REVIEW: The Honest Kitchen Force w/ GIVEAWAY (inc. Perfect Form)

Tags

dehydrated dog food, digestive aids, giveaways, honest kitchen, supplements

Product: The Honest Kitchen Force
Quantity: 2 lb. trial package
Price: $21.99 via THK online*
Ingredients (all dehydrated): Chicken, organic flaxseed, potatoes, celery, sweet potatoes, apples, organic alfalfa, organic kelp, honey, pumpkin, green beans, cabbage, bananas, papayas, basil, garlic, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate
Guaranteed analysis:

• Protein, 24.0%
• Crude Fat, Min 0.85%
• Fiber, 6.5%
• Moisture, 8.5%

Country of origin: Manufactured in the United States; ingredients sourced from various locales, no ingredients from China
Company information: The Honest Kitchen; 145, 14th Street; San Diego, CA 92101
Web Presence: TheHonestKitchen.com, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and elsewhere

* Complimentary box received in exchange for our honest review. Please check out the bottom for details on a how to win a FREE trial box of THK!

In a long term relationship, one sometimes falls so deeply into familiar routines, questions start answering themselves. It’s hard to step outside that halcyon lull when everything just feels fine. And why should you want to? Steadiness, reliability, and that constant source of assurance can be exactly what makes any long term relationship so desirable.

But then one day, your old familiar partner walks through the door with a wild new hairstyle or decked out in a sharp new wardrobe, and you think…

… Woah. Hot!!!

For it’s a mistake to equate stability with stasis, or a lack of change. The desire to package and present yourself anew can itself be endearing. So long as we’re not talking drastic measures like, say, face tattoos without prior notice, and all the intrinsically lovable traits remain intact, some element of surprise does wonders to keep a relationship fresh.

And that is how I feel about The Honest Kitchen’s new packaging, designed by Natalya Zahn, unveiled a few months ago and introduced via a lovely care package delivered straight to the doorstep at the House of Two Bows.

Inside was a wooden crate containing all kinds of literature reintroducing the brand and the product, including a lavishly photographed recipe book full of healthy dog- and human-friendly meals. Of immediate concern to the Bows was the box of Perfect Form, a digestive supplement that we sometimes use, and a trial size box of Force, the grain-free chicken recipe that is already a part of the Bows’ regular meals.

I’m cataloging the contents for full disclosure that yes, we did get free stuff from THK in exchange for our honest review. No other compensation was received. But the Bows’ and THK already go way back to July 2011, when we first started feeding it regularly. I had no idea back then that we would use THK products on a near-daily basis. Indeed, as sometimes happens in long-term relationships, we’ve come to take their products for granted. So the surprise package was a welcome invitation to recall why we fell in love in the first place.

Some of the many ways we prepare THK: topped with raw chicken gizzards and hearts, mixed with shredded carrot and topped with raw chicken’s foot, topped with raw chicken liver and mixed with herbal skin and coat supplements, rounding out a meal of smallish raw chicken drumsticks, blended with raw ground turkey, topped with raw egg, with raw sardines and scrambled raw egg, with a hunk of raw chicken thigh

The new, two-pound trial size box is available in four dog-specific recipes (Force, Embark, Love, and Keen) and one cat-specific recipe (Prowl). Each box makes about eight pounds of food, which lasts about three to four weeks when fed for one of the two meals at the House of Two Bows. Thus, it’s a fitting amount for a proper food trial, both in terms of volume and time. The previous one and three-ounce packages only give a shallow impression, basically letting you know if your pet will bite… or not. To get a better idea of potential benefits, you gotta have enough to s-t-r-e-t-c-h out the affair a bit.

So let me now take this opportunity to explain the top three reasons why I have stuck with The Honest Kitchen over the years:

• They’re just my physical type. Of all the different types of dog food — kibble, canned, raw, rolled, etc. — I find this dehydrated form to be the most versatile and portable. Every recipe is fully balanced on its own, but I like to add extras to bump up protein content or just to spice things up (also very easy to hide medication, as necessary). Meanwhile, rehydration adds necessary moisture, and that can be adjusted too.


When switching formulas or countering mild digestive upsets, I add Perfect Form to the mix. Pictured is THK Preference (meatless base mix) with ground turkey, topped with Perfect Form before mixing.

