Purina ONE, good or bad?

Question

We were thinking about buying this food for our dogs, but when I asked about dog food previously, 6 people gave this suggestion a thumbs down.. any particular reason? Upon comparison, it is pretty much the only food I can find around here that has meat as the first ingredient... just wondering about it..

Answer 1

If you continue reading the ingredients, you'll find it isn't a very good food. Compare it to the following list:

Nothing you find at a grocery store is going to be a good food. High quality foods can be found at large pet store chains, or online. A couple of foods I like are Nutro Natural, Innova, Innova Evo and Cannidae.

There are other high quality dog foods. Here's how to spot them:

A high quality food will have little or no fillers such as corn, wheat or soy. These aren't very digestable for dogs, and are common food related allergens. Since you were seeing corn meal in the first few ingredients, those are not high quality foods. Foods list ingredients by content, with the ingredient it contains most of at the top.

A high quality food will not contain BHT, BHA or Ethoxyquin, these are all chemical preservatives that have been linked to cancer.

A high quality food will not contain by-products of any kind. Meat meals are ok as long as the source of the meat is listed, such as Chicken Meal.

A high quality diet should have meat as at least the first ingredient., and be made from human grade ingredients. Foods that don't use human grade ingredients often get their ingredients from less than desirable sources, such as meat from animals that were diseased, or euthanized.

There is another diet option other than dog food. Some people choose to feed a raw diet. This involves feeding the dog raw meaty bones and organ meat. However it is not as simple as throwing a couple chicken bones in a bowl everyday. If you wish to feed this type of diet, do lots and lots of research first. Switching to this diet without knowing what your doing can lead to nutritional problems for your dog. I'll give you some links as a starting point in research if you are interested in this type of diet.

http://www.willowglen.com/barf.htm.........

http://www.bestfrisbeedogs.com/diets.htm...

http://www.rawlearning.com/rawfaq.html.....

http://www.rawfed.com/myths/index.html.....

http://www.rawdogranch.com

What's Really In Pet Food
http://www.api4animals.org/facts?p=359&m...

Answer 2

The first 8 ingredients are: Ground yellow corn2, poultry by-product meal1, corn gluten meal2, soybean meal, beef tallow8 preserved with mixed-tocopherols , brewers rice3, dicalcium phosphate, calcium carbonate Dogs have a very hard time digesting and processing corn, and since thats the #1 ingredient in Purina Dog Chow, its very difficult for them to digest. The next is poultry by-product meal, which is the stuff on a chicken that isn't meat (such as beaks, tallons, intestins, etc). So right off the bat, the first two ingredients are fillers or low quality. Its just not a good food for dogs, unfortunately. I would go with something like Innova Evo or Canidae, personally. Or even Solid Gold is good, but I wouldn't ever feed purina. :)

Answer 3

Purina ONe is actually pretty disgusting.

The first ingredient is chicken but that isn't exactly what you want to be looking for. Having meat as the first ingredient of a food is important but in this case there is less chicken in this food than the second and third ingredients - Brewers Rice and Corn Gluten Meal (which are both horrible ingredients that shouldn't be in pet foods). A really high quality food would contain something like this: Chicken, Turkey, Chicken Meal, Turkey Meal (Innova Dog Food).

You have to remember that if a company labels an ingredient by its simple name (chicken, turkey), it is put in the food in its natural form and contains 70%. When cooked it loses the water and therefore represents a smaller percentage of the food. Top companies include fresh meat like this but then follow it by chicken or trukey "meal". If you see the word "meal" after an ingredient all it means is that the water has been removed prior to cooking. These means that the protein in the meat put in the foods is much higher thus giving the final food a much richer protein content.

Anyways, Purina ONe has little to know real meat in it and does have many questionable ingredients that I would never feed my pets: corn, brewers rice, by-products (feet, feathers, organs, etc), wheat, animal digest, salt, animal fat, etc.

Here are the ingredients of Innova which is by far one of the best foods on the market. I have reviewed the ingredients of the majority of foods on the market and have yet to find one that has topped Innova. Compare this list to the ingredients of Purina One and you will see that there is a huge difference.

