realize that so many vets sell/promote Science Diet. I used to work for a vet, and she sells Science Diet, and of course fed the Prescription Hills to sick animals. I have just realized that #1) A ton of vets do this, and #2) Science Diet is garbage. Why do vets all sell this stuff? Do they get a special promotion from the company to sell their food? Do vets really think this stuff is good for the dogs? I started my Kodee Bear (3 mo old GSD) on Science Diet Lg Breed Puppy food before I started looking at this website, and after doing some research, I looked at the ingredients list of our food, assuming meat was the main ingredient. I was shocked, and p.o.ed to find out that I was paying good money for a bag of corn! I switched him to Nutro Natural Choice, which has chicken meal (no chicken by-products) as the main ingredient. Same exact price I was paying for Science Diet's corn.

Just wondering if vets are really that unethical, or just that ignorant?

I fend my puppy the same thing. She was not doing good on it. So i switched to iams. she has a better body time ,and A lot more active

Beware the Nutro brand Kori. Although I don't know which of their dry food was recalled I know their wet food was back in the spring. I believe it was linked to 10 or 15 deaths of cats and dogs.

I know there are some threads on here about good kibbles that are mostly meat. Below is a list of the recalled Nutro brand dog foods taken from Foxbusiness.com. I know there are LOTS of people on this board who can direct you towards healthy kibble. Once I switched to raw I didn't do much more research on which kibble would be acceptable to feed.



• Nutro Max

• Nutro Natural Choice

• Nutro Ultra

• Nutro

I forgot to mention to check out the dehydrated food sold here on Leerburg.com. I'll do a search through the boards to see if I can find the name brands of the acceptable kibble for you.

Hi Kori. You won't have to google far to find that Hill's, the makers of Science Diet, are prominent sponsors for various activities of Vet Association type organizations. Here is just one link to an American Veterinary Medical Association event where Hill's is a prominent sponsor.

http://avmaconvention.org/default.asp?alt=URL2&body=/_event1/default_content.asp&nav=/leftnav/navHome.asp

If I have more time later, I will hunt down some other stuff I've seen showing the prominence of Hill's in veterinary school sponsorships.

The sponsorship activity alone doesn't make the dog food bad. However it also doesn't make the dog food good. And it would sure seem, considering the ingredients of many (most? all?) Science Diet products that lots of vets are being influenced by the marketing rather than the contents label.

I blindly followed a vets advice to feed my old beagle Science Diet Senior Formula. This was a few years ago, so maybe the formula has changed. But back then, I was unwittingly feeding this poor dog primarily corn, chicken by product meal (google that for a scare) and other grain products. No wonder he got sicker and sicker.

Once again - spending money to market products is part of the American Way and I LOVE my country and it's free market ways. We just all need to be ever aware of the need to be ever aware.

Beth

 Quote: Kori Bigge

I switched him to Nutro Natural Choice, which has chicken meal (no chicken by-products) as the main ingredient. Same exact price I was paying for Science Diet's corn.

Kori, I switched my pup to Canidae All Life Stages, and it's been great. No corn or wheat products at all (I think Nutro has both, but not as the main ingredient)
It ends up costing me less than Nutro, because after a couple of weeks I was able to adjust down the quantity that I was feeding her. It's available at some pet stores (not the chain stores) or on-line...

I certainly recommend reading all of the information here at Leerburg about feeding - whether you end up going with a raw diet, or with prepared type diet.

While the navigation of this site is a bit tedious IMO, I REALLY enjoyed the information prsented at http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/. It helped immensely in terms of understanding what the labels on pet food cans or bags does and doesn't tell you. Many of our perceptions of "premium foods" has to do FAR more with $ spent on marketing and what's outside the bag, than what's inside the bad. While we haven't fed kibble in a long time, and don't plan to, I felt better about our food choices by getting a better understanding of the labeling.