• They have a strong personality… insofar as one can speak of a company possessing a personality. I’m not referring to a cartoon mascot or hired spokesperson. I mean that the company visibly embraces specific food production values which overlap with lifestyle philosophies, all of which they forefront with abundant detail. Now, I don’t claim to be in complete alignment, but I feel like we’re on the same page on a lot of flashpoint issues inclusive of dogs and cats and also extending to matters of broader social import. There are too many examples to list here, but the thing is you don’t have to dig too deep to find out where the company stands on quality control, sustainable sourcing of ingredients (the tag “nothing from China” is even printed on the box), and even social issues like the balance between animal rescues and ethical breeding, etc.
  

  Honest Kitchen is clear about where all their ingredients are from, even if internationally sourced. All recipes are domestically manufactured in the US. Source: THK blog, http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/thk-blog/pet-food-with-no-ingredients-from-china/

• Third, they know how to communicate. They’ve been pretty social media-savvy from the start, especially on Facebook. Not only do you know about it when they’re adjusting recipes, they even solicit feedback in the course of making product changes. There’s a lot more they do to maintain integrity with their customer base. Again, too many examples to list here, but suffice to say, their presence and outreach efforts befit their status as a 21st century pet food company, both in the office and on the product shelves.

Finally, The Honest Kitchen is generously sponsoring a GIVEAWAY for one box of any of their 2-pound trial boxes:

• FORCE, free range chicken (grain-free)
• EMBARK, cage-free turkey (grain-free)
• LOVE, Midwestern beef (grain-free)
• KEEN, turkey with organic oats
• PROWL, free-range chicken for CATS

That’s right! Cat owners are invited to participate, as well. The only rules are that 1) you are committed to a long-term relationship with your pet(s) — so please tell us who you’re entering for, 2) you reside in the continental United States, and 3) comment on this post simply stating which recipe you would like to try out.

Deadline is Wednesday, June 18th at 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time, at which point one winner will be randomly chosen to receive their preferred two-pound box; three runner-ups will be chosen to receive sample packets of THK Perfect Form, a digestive supplement suitable for both dogs and cats. Because I will be personally mailing out the packets of Perfect Form, “runner up” winners can be from anywhere in the world — so international participants are welcome to comment, though you’ll be ineligible for the main prize.

Have at it, and good luck!

Hitting a RAW nerve

Tags

bad journalism, bravo pet food, dehydrated dog food, dog food, dogswell, freeze-dried raw, grandma lucy's, honest kitchen, minneapolis, nutrisca, primal raw, raw diet, salmonella, sojos, st. paul, stella and chewy's, twin cities, veterinary nutrition

On the Shiba Inu Forum, Nicole/Saya pointed out a recent news story on commercial raw dog food. Coming out of WCCO in Minneapolis, Jamie Yuccas reports on “Pros & Cons To The Raw Pet Food Diet: Is It Worth It?” Interviewed were Liz Cummiskey of a Twin Cities-based holistic pet food store, Woody’s Pet Food Deli, Dr. Julie Churchill from the department of Veterinary Clinical Nutrition at the University of Minnesota, and a pug owner rather condescendingly described as a “believer” of raw diets. Crudely polarizing the salespeople against the scientists, the report basically gave Dr. Churchill the last word, coming down against raw diets by ridiculing the costs, hyping potential risks, and dismissing anecdotal claims made by proponents.

Now, I understand that personal observations only go so far, and there are very compelling reasons for many pet owners to not feed raw. However, it drives me batty when journalists fall back on any type of authority without properly contextualizing what is presented as fact, just focusing on who says what they want to use as news. This is true in any venue in which “expert” testimony is solicited, but even more frustrating when it comes to scientific reporting in mainstream media — precisely because I’m not a scientist and need others to filter information for me in an accountable manner.

This is exactly what we expect journalists to do, so it’s maddening when the task is carried out so sloppily. Take, for example, the presentation of this “factoid” from the news report:

In a recent University of Minnesota study, the department looked at 60 raw meat diets available at stores in the Twin Cities. Seven percent of them tested positive for salmonella.

All sorts of alarms clang when I read statistics framed in such a vague context. First of all, the University of Minnesota is a large research university with many departments — which department conducted the study? What is the title of the report? Where was it published? Who funded it? How did they select the samples for testing? What brands? How did they handle the samples? Did they bother trying to trace the source of the contamination, or is the mere presence of Salmonella meant to be damning in and of itself?

