How to Read a Dog Food Label

Dog food label standards are enforced federally by the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and by some states that adhere to standards set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO).

Before we get started, would you rather just go straight to the foods that have been found to be the best?  If so, go to our 10 Best Dog Food Options page.  You can also use our Dog Food Ratings Healthy Label Test to apply all of the information on this page to your dog's food.

Otherwise, put on your learning cap and go get your dog food so you can follow along with your own label.  We'll wait right here...

Okay, here we go.  Remember, once you understand the concepts on this page, you can always use our free Healthy Label Test to double check that your dog food makes the grade.

The Center for Veterinary Medicine requires each dog food label to provide (the following 8 links will jump ahead down the page):

• Proper product name
• Proper ingredient listing
• Net weight
• Manufacturer’s address

Each state or specific brand can choose whether to enforce AAFCO’s standards, which get even more specific for:

• Product name
• Guaranteed analysis
• Feeding directions
• Calorie statements

In addition to explaining each element above, we will also walk you through a real label at the end of the page.

Product Name

The dog food label product name is one of the biggest ways to lure you to buy, and dog food manufacturers know it.  Unfortunately, even AAFCO’s standards allow labels to mislead the common consumer.

For example, what is the difference between “Lamb Dog Food,” “Lamb Dinner Dog Food,” “Dog Food with Lamb” and “Lamb Flavored Dog Food”?

See what we mean?

Here is what you should look for in the product name:

And guess what?  Lamb is not the same as lamb meal or lamb by-products, which is why you should pay particular attention to the dog food label ingredient list.

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Dog Food Label Ingredient List

All dog food ingredients are required to be listed in order of their prominence by weight.  Manufacturers are, however, allowed to include water weight when calculating the weight of each ingredient.

Meat, for example, contains about 75% water.  Although it may be listed first on the ingredients list, it may not provide the amount of protein that your dog needs (or you think you’re getting).

Dog food ingredients are supposed to be listed by their "common or usual" name according to AAFCO.

You probably won’t recognize many of the less prevalent ingredients towards the bottom of the dog food label ingredient list.  These can include good things like vitamins, minerals and nutrients or not-so-good things like artificial colors and chemical preservatives.

Most of the lower-listed ingredients will be “Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)” or approved food additives.  This only means that the ingredients are not directly harmful to your dog.  They may, however, be indirectly harmful.

Harmful or Controversial Ingredients

Many dog food ingredients have either been found to be harmful but have not yet been addressed by the loosely regulated pet food agencies or have conflicting opinions about them:

• Any artificial coloring
• Any artificial flavoring
• Ammoniated lgycyrrhizin
• Bone meal
• Butylated hydroxytoluene (bht)
• Chicken by-products
• Corn syrup
• Digest of poultry by-products
• Dried animal digest
• Dried liver digest
• Ethoxyquin
• Fish by-products
• Fish meal
• Liver glandular meal
• Meat by-products
• Potassium sorbate
• Poultry by-products
• Poultry by-product meal
• Propyl gallate
• Propylene glycol
• Sodium nitrate
• Sucrose

Why risk it?  Play it on the safe side and AVOID these ingredients.

An Important Note About Raw Food

It is generally a good idea to balance your dog’s diet with partially cooked or raw natural dog food and/or dog dietary supplements for several reasons:

• Protein – dog food labels do not distinguish between the biological value and digestibility of the protein in their products.  A large amount of protein is essential for a healthy dog, but only if it is high enough quality for your dog’s body to use it.
• Carbohydrates - great source of nutrients, but only in the form of complex carbohydrates such as whole grain.  Low value carbs include sugar, propylene glycol, corn syrup, rice flour, beet sugar, corn gluten meal and brewers rice.
• Vitamins & minerals - may be lost through heat processing.  Especially true for Vitamins A, E and B which are very important in fighting disease.  Minerals may be present in manufactured foods in their basic form, but it is doubtful that their benefits in this form are as beneficial as the complex forms found in nature.

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Other Important Dog Food Label Elements

Net Weight

The net weight dog food label requirement is strictly regulated by the U.S. Fair Packaging and Labeling Act.  It tells you the weight of the product and is especially important to make sure that you understand what you are paying for, especially when comparing products.  Manufactures play plenty of tricks such as adding air to the product to fill a bigger bag with less dog food.

Manufacturer's Information

Many products on the shelves are not actually made by the brand or company selling the product.  The "manufactured by..." statement on the dog food label will let you know who is actually making the food and who you should be researching.  You may, for example, want to avoid manufacturers involved in any recall of dog food.

