The shocking truth behind store-bought pet food

Did you know that most commercial pet food and snacks are full of preservatives, colourants and other chemicals which may harm your pet's health AND the planet? Even the top brands on the market aren’t as 'premium' when it comes to the quality of ingredients and safety of manufacturing processes.

Have you heard of 4D meat? If not, read further to discover the shocking truth of what you're actually feeding your beloved pets!

Yes, commercial pet food and treats do contain a few necessary vitamins and minerals to sustain our pets’ health, but not enough to provide their bodies with everything that they need for best health. Additionally, commercial pet food contains about 35% protein, 19% fat and 37% carbohydrates - an interesting statistic considering cats and dogs are primarily carnivorous.

Protein is the most expensive ingredient while carbohydrates are the cheapest; usually cheaper foods contain more carbohydrates. Often, they use substitutes like corn gluten meal or soybean meal to get the protein up to minimum acceptable levels - this leads to an excess in calories, making dry pet food one of the leading causes of obesity in pets!

Besides store-bought pet food not supplying our pets with the daily recommended nutrient intake that their bodies need, they contain some other worrying ingredients.

Scary ingredients found in store-bought pet food

Pet food manufacturers don't want you to know that less than desirable ingredients end up in your pet’s food, such as 4D meat. 4D meat refers to meat that was sourced from animals who were dead, dying, diseased, or down - in other words, they were not slaughtered, they were found in these unsavoury conditions. Factories who use 4D meats are known as 'rendering plants', and in addition to dead and dying cattle, rendering plants are also known to use meat from roadkill, dead zoo animals and even euthanized pets from animal shelters and veterinary clinics.

As if it wasn't already bad enough, 4D meats often have cancerous tumors, worm-infested organs, bodies pumped with antibiotics and steroids, the sodium pentobarbital used to euthanize animals, and other terrible toxins!

Choose the healthiest diet for your pet

It can be tricky knowing which pet food brand to trust and which to not! One of the easiest ways to determine whether a pet food is really healthy for your pet is by looking at the price. Human-grade meats are considerably more expensive than 4D meats - an attractively low price tag is almost a guarantee that a pet food is made from low-quality, 4D meats.

Besides the 4D meat issue, pet foods that contain ideal proportions of ingredients, best suited for animals, will be more expensive. This is because they are not cutting corners by bulking up the food with cheap substitutes. They're rather ensuring the food contains the protein and nutrients that the animals need to be healthy.

If you would like to start becoming a more health-conscious pet food consumer, choose pet food products with ingredients processed as little as possible. Also, many animal experts will swear by canned food over dry kibble, or, even better, fresh frozen, dehydrated, or freeze-dried items. Read into raw food diets, they are way better for your pet's health!

Raw food diets are beneficial for numerous reasons, including dental health, digestive health, skin health, obesity, and more - plus they do not contain all the undesirable additives!

Browse our range of pet supplements that are perfect for adding into their food!

If you have any health-related questions, please contact us or leave a comment below for FREE advice. We always love hearing from you!