Curious about details, I looked up the study. Not too hard to find, though it would have been nice if the report had been cited to begin with.

• Mehlenbacher, Shelley, Julie Churchill, et. al, “Availability, Brands, Labelling and Salmonella Contamination of Raw Pet Food in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Area,” Zoonoses Public Health 59.7 (November 2012):513-20.
  Abstract at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22551080

The study looked at 60 different types of raw dog food from eleven different unnamed brands, including frozen, dehydrated, and freeze-dried varieties. Five unnamed kibble brands were tested as well. Though the samples were anonymized, a table was included comparing the first five ingredients, so it’s not too difficult to figure out that they appear to have sampled all the major, nationally-available brands, and probably some regional ones that I’m not familiar with.

The way that the study is being used to foment paranoia about raw dog food is problematic to me. Here are a couple details that I find interesting enough to highlight:

“The 2010 Food Safety and Inspection Service progress report on Salmonella testing of raw meat and poultry products sold in retail stores indicated the Salmonella prevalence was 18.8% in ground chicken, 10.2% in ground turkey, 6.7% in broiler chickens, 4.6% in turkeys, 2.4% in market hogs and 2.2% in ground beef (United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service, 2010). A 2009 Consumer Reports study indicated that the prevalence of Salmonella contamination between store-bought organic and non-organic brands was similar and ranged from 6% to 29% (Consumer Reports, 2010).” (p. 514)

In other words, by their own review of findings, the presence of Salmonella in 7% (four out of 60 samples) of commercially available raw dog foods falls within the low end of the TYPICAL amount of Salmonella found in grocery store meat fed for human consumption. If this information is remarkable at all, it should be pointed out that this is actually on the low side of the spectrum, especially given the conditions under which the meat was prepped for this study.

See, here’s the funniest segment to me (because I always go to public health journals for light comedy…):

“Products were purchased, placed in a cooler and transported to the University of Minnesota and stored according to package instructions until processed. For [lab] processing, frozen diets were thawed at room temperature in original packaging for 12–16 h.” (p. 515, emphasis mine)

Wait, what? This was allowed to pass as appropriate procedure? You know, a long time ago, I worked at a food safety testing laboratory… No doubt the lab’s clients, which included several national restaurant chains, would have terminated their contracts and charged us with rigging the results if we had thawed their frozen hamburger patties by this protocol!

Now, I understand that the study is geared in part towards their final recommendation that proper handling guidelines need to be added to raw pet food packages. But honestly, that information is just as accessible as how to handle raw meat for human consumption. Is a consumer safety sticker saying “HEY! RAW MEAT IS RAW!” really going to protect the clueless??

When I thaw frozen meat for myself or for the dogs, I know to do it overnight in the refrigerator, or not more than a couple hours at room temperature and ideally submerged in cold water. Perhaps I am being too generous in assuming this is basic information that any cook already knows. It seems, however, that this study was designed by someone playing dumb in order to promote the growth of all sorts of icky germs…

Thus, it’s no surprise to me that the four samples that DID test positive for Salmonella were indeed frozen raw products, which were thawed out using the process described above. “It was interesting to note,” the report reads, “that Salmonella was not recovered from the processed samples, perhaps warranting further research into the use of processing methods such as HPP or freeze-drying for the prevention of bacterial contamination” (p. 518). Let me put it another way: it’s interesting to note just how safe raw dog food may actually be if properly handled in the first place, because the way I see it, the problem isn’t with the diet itself, but the way the researchers prepped it for the purposes of conforming to their own agenda.

A note to future veterinary nutritionists designing and writing up these types of studies: You might do better negotiating the “belief structures surrounding this practice” (p. 514) of raw feeding if you started by acknowledging the existence of your own. When experiments seem designed, for example, to suggest that raw feeders are idiots, it’s no wonder they provoke an irate, defensive response…

Review + GIVEAWAY: The Honest Kitchen Beams

Tags

catfish, dehydrated dog food, dog food, dog treats, fish, fish skins, giveaways, honest kitchen

Friends and readers are probably aware that The Honest Kitchen products comprise a regular part of the Bows diet. After tracking the Bows’ daily meals in October, I was so delighted with the mosaic I created, I posted the picture to the company’s Facebook page. They noticed and cared enough to share in our foodie-ness by sending The House of Two Bows some neat gifts, including a box of their newest treat.

