Reddit reviews Dog Food Logic: Making Smart Decisions for Your Dog in an Age of Too Many Choices
We found 4 Reddit comments about Dog Food Logic: Making Smart Decisions for Your Dog in an Age of Too Many Choices. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
You won't find m(any) published studies comparing specific named brands to other specific named brands. Many published peer-reviewed studies tend to keep the names blinded to avoid appearing as endorsements.
But, I have oodles of resources for you about canine nutrition in general.
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) is an association of associations. Its membership is made up of veterinary organisations from all over the world, which are concerned with companion animals. Currently there are 92 member and affiliate associations, representing over 145,000 individual veterinarians from around the globe.
Here is what they, along with a few other expert resources have to say about pet/dog nutrition.
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University
The Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine
'Dog Food Logic' Book Excerpts written by an animal nutritionist (MSc)
I HIGHLY recommend reading the full book. It's a great read, and dives into detail on the science of canine nutrition for the layman. No, seriously, read the book Dog Food Logic: Making Smart Decisions for Your Dog in an Age of Too Many Choices.
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Peer-reviewed studies related to dog/pet/animal nutrition (borrowed from the book Dog Food Logic):
DogFoodAdvisor is not a very good resource when it comes to evaluating food. The writer has no education in nutrition or veterinary medicine; he's a dentist who believes that his dog died because of the food it ate, and therefore has developed this completely unscientific method of evaluating how good a food is based on how palatable the ingredients sound to him personally, without taking into account actual reputable benchmarks of food quality such as AAFCO labeling, feeding trials, in-house veterinary teams available for consultation, in-house research, reputability of company/length of company's existence, in-house quality control procedures, and actual food safety (in the case of raw).
He also has a number of completely unqualified beliefs about which ingredients are better than others when it come to how he rates various foods, and he frequently uses the naturalistic fallacy in determining what is good and bad for a dog without taking into account the difference in lifespan between feral and owned dogs and between dogs and wolves, as well as the large differences in biology (including digestive ability) between domesticated dogs and wolves.
He, along with other dog food corporations, claim that veterinarians get little nutrition training - completely false (they take multiple courses in nutrition over the course of their veterinary school years) and really laughable when put in juxtaposition with how it's recommended we take advice from lay people like groomers and trainers instead. They also like to claim that vets only recommend brands with research like Science Diet and Royal Canin because they get a kickback - again, completely untrue, and vets only carry prescription varieties of those foods in their offices anyway. According to some analyses done at /r/AskVet, vets actually lose money carrying those prescription diets, too, because they have to keep all kinds in stock regardless of the frequency of it being used, and get rid of that stock when it expires. The only reason they even carry these prescription diets at their office is because otherwise some of their patients would not be able to access the prescription food they need to live. It's a courtesy that costs the practice money, not a money-making venture.
You are likely much better off choosing a high quality food from a brand that meets the above requirements (AAFCO labeling, feeding trials, in-house veterinary teams available for consultation, in-house research, reputability of company/length of company's existence, and in-house quality control procedures) than going off of a fad "holistic" diet with no scientific research backing it up and no advanced quality control such as the kind used by larger, more established companies.
For more information on choosing a healthy diet for your dog:
Have you spoken to your vet about this?
Every dog is different and there is no objective "best" dog food - you will get a lot of anecdotal evidence in threads like these. If you're interested in understanding canine nutrition and how to differentiate science from marketing/pseudoscience, I would really recommend the book Dog Food Logic by Linda Case. She has her MS in canine nutrition - the book should really be a staple for all dog owners.
If you're seriously interested in learning about pet food and making an informed decision, I really suggest this book: Dog Food Logic. It's aimed at dogs, but a lot of the information is similar. It'll walk you through a lot of the myths about pet foods, human biases, talk about what "by-product" and "filler" really means, etc. It won't tell you exactly what to buy, but will definitely make you more informed when you walk the aisles at Petsmart. :)