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Different Types of Dog Food:Dog food is a billion dollar industry world over because of the sheer convenience that it offers pet owners in ensuring that their dogs get a square meal without them having to really venture into the kitchen.
There have been many generations of dogs that have grown up on commercial dog foods and the overall benefit that it most dogs get out of it seems to overshadow some of the controversies that have dogged the commercial dog food industry. However, having said that, there are still concerns about the true nutritive value of these commercial foods as against an ideal wild diet that is the natural dog diet.
There are different types of dog food that are available with the main two varieties being kibble and wet dog food.
Kibble dog food is been dried out with a process like baking. This is then spray with essential nutrients and fats before being packaged and sold. Wet dog food is a bit more natural with the meat being made available in a can after being sterilized.
The cost difference between the two favors the former. Nutritionally speaking, there really isn’t much difference between the two. On the subject of nutrition, it is worth noting that many types of dog food have a certain amount of plant matter in it like corn and wheat. These are known to cause some type of allergies in dogs and wheat is especially problematic for allergic dogs. Some brands that are either wet or dry in nature have also ventured into the arena of using soy as a method of infusing more protein into the diet of a dog.
One of the biggest criticisms of dog food has come from the edges of the nutrition debate. This is a group that propagates a raw food diet. In a sense, the logic does hold some water because dogs are still evolutionarily tuned to eating meat and don’t need to have their meat cooked for them. However, the criticisms on this brand of pet nutrition comes from the fact that meat is something that is highly degradable and in the absence of proper treatment, meat can go from fresh to rotten very fast. Apart from this is the ever present danger of parasitic worms finding their way into the dog from eating infected meat. There is no clear mandate that is the best but a balance between the two sides of the debate is the best choice.
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