Product: Beams (Talls)
Quantity: one box, 7 oz. (approx. 11 sticks?)
Price: retail $12.99 on the Honest Kitchen store
Ingredient: wild-caught Atlantic Catfish skins
Guaranteed Analysis:

• Protein, min 88%
• Fat, min 4%
• Fiber, max 0.2%
• Moisture, max 8%
• Omega 3 EFA, 1.5g /100g
• Calories (Calculated) 3650 cal/kg (approx. 39 calories per treat)

Country of origin: Iceland, sustainably fished
Company Information: The Honest Kitchen; 145, 14th Street; San Diego, CA 92101
Web Presence: TheHonestKitchen.com, on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere

Fish-based products have always gone over well at the House of Two Bows, and this treat was no exception. Beams TALLS live up to their name — the box itself stands over 12″ tall to accommodate the size of these strips, which ranged from 10 ~ 12″ apiece in our box.

Each Beam is simply made of dried catfish skin, some with little curlicues of flesh still attached. They’re way too tough to cut down with ease (maybe with a good pair of meat shears, which I don’t have). So if this seems like too much for your pet, you’d be better off with a box of Beams Smalls, which are about 7″ apiece and come in four ounce packages.

The Bows would be happy to get these in SUPERTall if they could. They found it very satisfying to pull at the flesh, like a bit of fish floss.

I prefer to offer more “natural” treats as edible dental chews, and Beams definitely serve that function. With nice ridges and a hard, firm texture, they do take a bit of work to consume.

Bowpi likes to grip the stick and chomp from the side, giving her molars some much-needed action.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the low calorie count per treat, in spite of their size. These catfish skins are quite a bit thicker than the salmon skins treats we usually keep on hand. Each chomping session lasts about seven minutes. Bowdu can rush through a piece in 5 minutes, and Bowpi works with gusto, but usually takes about twice as long. Obviously your experience will vary, depending on the strength of the chewer.

The Honest Kitchen sent along this complimentary box with no expectations for a review, but I can’t help saying good things about them. It’s a simple, clean, and healthy treat. Stinky, yes — there’s no mistaking that these came from FISH! But not oily and greasy like some dried animal treats can be.

Overall, I consider it a good value for what you get. I’ve yet to see these stocked in my local pet food stores, but we’re ready for another box as soon as we find them!

FINAL GRADE: A

---

GIVEAWAY: The generous folks at The Honest Kitchen are providing three prizes for a House of Two Bows giveaway! Just leave a comment stating which one of the following you would choose if you win first pick:

• A 4 lb box of any Honest Kitchen dehydrated raw formula (please state a specific dog OR cat recipe)
• A box of Beams for your own dogs to sample
• One canister of Perfect Form, a digestive supplement (appropriate for dogs and cats)

we keep Perfect Form on hand, too

“Liking” The Honest Kitchen and/or our page on Facebook is not required, but will probably net you some positive karma.

Comments will be collected until 11:59 PST next Monday, December 10th. After that, three random winners will be selected. First prize will win what was stated as their preferred choice. Second and third prize will get the remaining two prizes in order of what is listed above. Please be sure to include a valid e-mail address (not publicly visible) with your comment so that you can be contacted about your prize.

The Honest Kitchen prizes can only be sent to addresses in the US. But fear not… there will be other giveaways this month that will be open to all. Check back later!

A month of dinners at the House of Two Bows

Tags

chicken, chicken feet, congee, dehydrated dog food, dog food, green tripe, honest kitchen, raw chicken, raw diet, raw fish, raw meaty bones, raw turkey

Because I document mundane things obsessively, I decided to track what the Bows ate for dinner every night for about a month. Full records can be found in this Flickr set.

Dinner at the House of Two Bows, mosaic built with Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker

Breakfast is not pictured because it’s pretty much always the same — fish-based kibble, with a side of about a tablespoon of plain yogurt. Kibble amounts are adjusted in anticipation of how much dinner meat each dog is to eat.