Hope that helps.
Beth

http://www.leerburg.com/feedingdogs.htm

http://www.leerburg.com/diet.htm

http://www.leerburg.com/all-natural%20kibble.htm

http://www.google.com/custom?domains=leerburg.com&q=hills+science+diet&sa=Google+Search&sitesearch=leerburg.com&client=pub-9352112989043417&forid=1&channel=8149920423&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&safe=active&flav=0000&sig=XaJqMPqToCkex0QJ&cof=GALT%3A%23333366%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV%3A%23999999%3BVLC%3A336633%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BLBGC%3AFF9900%3BALC%3A333366%3BLC%3A333366%3BT%3A000000%3BGFNT%3A666666%3BGIMP%3A666666%3BLH%3A86%3BLW%3A100%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.leerburg.com%2FPhotos%2Fheadlogo.jpg%3BS%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.leerburg.com%3BLP%3A1%3BFORID%3A1&hl=en
(on this last one, scroll down a few lines to "WEB" for some SD/Hills Leerburg threads)

Kori,

You ask a valid question. There are a few contributing factors to why Vets push Hills...

1. Hardly any nutrition is taught in vet school.

2. What little education on nutrition they do receive HILLS TEACHES!!!

3. The vets make profit on the Hills products they sell.

So, unless a Vet takes the time to educate themselves outside of school on nutrition they know very little. Combine that with greed in some cases, and you have the situation we face every day. It's very frustrating.

 Quote: Stephanie Lemoine

I fend my puppy the same thing. She was not doing good on it. So i switched to iams. she has a better body time ,and A lot more active

IAMS is no better than Hills. When you look at the ingredients you can see the difference. In the Iams example below, the first ingredient is meat (chicken) so it's a good food right? Wrong. The next four ingredients are either grain (and worst of all CORN) or by-product. Add up the amounts of ingredients #2 and #3 and they outweigh #1. The food is grain based.

Chicken, Corn Meal, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Chicken By-Product Meal (Natural source of Glucosamine), Ground Whole Grain Barley, Fish Meal, Dried Beet Pulp (Sugar Removed), Chicken Fat (Preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), Natural Chicken Flavor, Dried Egg Product, Potassium Chloride, Brewers Dried Yeast, Calcium Carbonate, Salt, Flax Meal, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, Choline Chloride, Minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Potassium Iodide, Cobalt Carbonate), Dried Chicken Cartilage (Natural source of Glucosamine), DL-Methionine, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Acetate, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (Source of Vitamin B1), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Niacin, Riboflavin Supplement (Source of Vitamin B2), Inositol, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Source of Vitamin B6), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid), Fish Oil (Preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), L-Tryptophan, Rosemary Extract

Now lets look at Canidae all life stages. Four of the first seven ingredients are meat meal, and most importantly the first two listed are meat meals so you are getting mostly meat in your food. In addition, it's all human grade. When a food is not human grade it's quite scary.

Chicken Meal, Turkey Meal, Brown Rice, White Rice, Lamb Meal, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Herring Meal, Flax Seed, Sun Cured Alfalfa Meal, Sunflower Oil, Chicken, Lecithin, Monocalcium Phosphate, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Linoleic Acid, Rosemary Extract, Sage Extract, Dried Enterococcus Faecium, Dried Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Aspergillus Oryzae Fermentation Extract, Dried Bacillus Subtilis Fermentation Extract, Inulin (from Chicory root), Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Fermentation Solubles, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Mixed Tocopherols (source of Vitamin E), Zinc Amino Acid Chelate, Manganese Amino Acid Chelate, Iron Amino Acid Chelate, Copper Amino Acid Chelate, Cobalt Amino Acid Chelate, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Ascorbic Acid (source of Vitamin C), Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Riboflavin (source of B2), Beta Carotene, Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Calcium Iodate, Folic Acid, D-Biotin, Sodium Selenite, Papaya, Vitamin B12 Supplement.

Then, add in all the testing that Iams does to animals and we can all run screaming from it. Awful, awful food.

Where can i get that food I'm changing her tomorrow.