dogfoodanalysis website - reliable?

paultf

I give my dogs Burns and recently I was checking out reviews of Burns on www.dogfoodanalysis.com From what I can gather, alot people check this site out when researching a new food.

The Burns foods gets 3 stars on the site. For each of the Burns foods reviewed, the review contains the following section which seems to be pasted into each Burns review:-

"Chicken accounts for 20% of the food. This product is inclusive of water content (about 80%) and once that is removed it is likely that this ingredient would be more accurately placed somewhat further down the ingredient list (ingredients are listed in order of weight). We have concerns, therefore, about the extremely low meat content apparent in this food."

When I saw this I sent off an email to Burns and got the following response:-

"Dear Paul,

Thank you for your enquiry. I am afraid your original email was misdirected into the ‘junk mail’ box and therefore missed, I apologise and we have asked our I.T. department to investigate.
We are aware of the reviews on the website ‘dogfoodanalysis’ and also of their stated bias towards high protein grain free diets. Almost every review on this site for the Burns diets is inaccurate if only because the same error appears to have been copied and pasted into each separate product review. All of our diets use meat meal whereas the reviews on the site assume we are using fresh meat which would indeed lead to a very low meat content if it were true. The percentage of meat stated, e.g. 20%, is therefore accurate and this varies from product to product because it is the amount required to achieve a desired protein content of 18.5%. A meat meal is a superior product to fresh meat in nutritional content and because we specify the use of high quality meat meals in our diets they are very digestible and a lower overall quantity is required as the body is able to utilise more of the meat. I hope this is of help.

Regards,

Deborah Parkin."

So I am just wondering how reliable is the dogfoodanalysis website? What do you think?

suziwalsh

Not sure the whole dog food area is so confusing. I would not find the dog analysis site very accurate. I think the right food for your dog depends on breed, lifestyle and exercise levels. There are a lot of wrong foods in my eyes but some very good high quality foods that I would give a similar rating. I feel that once your dog is on a good quality diet and not full of additives etc then you are on the right track. I also would supplement my dogs diet with some fish oils and some veg on and off.

tk123

suziwalsh wrote: »

Not sure the whole dog food area is so confusing. I would not find the dog analysis site very accurate. I think the right food for your dog depends on breed, lifestyle and exercise levels. There are a lot of wrong foods in my eyes but some very good high quality foods that I would give a similar rating. I feel that once your dog is on a good quality diet and not full of additives etc then you are on the right track. I also would supplement my dogs diet with some fish oils and some veg on and off.

+1

Our guy is on Burns too and changing him to it has made a huge difference in him. 5 stars imo

StupidLikeAFox

I think theres no way to accurately predict what way a dog will react to different food. We have gotten reports of dogs reacting badly to the more premium products (irritated, itchy, generally just down in themselves) while some thrive on the supposedly lower quality foods.

peasant

Dog food is the new religion

Dogfoodanalysis.com stem from the "thou shalt not feed grain to thy dog" sects with a strong influence from "The wild wolf be thy God, thou shalt have no other god than the wolf" nutters.

Today's dogs are not wolves, they don't need a fresh kill every day ...they've had roughly 100,000 years to adapt to living off human food scraps.

Furthermore, most of today's dogs are also lazy, unemployed couch potatos. They do not need to be fed on the sheer protein reserved for super athletes.

Feed good quality (not floor sweepings), don't feed lots of artificial crap (colourants, preservatives etc) and you'll be grand.
If your dog doesn't do well on one brand it will on another.

mymo

I think its very unreliable, I checked the ingredients on 3 bags of food here(Royal canin med and mini adult and james well beloved) and found the Royal canin seemed to have way different ingredients in both varieties and the Jwb also a slight difference.
It is definitely biased towards the grain free high protein foods which would make one of my dogs quite ill. He doesn't seem to handle high protein foods well.
I think the best thing is to read up a little and try to judge for yourself, based on budget as well as how good the food is.

lorebringer

I think www.dogfoodanalysis.com is a very good site as a guideline, but not as a bible! I have my own personal opinions on what suits my dogs best and stick with it. As long as you are feeding a decent quality food that the dogs (and you) are happy with there is no need to change (unless you want to!). Research into food(s) and the dogs health are the most important things when it comes to feeding dogs, www.dogfoodanalysis.com is a good tool to aid this but certainly not the be all and end all.