Turkey
Chicken
Chicken Meal
Ground Barley
Ground Brown Rice
Potatoes
Natural Flavors
Ground White Rice
Chicken Fat
Herring
Apples
Carrots
Cottage Cheese
Sunflower Oil
Alfalfa Sprouts
Egg
Garlic
Taurine

Innova is made with ONLY whole, fresh, human grade ingredients...no by-products, fillers or chemical preservatives.

A rule of thumb is that if a food has been advertised on the tv or sold in the grocery store/vets office/chain department store, it is not suitable to be fed to your pet on a regular basis.

HOpe this helps. Pet food is definitely a complicated topic.

Answer 4

A couple of people have provided some very good answers on how bad purina and all the 'commercial' foods are for your dog. if you're looking to learn more about what to look for in a dog food try www.whole-dog-journal.com

When i look at a food, i want to see real, whole ingredients not meal or by products. i want to see grains lower on the list (if at all) and again, whole grains, not by products of the human food industry. For example, i like the ingredient list here of the wellness duck and sweet potato canned food:

Duck, Duck Broth, Ocean Whitefish, Turkey, Chicken Liver, Ground Whole Barley, Sweet Potatoes, Carrots, Flaxseed

now THAT's an ingredient list. Compare that to Purina ONE:

Lamb (natural source of glucosamine), brewers rice, oat meal, corn gluten meal, poultry by-product meal (natural source of glucosamine), whole grain corn, animal fat

okay, the lamb is nice but it goes downhill from there. brewers rice is a byproduct of the human food industry - that mean's it's waste and it's cheap. Again, we've got oat meal, not whole oats. Then it's corn gluten (a byproduct again) and meal at that! then we have poultry (not sure what type) by product (meaning it's rejects from the human food industry again) meal (not even the whole food). Whole grain corn, well our dog is not a cow and corn is the most likely source of allergies in dogs. And then we have animal fat. we have no idea what kind of animals they used for this. most animal fat is stored in large 50 gallon drums and sit around for months meaning it's rancid and must be heated to very high temps to be used. it could never be used for human grade food!

Try looking for companies that use whole, real ingredients and use human-grade food. Not rejects, not by products, not food that could never be served to a person.

Try www.petfooddirect.com for a good place to compare labels.

After doing research i used nature's variety prairie brand, wellness, newman's own, solid gold, etc. until i read more and eventually switched to a raw diet.

Answer 5

uhhhh, not great- but not terrible. Basically the first 5 ingredients of a food are what it is made up of. It probably contains alot of corn which is a big filler. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Bad the best thing to look for when purchasing food is that the first ingredient is chicken or beef. Not chicken meal or chicken by-productSpend the extra few dollars and get the good stuff that will keep your dog healthier longer. We feed Eukanuba. One of the best in the market.

Answer 7

Get thee to a pet store and talk to a knowledgeable employee about your dog's specific nutritional needs. Generally speaking, 99% of the dogs foods sold outside of a pet store and not of sufficient quality.

Answer 8

My husband works at the plant on occassion and they make many different brands. Same ingredients, just processed and labeled differently. The plant reaks of dead animals, they wheel in dead horses and pigs donated by farmers. Meat as an ingredient does not mean much. It is anything that they have to mulch into the vats.

For our dogs we buy whatever is on sale and mix the hard and soft food. i usually like Iams as it appeases my senses more then other dog foods. It gives them variety of different 'junk' and, of course, sometimes we find an item that makes them sick so we will stay away from that one. Sorry, but dog food is a money scam. It is all garbage. There are no regulations. The expensive stuff is processed to be appeasing to humans not to animals as we are the ones who purchase it.

Even the vet approved specialty foods are garbage. They get kick-backs, pressure to sell their brand. It is the same as our medical professions succumbing to drug reps pushing their prescriptions. Welcome to the world of capitalism.

Answer 9

Way too much fat content and fillers in that dog food. But Beneful is worse! And Dad's is the bottom of the barrel.

Try Iams, Eukanuba, or Science Diet.

Answer 10

Our vet, breeder, and everyone we knew recommended Nutro. We use the lamb flavor puppy (large breed) and our dog devours it. They have a ton of varieties to chose from.

We've heard great things about the Kirkland brand from Costco and may switch to that as adult food.