Observations and notes from this exercise:

• Bowdu has mastered “Sit to say please.” Or in his case, it’s more like PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE OH PUH-LEEEEZ!
• Bowpi, on the other hand, is very fidgety, and even moreso when I’m taking my time photographing her food. I wonder if someone taught her to walk on her hind legs at some point, because that’s her natural inclination when pushed to impatience. Or maybe it’s a breed thing.
• Honest Kitchen products made an appearance at virtually every dinner. We regularly feed their complete meals (HK Embark, a grain-free turkey recipe, is their main course at the moment), their pre-mix HK Preference, or one of their supplements, which sprinkles easily onto meat if not mixed into wet food. I had never planned on such an expensive brand becoming a regular part of their diet, but given the way we mix in fresh proteins and veggies, each box goes a long way!
• I do not count calories or calculate nutrients, in part because I rely on conveniently pre-formulated, commercial supplements to do the numbers for me. Except I don’t follow the instructions. For example, it’s supposed to be one part HK Preference (dry) to one part meat, but if I did that, I’d be overfeeding them — so I usually cut down on the pre-mix. I’d eventually like to prepare and freeze my own veggie mixtures, but currently, I spend as much time creating perfectly balanced meals for them as I do for myself, which is to say… not a whole lot. I know what’s good for me and what I like to eat; my feeding philosophy for both humans and pets is built from the intersection of these two primary categories.
• We do not regularly feed red or dark meats, and this may be a problem. The green tripe/trachea/gullet mix, which only Bowdu accepts, and cut up pig’s heart are about the only proteins from four-legged animals that are regularly consumed here. So even though Bowdu’s latest blood test showed that he’s in great shape with a steady diet of poultry and fish, and I’m expecting the same for Bowpi, I want to think about how to fill in this part.
• The Bows are always very happy at mealtime!

REVIEW: Nutrisca Chicken Dinner Bites by Dogswell

Tags

chicken, dehydrated dog food, dog food, dogswell, freeze-dried raw, nutrisca

Product: Nutrisca Chicken Dinner Bites
Quantity: 5 oz (one resealable pack)
Price Paid: N/A, part of the Pawalla.com haul, usually $10.99 on Amazon.com
Ingredients: Chicken with ground bone, chicken liver, apples, chickpeas, peas, flaxseed, chicory root extract, cranberries, salmon oil (a source of DHA), dried kelp, potassium chloride, salt, zinc proteinate, iron proteinate, vitamin E supplement, copper proteinate, manganese proteinate, mixed tocopherols (a natural source of vitamin E), vitamin D3 supplement
Guaranteed Analysis:

• Crude Protein: 40.00% (max)
• Crude Fat: 30.00% (min)
• Crude Fiber: 6.00% (max)
• Moisture: 5.00% (max)

Country of Manufacture: USA
Company Information: Dogswell, LLC, 1964 Westwood Blvd., Ste. 350, Los Angeles, CA 90025; Phone: 888.559.8833; e-mail: info@dogswell.com
Web Presence: Dogswell.com, also on Facebook, Twitter; specific production information here

Raw diets appear to be hitting the mainstream these days. Since not all pet owners are prepared to handle slimy, germy raw meat, it seems like there are more pet food companies catering to the raw-but-not-really-raw niche of the market.

There are a few dehydration processes that preserve the nutritional integrity of foods without subjecting them to high heats and effectively cooking them. Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, is one method that I’m seeing used by more pet food and treat manufacturers. Apparently, each raw Nutrisca patty is flash frozen, then all the ice is vaporized out of there in order to extend shelf life without the use of chemical preservatives. Neat process.

These biscuits smell really good, very rich, like the shredded rousong/meat floss that I grew up stirring into my congee. And they’re just as dry.

Each wafer can be fed as-is, or rehydrated. I tried feeding as-is first. The Bows were eager to consume their portion, but without adequate chewing, pieces of the dry little puck ended up lodging in Bowpi’s throat so she gagged and hacked for a bit before finally choking down the crumbled remnants. It’s better to break down each piece before offering, but this makes for a messy process and stinky fingers.

So I don’t really like feeding it as a treat. I had better luck adding it to their meals. The rehydration process, however, was a disappointment. The package doesn’t say how much water one should add, so I steeped the nuggets in just enough hot water for them to sit waist-deep in a serving bowl, and I waited, expecting each wafer to swell as they soaked up the moisture like sponges…

Five minutes later, the water was still sitting in the bowl, and each piece was still stiff, hard, and basically the same size. Magic grow capsules, these are NOT!

