Pap en sous

I think we'd all agree that feeding your dog mielie pap with a bit of fat from the pan is not a good diet. Our SPCA tells people not to feed their dogs only pap, and we can all easily see this is not a well balanced diet, especially not for mostly carnivorous creatures that have limited ability to process grains of any kind, nevermind mielies. I mean, even we humans can't do mielies easily, as anyone peeking in the loo after a nice braaimielie can attest to, and we're omnivores in the true sense of the word!

Despite this, do you really know what's in your dog's kibble?

Most supermarket food is pretty much exactly that, mostly maize, with a sprinkling of meat, fat, flavourants, colourants and a host of preservatives. But, luckily, many pet owners have seen the benefits of feeding a higher quality kibble (smaller poop, less gas, better fur, more energy, brighter eyes, it goes on for some length, this list). This is partly on recommendation from your vet, which is normally a fairly good place to get some advice on your dog's health and care. If you're still feeding Purina, Bobtail, Pedigree or the like, I strongly suggest googling around a bit. None of these are really things a dog should be eating, the health benefits (and fewer vet visits) plus the smaller portions of a better quality food means the price is not that much higher.

I want to take a quick look at four of the most commonly fed higher end kibbles available to us, the thought being that now that we've moved our pets to a better food, we've gotten rid of the pap and sous, and gotten to the good stuff. The price surely should indicate this, especially on the first four of the five I will be looking at - Hill's Sience Plan, Eukanuba, Royal Canin, Montego and Vet's choice.

To be able to read ingredient labels you need to know a few things. Firstly, the ingredients are listed in order of the weightiest component to the component with the least volume. The first five ingredients are often taken as a good way of knowing what's mostly in the product. Secondly, the ingredients are listed before processing, which means meats that lose up to 70% of their mass during the kibble making process are still at the top of the list, despite actually being a fairly minor part of the kibble in the end. Thirdly, a lot of fairly commonly used ingredients in dog food are hotly contested, so any info needs double, triple and quadruple checking before you make up your mind as to what you find convincing.

Because reproducing the whole ingredient list is really not fun reading, I'll stick to the first five ingredients myself of the above kibbles - they are all certified 'nutritionally balanced' by many different organisations, so none of them need to be checked for whether your dog will develop nutrient deficiencies on them.

Let's start with the Science Plan, Adult Dry food (lamb flavour, because why not?).

First things first, this food is pricy. Due to the high price, we want the very best here. And the bags sure do claim that they are the best thing ever...

But:
Lamb meal, brewers rice, brown rice, corn gluten meal, whole grain wheat...
Well, well, well. So the largest ingredient is lamb meal, but that's truly about all the meat in this. The rest is all starches. Rice is sometimes considered better than corn, because it is more easily digestible, but it may also contain arsenic, so the jury is out. Corn gluten meal is a source of protein that your dog cannot really digest - it's bioavailability is rather low. Overwhelmingly, this is (expensive) pap en sous.

Next up, Eukanuba dry dog food. Also expensive, and like the Science Direct, it comes in so many types it's overwhelming.

The first five ingredients are:
Chicken, chicken by-product meal, corn meal, ground whole grain sorghum, brewers rice...
Hey, two proteins at the start - the chicken will be mostly lost during kibble making, but we're already a step ahead of Hill's. The rest is back to pap, though. In general, I'd say this is a slightly better food... but really, that's partly a reaction to how Hill's markets itself.

Right, Royal Canin. Since I'm a puggy person, we'll look at the mini adult type.

In here, we have:
maize, maize flour, dehydrated poultry meat, animal fats, maize gluten...
Am I seeing a trend here? Pap en sous indeed! At least this one is a little less expensive in most cases, but those are a horrible set of five ingredients.

Then, Montego. A good ol' South African brand, specifically the Montego Classic Adult dog formula.

On this menu:
cereals (4% rice), meat & animal derivatives (includes ostrich), cereal derivatives, fats & oils, natural flavouring agents...
A much more ambiguous list of ingredients, but much cudos to them for being honest, and clumping cereals into one category, so it goes where it should, at the front of the list. Of course, we'd need to know a bit more about what on earth meat & animal derivatives are to really judge anything here, especially with the recent inclusion of feather meal as a potential dog food ingredient. But, this is a much more affordable option, and is still a much, much better choice than anything in a supermarket!

Lastly, Vet's choice. Also a bit less pricey than the first three, inside this kibble you will find:
Cereals, meat and animal by-products, vegetable protein extract, oils and fats, minerals, vegetable derivatives, vitamins, amino acids...

We fed this for quite some time, in fact, after discovering how truly horrid the Pedigree and Purina puppy food was that we started out on. At the time their recipe read a bit differently, including more meat.

That said, though, while this is (was?) a more meaty pap, it's still not really getting away from the problem - lots of stuff in this food that the dog cannot easily digest. Now, grains aren't bad, per se (there is a case to be made for the immediately available energy they can provide), but I don't think they should be the majority of what a dog eats, with vitamin supplements to make up the rest. I am one of those cooks that thinks maybe dogs should eat healthy food, not just healthy supplements.

What do we feed nowadays? Earthborn Holistic grain free. It's hard to find at times, and it's expensive (I doubt this will be possible for people with many, or large dogs). We're looking at finding us some premade raw (doing it myself is beyond me and my kitchen at the moment - yet it is very affordable, and in many ways really the very best you can do for your dog).

Honestly, tough, it's tough finding dog food that sounds like it's actually food.
I do know though that pap en sous is not it.