By RICHARD MURRIHY
THEY say you are what you eat, but did you know the same applies to your pet?
Understanding what is in your pet food should be one of the first things we do when buying food for our pets.
Like foods in our lives, there are some differences when reading the label of ingredients and we should look for pet food that has ingredients that are easy to find and not hiding on the bag.
Canidae dog food is a prime example where the ingredients are listed on the bag in two, easy-to-find places, making the decision of which food to buy much easier.
It’s also important to understand the ingredients that are listed on the bag from the heaviest to the lightest.
Watch for ingredients such as corn and corn gluten as they are separated to go lower in the list where they can hide from your notice.
Manufacturers can sometimes use complicated or tricky words to hide what the ingredients really are, such as meat by-products which are the clean parts of animals, but not meat.
Meat by-products can include lungs, spleen, liver, blood, bone and some fatty tissues, but are free from hair, horns, teeth and hooves.
While corn gluten meal is the by-product after the manufacture of corn syrup or starch and is dried residue after the removal of the bran, germ and starch.
BHA is a fat preservative, ethoxyquin is a chemical preservative used to prevent dog food spoiling and brewers rice is the small fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from larger kernels of milled rice.
To better understand what you are feeding your pet, ask your local pet food retailer for more information and find out what they feed their pets.