Breaking down each wafer and adding more water helped move the process along. In the picture below, you can see a couple of the whole peas which are part of the recipe (in small amounts). But the final result after about fifteen minutes of soaking in hot water looked… well, pretty unappetizing. The Bows don’t judge a meal by its looks though — they ate it right up, with gusto.

Ultimately, I found the best results when I broke each wafer down and stirred it in with Honest Kitchen mixes. That’s how I would recommend feeding it: as a topper or meaty filler to an already complete meal.

Though this could be fed on its own, a Bow-sized dog (20-30 pounds) is supposed to eat 19 to 26 of these cakes to get their daily fill, according to the feeding guidelines on the bag. Are they freakin’ kidding me?? Are there even 20 of these guys in a single 5 oz. bag?? And at this price, Dogswell is telling me that it could cost up to $12 or so to feed one of my dogs for a day?? Hell, *I* barely spend that much money feeding myself on average!

So frankly, feeding this as a complete meal would be ridiculous. Nutrisca recently updated their feeding guidelines to acknowledge this, advising that their nutrient rich meal is only meant to be fed “intermittently.” The more practical table on their product website suggests feeding up to four pieces with 1 to 1 1/2 dry cups of food a day for 21 ~ 30 pound dogs. I’d say that makes much more sense.

This product is very high in protein, chock-full of quality ingredients — grain-free, potato-free, with “NO Gluten, soy, corn, wheat, flour, BHA/BHT, ethoxyquin, added hormones, artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives” — just the way we like it. But it’s still no substitute for a truly fresh diet. In terms of convenience, I find other dehydrated raw brands to be more efficient and thus much higher on our list of preferred foods.

Would I get this again? Sure, if there was a significant sale, like at least 25% off suggested retail price. It seems like a good product, but ultimately, not as satisfying as I had hoped.

FINAL GRADE: B

EDIT 10.3.2012: I’m impressed that a DOGSWELL rep saw this review, and sent me a friendly message:

Brad, here, from DOGSWELL. First of all, thanks for reviewing our product. Secondly, we really appreciate hearing your feedback, especially that it was too difficult to break up as a treat and didn’t reconstitute well. We hear you loud-and-clear, and we are going to set out to create a new product, or revise our current product, to address your comments. Also, we are going to change the packaging since people told us that this version was a total snoozer.

Veddy veddy eeenteresting. We will be keeping an eye out!

Two meatless, dehydrated mixes: Grandma Lucy’s Artisan Pre-mix and Honest Kitchen Preference

Tags

artisan foods, dehydrated dog food, dog food, grandma lucy's, honest kitchen, raw diet, raw turkey

Recently, we tested out a couple dehydrated meatless pre-mixes that I got as free samples from a local pet boutique. I hadn’t been very interested in this stuff in the past, as frankly, it seemed economically silly to pay for this insta-food when you’re adding your own meat — the actual meal. It’s sort of like springing for soup and stew flavoring powder mixes, when it’s really not that hard to shake your own blend of spices into a pot of meat and water.

But the idea of these pre-mixes is to offer a means to balance a meal with high quality ingredients (more nutritionally dense than canned or kibble), yet still easy to prepare and customize. Feeding the Bows just the raw ground turkey that I had stockpiled in previous months wouldn’t be enough. So blending it with these formulas would help round out and add some variety to their diet.

We tried these two brands —

Grandma Lucy’s Artisan Pre-mix (2 oz. trial size)

Ingredients: Potatoes, flax, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, apples, bananas, blueberries, cranberries, garlic, rosemary, Vitamin A, Vitamin D3, Vitamin E, Niacin, iron, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, riboflavin, thiamin, potassium, manganese, chloride, copper, magnesium, pyridoxine, cyanocobalamin

Guaranteed analysis:

• Crude protein, min. 13.5%
• Crude fat, min. 9%
• Crude fiber, max. 9%
• Moisture, max. 10%
• Calcium, min. 1%
• Phosphorus, min. 0.37%
• Magnesium, max 0.16%

Honest Kitchen Preference (1 oz. trial size, says it makes about 1/4 cup of food)

Ingredients: Dehydrated sweet potatoes, organic alfalfa, cabbage, organic coconut, apples, spinach, zucchini, bananas, celery, organic kelp, honey, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate.

