spoiling. Wheat gluten was implicated in the pet food recalls a couple years ago but corn gluten isn’t safer. “Natural flavor” is one of those nebulous ingredients that could be anything from MSG to livestock manure. “Animal fat” could be from any or multiple species of animals, and usually comes from a rendering plant, whic process carcasses from just about anything including material from roadkill, 4-D (dead, diseased, dying and downed) animals and sometimes even euthanized pets. Fats are also resevoirs in animals for medications and pesticies that are fat-soluble and work their way up the food chain in increasing concentrations. I would avoid this ingredient completely if possible. It’s usually included to make an animal’s coat look shinier but has no real health benefit and you could get the same result with a daily tablespoon of olive oil or even cooking oil.
This chicken variety looks the same other than the first two ingredients being “chicken, chicken meal” rather than “beef, chicken meal”. This food is about on the same level is most of what’s on the grocery store shelf and is nothing to write home about in my opinion. It’s better than totally complete garbage like Beneful and Ol’Roy but it is not a high-quality food by any stretch of the imagination. I’d feed a dog Iams before I fed this and considering the celebrity branding on the label it’s probably a lot cheaper to feed Iams.
Source Link: nutrish page on rachael ray\’s website
Comments to Answer
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I do have to say that Telegramsam is just about right on that. The only thing is, when you said "from just about anything including material from roadkill, 4-D (dead, diseased, dying and downed) animals and sometimes even euthanized pets." This would be unthinkable for us to eat, but before animals were domesticated, they ate just about all of that (except euthanized animals). It's something I've just recently really thought of, and it's a hard question. Anyways, I'm not sure I would feed my pet Iams over this food. I would say they're about the same, if not this to be a little better. Beneful is one of the most lousy foods on the market; it's like feeding your pet Twinkies for breakfast, lunch and dinner!(and Ol'Roy too!) I would say that if you couldn't afford Wellness, California Natural, etc., but could afford this food, I would buy it over Purina and the other "garbage".
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Larka, the problem with these ingredients isn't the meat itself (because you're right, dogs have scavenged meat for ages. Cats typically don't however, unless something is *very* recently dead) but the *chemicals* that come along with them. Some pet foods have tested positive for the chemical used to euthanize animals because of using ingredients from rendering plants. In small amounts, yes, but do you really want your pet eating that? And with roadkill and picked-up carcasses there's no telling what you could be getting. Fragments of lead shot from animals shot by hunters and left to die, or animals that scavanged said animals; rat poison, etc etc. Not everything gets destroyed by cooking. 4D animals can also enclude animals that died from things like Bovine Spongiform Encephalitus ("mad cow") and Scrapie (a similar disease in sheep). There has been at least one documented case of the animals at a mink fur farm dying from this type of encephalitis due to being fed 4D meat. The prions that cause this disease cannot be destroyed by cooking even at high temperatures as they are very stable small proteins. Do as you like, of course, but I'd be wary of feeding a pet food with ingredients from a rendering plant, including "animal digest", "animal by-products" and "animal fat"
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Telegramsam, I understand that, it's just something I've been thinking about. Before Dogs were domesticated, they ate practically anything(it's not like a dog knows a good meal from a bad one). It's kind of hard to explain what I'm trying to say. I wouldn't want to feed my pet Beneful over Wellness, because of the 4-D that comes from Beneful. I wonder if all there was to eat was Beneful(for the animals) if 4-D really would have a huge effect on them(that's my point). It could, but then again--it may not.I would never try to feed my pets this food, or anything with 4-D, but I'm saying I wonder if there have been any tests done to prove that 4-D is as unhealthy as it sounds(which it probably is). I'm saying that I agree; this food is not high quality by any means, but it's not garbage like Ol'Roy or Beneful as you said. So, I'd have to say this is probably not the best food. Iams is a lot cheaper, and almost the same health-wise. I'd stick to Wellness or something better then Nutrish. You could do a lot healthier. Mimi, try looking at the ingredients of all of the pet foods you wish to buy, and compare them with what Telegramsam said. It's best not to use this dog food, unless you really can't afford a better kind.
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I get what you're saying Larka. The truth is that a dog could be fed raw meat from 4D animals its whole life and it may never develop an illness (many racing greyhounds are fed exactly that in fact) but they may also get sick from it. It's like playing russian roulette. And stray dogs die from things they eat on a fairly regular basis. That's why they have two litters of puppies a year compared to a wolf's one, to make up for the loss in population. Now if all you can afford is something with those ingredients, then your pet will *probably* be okay but if you can afford something safer and more nutritious, then why not feed that? It all comes down to feeding the highest quality food that you can afford to within your budget, that's all anyone can be expected to do, of course. Nobody's saying you have to break the bank to feed your pets.
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