Hi {{first_name}} ,

A good friend of mine told me he was going out to buy food for his German Shepherd. The price had gotten to him. He was going to look for something cheaper.

The confusion around dog food has reached a point where people spend more time decoding labels than actually understanding what they are reading. 

Once you know the three things to look for, you can pick up any bag in any store and know in 30 seconds whether it belongs in your dog's bowl.

In This Issue

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Before you buy anything, flip it over and look at the first three ingredients.

Every single one of them should be a protein source. Animal protein. If wheat appears as the second ingredient, put it back. If corn is in the first three, put it back. Those are fillers. They bind kibble together, give the dog a full stomach, and provide very little else.

There is a difference between a full dog and a fed dog.

People avoid “chicken meal” because the word “meal” sounds like a downgrade. Meal means the entire animal ground down. Feet, beaks, bone, organ meat, all of it. The ingredient most people avoid is one of the better things on a label.

What you are looking for is whether the first three ingredients are all protein. If they are not, move on.

I pulled up a 40-pound bag of food that costs $28. That is 50 cents a pound. The first ingredient on that bag is ground whole grain corn.

Your dog eats two cups of it, feels full, and extracts essentially nothing. Corn goes in, corn comes out. The dog's stomach is satisfied. That is all that happened.

I pulled up a 22-pound bag that costs $100. About five dollars a pound. The first five ingredients: beef, pork fat, beef meal, dried whole egg, dried egg white. All protein. Dense, actual nutrition.

Here is what people miss. Because the dense food is so nutritionally rich, you feed roughly half of what you would feed of the cheap bag. The cost per day comes out close to the same. One dog is getting nutrition. The other is getting a full stomach and nothing else.

Cheap food is not the bargain it looks like on the shelf.

Wheat, corn, sweet potatoes, potatoes. All of it metabolizes into sugar in the body. That process is the same for your dog as it is for you.

What we know about sugar is that it has been shown to drive cancer. It drives heart disease. More than cholesterol. More than fat. Sugar is the mechanism behind more chronic disease than most people understand.

Most dog food bags are loaded with starch. That starch becomes sugar. That is what goes into your dog's bowl every day when you grab the bag with the lowest price on the shelf.  

To add some carbs and good sugars, I add a bit of organic oatmeal to my dogs’ meals.

Here is a practical check you can do in 30 seconds.

Run your fingers along your knuckles. That is what an underweight dog feels like along the ribcage. Bone too prominent, not enough coverage.

Run your fingers across the inside of your palm. That is what an overweight dog feels like. Too padded, bone buried under fat.

What you want is somewhere between the two. You should be able to feel the ribs under a layer of meat. Bone present, not prominent. If you cannot feel the ribs at all, the dog is carrying too much. If the ribs are sharp under your fingers, the dog needs more.

Most dogs in America are carrying too much. Leaner is almost always healthier.

Good nutrition will never harm your dog. It gives the dog the best shot at a long, healthy life.

That is the whole point.

ZIWI Peak is the food I feed my dogs. Grass-fed beef, 85 percent premium animal ingredients, and none of the fillers that show up in the first three spots on most bags.

If you are working toward a raw or home-cooked routine and need a solid bridge food while you get there, this is where I would start.

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Until next Tuesday,

- Robert