Guaranteed Analysis

Each dog food label must include guarantees for the minimum percentages of protein and fat and the maximum percentages of moisture and fiber.  You may also find minimum guarantees for calcium linoleic acid, phosphorus, sodium and other ingredients.

Why are the guarantees important?  They will help to give you an accurate comparison of the protein, fat, moisture and fiber (and other) content between dry and canned foods.

The guarantees will usually be much lower for canned dog food because they are 75% - 80% water versus around 10% in dry food.

Here are the formulas to put the two on a level playing field:

• Percent of dry matter = 100% minus % of moisture guaranteed on the label
• Guaranteed amount in canned food dry matter = % of guarantee divided by % of dry matter times 100

Not a fan of carrying a calculator with you to the store?  Me neither.  The quick way to figure out the amount of dry matter in canned food is to multiply the guarantee by 4 (10% protein above X 4 = 40% protein in the dry matter).  Then bump up the dry food percentage by 3 or 4%.  The math won’t always be perfect but it will keep you on the right path.

Feeding Directions

Every dog food label should indicate the necessary number of cups per pound of your dog’s body weight per day.  Only use this as a starting point.  Adjust the amounts based on your dog’s individual characteristics and weight loss/gain requirements.  If you are feeding a nursing mother, give her all she can eat.

Calorie Statement

A variety of factors can make the fat content difficult to determine, so the best way to compare products and determine how much to feed your dog is through the calorie content.  Although the calorie statement is not on every dog food label, new AAFCO regulations were created to allow manufacturers to prove their claims.

Always lean towards brands that include calorie information as it is a strong indication that the brand is complying with AAFCO standards.

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Let’s Apply What You Have Learned with a Real Dog Food Label

Click here for more details about Solid Gold Hundchen Flocken

Product Name

• "America's First Natural Dog Food" - Labeled "natural," so should be without chemicals or preservatives.
• "With Vitamins and Minerals" - Must contain at least 3% vitamins and minerals
• "Made with Fresh Lamb Meat" - Must contain at least 3% lamb meat
• “Puppy Food – Excellent for Growth” – indicating which life stage the product is meant for since they are explicitly using AAFCO’s guidelines

Net Weight

• Included

Manufacturers Name

“Manufactured for” indicates that Solid Gold did not actually make the food, but the bag does not tell us who actually manufactured it.  (Although Solid Gold is a good brand, this proves the point that the guidelines are not enforced since technically they are supposed to tell us this information on the bag.)

To make sure that the food was safe, we called Solid Gold to find out who the manufacturer was, whether they were affected by the recall and, just to be safe, which countries the ingredients came from.  We found that Diamond Plants are their manufacturer.  Although Diamond WAS effected by the recall (Texas plant), the plants used to make Solid Gold were not (Missouri and California).

We also found that all of the ingredients are from the U.S. except for the lamb (New Zealand), potato protein (Europe but not the Netherlands) and tuna (Thailand).  No China, no Netherlands – check.

Ingredient List

• “Lamb” is listed first, so we know that it is the most prevalent by weight (likely higher than the required 3% indicated from the product name)
• Contains none of the harmful or controversial ingredients listed above
• In addition to listing “lamb” first, this food contains many more sources of protein (lamb meal, ocean fish meal, lentils, etc.), so we are more confident that our puppy will get the proper amount of protein.  This is further supported by the Guarantee Analysis below.  Since growing puppies REALLY need protein, we still supplement her diet with partially cooked meat and other protein sources.

Guaranteed Analysis

By using our formula, we know that this dry food contains 31% protein

• 28% protein / 90% dry matter X 100 = 31% protein
• Note:  You really only need to worry about the calculation when you are comparing canned (wet) food.  The 28% crude protein listed is very close to the actual 31% protein because the food is dry.  As a reminder, it is easier to use the “times 4” rule when figuring out actual protein for canned food.  For dry food, you can just bump up the number by 3 or 4% for comparison purposes.
• The same calculations are used for the rest of the guaranteed ingredients.

Calorie Statement

Calorie information is provided, which reassures us even further that this brand is on top of things.

Feeding Directions

Directions are included and amount by weight is provided in an easy-to-read table format – perfect.

Other Points

• Although not indicated in the product name, the back of the bag states “Nutritionally Complete and Balanced” using AAFCO’s standards – big positive.
• Packaging explicitly states that it does not contain several potentially harmful or questionable ingredients (i.e. “No Byproducts”).

Summary of This Dog Food Label

We are very pleased with the label analysis of Solid Gold Hunchen Flocken for all of the reasons listed above (surprise, surprise, we feed this to our puppy!).  It follows AAFCO’s guidelines, has the protein and nutrients she needs, has no known “bad” ingredients and is from a brand who gets their food from safe manufacturing plants.

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