what do you think of grain free kibble?

[Lioten]

I am thinking of buying Grain free kibble. Most of these are marketed as „wolfs diet based“ and better for dogs.
What do you think ? Is it only marketing or are they really better?

 

[Mr. Schmucks]

If my dog’s a wolf, she’s the kind that hunts for dropped fries in the parking lot. I’d say it’s mostly marketing, but depends on the brand. What were you looking at?

 

[EnraaGygas]

A "wolf-based diet", or as close as you can get to it, is going to be raw feeding. Kibble is always going to be processed, always going to loaded down with unnecessary fillers, pet-grade meat, questionable additives, and usually it's even sprayed down with fat to even taste decent. A lot of dogs do awesome on kibble, it's old reliable for a reason, but it's not natural and it's nowhere near an ancestral diet. That's okay! It works!

Grain free diets picked up traction in like 2010-2018 because they were better for weight loss/maintenance, they were usually low glycemic so they help with chronic yeast, and seemingly were just the best thing since sliced bread. Heck, you usually even feed less, which means you save more money if you don't count how much pricier it is than grain friendly diets.

The one bad thing, and I mean actually bad, about grain free is that the legumes and peas/pea protein they load up on to falsely boost the protein percentage cause issues with the heart, leading to DCM (dilated cardio myopathy). Now you will have a million and one pet store staff saying "that's not true! It wasn't proven!" And I will tell you that I have known dogs who have gotten DCM from those diets and the reps for the companies attacked are the ones telling them that and passing them brand swag. Do your own research because most pet store staff are extremely ill-advised by reps trying to sell their products.

Now those ingredients (peas,legumes) aren't in every brand of grain free food, but you're paying a pretty penny if you want to avoid them. After all, if it was affordable to boost the protein percentage with...you know...protein, they'd do it. At $130+ a bag usually for a legume free option, you're REALLY narrowing the people who can afford to feed that product. A lot will just go to raw or another alternative diet.

Brands like Farmina are a little better, they do the whole scientific approach and make sure their kibble is more sound with added taurine and less risky ingredients. I do believe that Stella and Chewy just put out a kibble with absolutely no legumes or anything in their raw blend, and Honest Kitchen Clusters are also a good option. There are probably others, but off the top of my head right now I really can't think of them.

To be perfectly honest though, in kibble I like grains. I think they're the lesser of the evils - potato causes yeast and weight gain like crazy if it's consistently fed and legumes and peas cause actual health problems. Meanwhile...grains are decently digestible (nothing some digestive enzymes won't fix), they're cheap, and can be a decent source of carb for energy. Unless there is multiple listed in the ingredient panel, it's not the worst thing on the planet.

 

[Lioten]

A "wolf-based diet", or as close as you can get to it, is going to be raw feeding. Kibble is always going to be processed, always going to loaded down with unnecessary fillers, pet-grade meat, questionable additives, and usually it's even sprayed down with fat to even taste decent. A lot of dogs do awesome on kibble, it's old reliable for a reason, but it's not natural and it's nowhere near an ancestral diet. That's okay! It works!

Grain free diets picked up traction in like 2010-2018 because they were better for weight loss/maintenance, they were usually low glycemic so they help with chronic yeast, and seemingly were just the best thing since sliced bread. Heck, you usually even feed less, which means you save more money if you don't count how much pricier it is than grain friendly diets.

The one bad thing, and I mean actually bad, about grain free is that the legumes and peas/pea protein they load up on to falsely boost the protein percentage cause issues with the heart, leading to DCM (dilated cardio myopathy). Now you will have a million and one pet store staff saying "that's not true! It wasn't proven!" And I will tell you that I have known dogs who have gotten DCM from those diets and the reps for the companies attacked are the ones telling them that and passing them brand swag. Do your own research because most pet store staff are extremely ill-advised by reps trying to sell their products.

Now those ingredients (peas,legumes) aren't in every brand of grain free food, but you're paying a pretty penny if you want to avoid them. After all, if it was affordable to boost the protein percentage with...you know...protein, they'd do it. At $130+ a bag usually for a legume free option, you're REALLY narrowing the people who can afford to feed that product. A lot will just go to raw or another alternative diet.

Brands like Farmina are a little better, they do the whole scientific approach and make sure their kibble is more sound with added taurine and less risky ingredients. I do believe that Stella and Chewy just put out a kibble with absolutely no legumes or anything in their raw blend, and Honest Kitchen Clusters are also a good option. There are probably others, but off the top of my head right now I really can't think of them.

To be perfectly honest though, in kibble I like grains. I think they're the lesser of the evils - potato causes yeast and weight gain like crazy if it's consistently fed and legumes and peas cause actual health problems. Meanwhile...grains are decently digestible (nothing some digestive enzymes won't fix), they're cheap, and can be a decent source of carb for energy. Unless there is multiple listed in the ingredient panel, it's not the worst thing on the planet.

Thank you very much for this detailed information. Both brands do in fact have peas allthough they are more expensive then raw feeding (Kibble is more convenient because I use it for training and feed by hand)

I will abstain from them