Premium, Natural, Holistic, & Organic Pet Foods
When It Comes to Pet Food, What's the Difference?
Mar 21, 2009
Super Premium pet foods start with top quality meats and meat meals as first ingredients. These meats are usually human grade and not by-products.
Super premium foods do not contain any coloring or chemical preserving agents. The ingredients used are usually natural.
Vitamins and minerals are either added or occur naturally with the ingredients of super premium foods. Some examples of these would be balanced omega fatty acids, vitamin E, and antioxidants such as beta-carotene.
Super premium pet foods often use feeding trials instead of formulation methods to test their foods.
Feeding trials follow strict AAFCO protocols that use the food the animal's sole source of nutrition for a defined period of time. Feeding trials allow manufacturers to document the performance of a pet while on a specific diet.
Formulation methods simply analyze the ingredients of a food in a lab to make sure it contains what can be read on the label. How well an animal will react to a food cannot be determined by simply using a formulation method.
Natural pet foods, according to AAFCO, must consist of only natural ingredients that have not been chemically altered. Pet food manufacturers cannot label a bag of food "natural" if it does not meet this requirement.
The term "natural" is straightforward, and most people understand the term means. When it is used to describe pet food, though, the definition is not as clear. There is confusion regarding the difference between natural, holistic, and organic diets, and even if there is any difference at all.
Holistic dog and cat diets are in fact natural, but there is no recognized definition as to what "holistic" actually means. The idea behind holistic diets is to use whole foods that are processed as little as possible, in order to retain the inherent nutrients that are often lost during processing. Rather than adding vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants, holistic diets use ingredients that already possess these important and functional elements, the idea being you can't improve on nature.
Holistic diets do not just satisfy hunger, they consider all of your pets needs. Clean teeth, healthy skin and coat, proper digestive health, and allergy prevention stem from more than just a food that tastes good to your pet. Prevention is often the best medicine, and holistic diets try to stop health problems in animals before they start.
Organic pet foods have to be certified as such. There should be a label on them that states the food is "Certified Organic," or "USDA Organic Certified," as companies must pass a rigorous inspection process to qualify for these certifications.
As holistic foods focus on the complete and overall health of your dog or cat, organic foods take this idea one step further. Organic pet foods take ecology and community into consideration, so as to foster sustainable development, and to minimize the impact humans have on the environment.
Certified organic foods are not treated with pesticides or synthetic fertilizers. The animals used for meat are not treated with antibiotics or hormones, and come from free range farms instead of feed lots. No irradiation is used to treat any of the ingredients in a bag of organic pet food.
It can be tough to decide which food to feed your cat or dog. An understanding these food categories will help with that decision. Though cost is not always indicative of quality, super premium, natural, holistic, and organic pet foods usually cost more than grocery brands. It's easy to count dollars and cents when choosing a bag of pet food, but the health benefits of a high-end food is immeasurable.
 |