Guaranteed analysis:

• Protein, min 12%
• Fat, min 6%
• Fiber, 10% max
• Moisture, 10% max
• Calcium, 1.67% [dry matter basis], 0.76% hydrated*
• Phosphorus, 0.71% [dry matter basis], 0.33% hydrated*
• Magnesium, 0.24% [dry matter basis], 0.11% hydrated*

* not on package, information from the Honest Kitchen’s nutrient profiles.

Both were prepared the same way — rehydrated and mixed with ground turkey, served at dinner time.

Grandma Lucy’s Artisan Pre-mix

vs.

Honest Kitchen Preference

Both were very easy to rehydrate, with instructions claiming that five minutes is all it takes. I found this certainly to be true for Grandma Lucy’s, as everything reconstituted almost immediately into a thick, mashed potatoey goo. It smelled great, and I sampled a bit and found it to be quite a smooth blend.

Grandma Lucy’s, sans meat

Grandma Lucy’s, with raw ground turkey

However, I usually find that it’s better to rehydrate Honest Kitchen for longer than their recommended time, and Preference was no exception. The mix was still fairly rough after soaking for five minutes (yes, I sampled this one too), so I let it sit for about fifteen minutes. Not a huge time difference to me, though every minute just ramped up the anticipation for the Bows.

One of these Bows sits politely for his Honest Kitchen; the other one is too eager to keep her butt planted!

If you visit Grandma Lucy’s very flashy Artisan site, there’s a fabulous chart comparing their products to other dehydrated and raw foods currently on the market, including Honest Kitchen, Sojos (which we were offered but bypassed, given the memory of our food failure with this brand), Stella & Chewy’s, and ZiwiPeak (which do not offer meatless pre-mixes). By their calculations —

• 3 pounds of Artisan Pre-mix selling for a MSRP of $19.60 would make 17 pounds of food, averaging $1.15/meal for a 30 pound dog.
• 3 pounds of HK Preference selling for a MSRP of $27.50 would make 12 pounds of food, averaging $1.15/meal for a 30 pound dog.

I’m a little confused by the feeding guidelines. Artisan recommends using 1.5 ~ 2 cups of dry mix for an “average” 20 ~ 30 pound dog (that’s what it says on the package, though it says the same thing for their complete formulas). For dogs up to 30 pounds, HK recommends 1/3rd ~ 1/2 cup of dry mix with enough meat to round it out to approximately 1 cup of food total, with a higher meat-to-Preference ratio for more active dogs. So it seems like each company has different expectations for how much a dog is supposed to eat in a day. At any rate, the Bows fall somewhere on the lower side of both suggested ranges; you should adjust accordingly.

The price per meal also seems to be calculated according to a single-feeding day (we feed two meals a day). Price-wise, these two brands are evenly matched. Both brands come out at nearly the same Kcal/cup (HK: 398; GL: 399), so even though the Artisan Pre-mix ultimately makes more food, you are expected to mix in less HK Preference to balance out a meal.

In terms of ingredients, my human nose found the Artisan Pre-mix to smell more appetizing than HK, but I think I was drawn to the combined aroma of potatoes and garlic. Some people prefer to leave garlic out of dog food. The Bows have never had a problem with garlic in small amounts, so I personally have no problem with seeing it in the formula.

However, we much rather prefer sweet potatoes, the leading ingredient for HK Preference. Though it’s the first item on the list, this blend appears very green and vegetation-dense. Like Grandma Lucy’s, all HK foods are manufactured in the United States, and sourced domestically whenever possible. In the final lap, the Honest Kitchen pulls slightly ahead because they use higher quality ingredients, and the company maintains a level of transparency, accountability, and customer responsiveness that we have found to be unmatched.

Since this was just a brief sample and not an extended trial, no letter grade is assigned to this review. We liked and would happily try both products again.

