The Dangerous Dog Food Ingredient | Top News

The Dangerous Dog Food Ingredient

Do you know why most dog foods contain carbohydrate? If you answered because your dog needs them, then you'd be wrong. Dogs and cats have no nutritional requirement for carbohydrate - no researcher has been able to prove that they need it in their diets. But most dog foods are nearly half carbohydrate … and this is hidden from you. But today, I'm going to show you how to do find out just how much carbohydrate is in your dog's food - and why it's super important to know how much. 

OK so if you flip over a bag of dog food and look at the guaranteed analysis, you'll see that AAFCO requires pet food makers to tell you some basic but important details about the food. They have to tell you how much protein is there, how much fat, and how much ash which is a fancy way of saying minerals. And this is because your dog needs these nutrients to live. But they don't have to tell you how much carbohydrate is in the food because it doesn't matter - dogs have no need for it. But dog foods average  a whopping 40-60% carbohydrate content. And there are two reasons for that:

1. Plant protein is cheaper than animal protein, and 2. Because kibble needs to contain at least 1/3 starch to be extruded into that convenient kibble form. So the carbs are there for price and convenience … they're certainly not there for the health of your dog. And by the way, if you like this video please let me know in the comments below - and if have any questions, leave a comment and our team will help you out.

Large amounts of carbohydrate can disrupt the delicate balance of bacteria living in your dog's gut … gut bacteria eat what your dog eats, and species of bacteria that like to eat starch also poop out toxic substances that can cause inflammation in your dog's gut. When this happens, little holes develop in the gut lining, allowing undigested food, yeast, viruses and bacteria to get into your dog. This is called leaky gut and it causes a general inflammation all over your dog that you'll see as allergies, digestive issues, joint pain and organ disease like kidney failure or pancreatitis. Starch also causes spikes in insulin, which will cause the body to stop breaking down and mobilizing fat in the body. So if a dog or cat's diet is continuously spiking insulin, then it can be hard for them to lose weight, even on a low calorie diet. So it's really important to know how much carbohydrate is in your dog's diet … even if nobody wants to tell you! But I'm here to show you how …

Take your bag of dog food and look for the guaranteed analysis. You'll see the percentage of protein, fat, moisture, fiber and ash, then add them together and subtract from 100. If the ash content isn't listed, then use 7% for kibble and 1.5% for canned diets. There isn't a wide range of ash and that's the average. This will tell you the percentage of carbohydrate in your dog's food. Let's do a quick example with a typical bag of food. I'll randomly choose what chewy.com calls a premium food  - let's do Orijen Original grain-free food. OK, so the protein is 38% and I'll add that up with the fat, fiber, moisture and ash - and I'll use 7% since it's not listed here - and I get 79 - 100 minus 79 is 21. So this premium food is 21% carbs. Now don't get fooled into believing all premium foods are this low in carbohydrate … let's look at one more food and I'll do The Honest Kitchen grain-free beef. So I'll add up the protein, fat, fiber, moisture and do 7% for ash … and that adds up to 63.5. 100 minus 63.5 is 36.5% carbs. 

So now you know how to find out how much carbohydrate in your dog's food … and why pet food makers don't have to report it. You'd think that a major ingredient that makes up at 1/3 of the kibble's weight would be important enough to let you know how much is in there. But when it comes to dog food, there are a lot of tricks and loopholes makers can use to make you believe the food is better than it is. Now if you have a question about your dog's food, just leave a comment below and I'll be happy to help you out. And if you like this video, please make sure you share it.