Yeah, Iams and Science Diet aren't good foods, Science Diet is by far the worst between the two though. Most vets know nothing about food -- they are only taught about nutrition for a few hours and they are taught by Science Diet and other dog food company representitives, therefore they learn nothing. Before my vet decided to practise both holistically as well as conventionally, she was a regular conventional vet. She began to realise that many of the health problems that arose in pets could be due to diet. As soon as she stopped promoting the bad foods and started promoting RAW diets and high quality kibbles, she noticed an extreme drop in health problems.

You really just have to know what you're looking for when you look at the ingredients. When you are looking for an inexpensive food, obviously you have to let a few of the ingredients slide because it's impossible to find a good food for really cheap. But some of the ingredients you have to watch out for are corn, wheat, by-products, soy, peanut hulls, BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin, tallow, unessecary additives like colour, etc. Make sure the first ingredient is a meat MEAL, not just meat (unless the ingredient after the meat is a meat meal, then it doesn't really matter). So chicken meal instead of chicken, lamb meal instead of lamb, etc. Stay away from any inspecific ingredients like "meat meal" or "meat and bone meal." What kind of meat??? Same thing with "poultry." Dog food companies make a killing off of buying roadkill from the city and euthanised pets from shelters and laboratories and putting it in their food. Poultry often means crow. But like I said, if you want something cheap, it's hard to find something that lacks all of these bad ingredients. Just try your best!