Originally posted by jennifert


Dixie, why do you say Iams is terrible? perhaps you can direct me to some articles or websites with info on why Iams may not be the best choice?? Then I can have some ammunition to show my roommate to convince her we need to change food.
I base this comment on the ingredients in both products. Let's just take a couple of ingredients on the Iams chunks bag and see what they really are.

Chicken By-products - This is an ever changing ingedient. By-products are whatever is left over from other processing. Today is it liver, kidney, lung tomorrow it is spleen, heart, intestines. Due to the inconsistentcy of the By-products being used how can the nutritional value be consistent? By-products are also much less expensive than Chicken meal and also much less digestable. This means the nutritional value is going in one end of your dog and passing through the other end with almost the same nutritional value because it is not getting absorbed into the dogs system.

Ground Corn - Ground corn is a processed ingredient that has been determined to be a cause of allergies in canines. While your dog may not develope an allergy that is readily diagnosed, That does not mean a food allergy is not present. Excessive shedding, scratching, ear infections, dull coat, hot spots are all symptoms of food allergies. I have seen to many of these problems in dogs and then when they are switched to a higher quality food they magically disappear!

My suggestion is to learn about the foods you feed your dog. A lot of pet food manufacturers do it for the billions of dollars the industry creates and not for the absolute love of your pet. IAMS and EUKANUBA were originally a very high quality food when it was run by IAMS co. The founder was Paul Iams and he started the company to create a high quality food. Unfortunately it is now run by Proctor and Gamble and believe me they do not have the same concern for your pet that Paul Iams did over 50 years ago. Their bottom line is how to make a bigger profit for the company using the least expensive ingredients they can. After all they are a public trading company that has to answer to the stock holders! Anyone in business can tell you how that goes.

Royal Canin has a new holistic food on the market that can be purchased at Pet Smart. I have not researched it all that closely but at first glance it looks pretty good. None of the ingredients that are on my taboo list.

Please don't get me wrong. You are the one who ultimately has to determine what is best for your dog. I am only giving my opinion based on years of research and trying to combat problems my dogs were having. Goldens in particular tend to have a lot of food allergy problems. I can honestly say that my Dixie and Dusty are the first Goldens I have owned that are not displaying the problems my other Goldens did. I believe it is because of the food they are eating.

One final note. The cost of a food does not determine if it is a premium food or not. You need to be educated to read the label and see what is in the product. Chances are you will find more foods with unattractive ingredient lists that cost more than some of the less expensive supermarket kinds. However, that being said, a Super premium food will cost more initially but because the ingredients are more readily absorbed into the blood stream, you do not feed as much. Therefor the food actually ends up costing about the same in the long run. You actually get smaller more consistent stools too because the ingredients list is pretty stable.