REVIEW: Sojos Complete Dog Food Mix

Tags

allergies, dehydrated dog food, dog food, food allergies, pet store a, sojos, sweet potatoes

Product: Sojos Complete Dog Food Mix
Quantity: 2 lbs/907 grams (package says it makes 10 pounds of food)
Price paid: $15.99
Ingredients: sweet potatoes, turkey, whole egg, broccoli, celery, apples, flax meal, pecans, tricalcium phosphate, pumpkin, cranberries, basil, dried alfalfa, ginger root, dried kelp, zinc sulfate, vitamin E acetate, vitamin D3
Guaranteed analysis:

Crude protein: not less than 22.0%
Crude fat: not less than 8.0%
Crude fiber: not more than 5.1%
Moisture: not more than 12.3%
Calories per cup = 480.8 Kcals

Country of manufacture: USA
Company information: Sojourner Farms; 1723 Adams Street NE; Minneapolis, MN 55413; tel: 1.888.867.6567
Website: Sojos.com, also on Facebook

Based on our success with our first attempt at dehydrated dog food, I decided I would grab a full box when I next went to Pet Store A. Unfortunately, they don’t stock the brand I was looking for, so I purchased what I thought was an equivalent product, a 2 pound bag of Sojos turkey recipe.

Thus I learned that not all dehydrated foods are created the same.

While the other brand was a great success, even with a fairly quick transition, this one failed. Frankly, this is probably the biggest gastrointestinal failure we’ve experienced this past year, and that’s saying a lot for The House of Two Dog Foodies who are actually fairly happy to try new things.

To prepare the food, Sojos instructions say to soak the mixture in an appropriate amount of filtered water and allow it to reconstitute for an hour at minimum, overnight in the refrigerator for optimum results.

So here it is after about an hour. Note that the ingredients are still pretty chunky, which gives the impression of heartiness (as opposed to the powder-turned-paste of the previous brand that we tried). However, as I found out, the chunkies are not to be desired.

For the first few dinners, I served it up similarly to how I prepared the other brand. I mixed the reconstituted Sojos with a home prepared blend of raw turkey and supplements, with Sojos making up about 1/4 of the meal. Both Bows were quite enthusiastic about their New! Food! as they usually are.

Then I bumped the ratio up to 1/2 Sojos, and that’s when trouble became evident. Perhaps I transitioned them too quickly. Sojos FAQs recommend a transition time of 2-3 weeks, but so do most foods that I switch over a shortened period. I gave this some thought and based on my inspections and observations, I’m not sure a longer transition would have made that much difference.

Both of their poops were pretty densely populated by orange and yellow chunks in the days following the introduction of this food. I wasn’t sure what to make of that, so I gave them a break one day for a full raw meal. Then the following morning, Bowpi threw up. All that was in her vomit was bile and undigested chunks of Sojos potatoes. The stuff had been sitting in her stomach for over a day before her body finally surrendered it.

Before you add water…

Sweet potatoes in and of themselves are not typically a problem. Both Bows have had potatoes in various dog treats without any digestive upsets, and I frequently bake sweet potatoes to add to their meals. However, I usually mash it up a little, and I never include the skins, whereas Sojos does.

This is also problematic because the ingredient seems to take a long time to fully reconstitute. Even after soaking for the recommended amount of time, many of the potato pieces feel quite hard. I know this because I started picking them out, piece by piece.

This human loves potatoes with skins. The Bows? Not so much.

Picking out the potato chunks after rehydration seemed to create a lot of waste, so I started picking out as much as I could while it was still dry.

This led me to observe that there are a LOT of potatoes in this mix. It is, after all, the very first listed ingredient. I assumed that even though turkey is listed second, this was due to the fact that it had lost some weight in the dehydration process. However, as Mike Sagman at the Dog Food Advisor points out, the published ingredients do not specify dehydrated turkey, but “USDA turkey” (which is also slightly different from just “turkey” on the packaging). Even if reconstitution increases the relative weight of turkey, all the ingredients would be rehydrated as well, and this would not change the fact that the ingredients are, by law, listed in order of weight before cooking.

I’m not sure how that shakes out if the ingredients are supposed to be raw, as the front of the bag claims the complete mix is made with “FREEZE-DRIED RAW turkey”. For those that are curious, there’s also some discussion of the relative nutritional value of freeze-drying raw versus air-dehydrating cooked meats in the comments section of the Dog Food Advisor link above, including a very recent comment from the company owner. It doesn’t definitively answer the question of proportions, but it does show that the company holds itself responsible for what people want to know about their food.

However it’s calculated, there’s still a buttload of sweet potato in this mix, probably more than I really have the time to pick through. But I am picking through it because I’m a cheap-ass, and I can’t stand the thought of throwing out something that I’ve paid good money for, dammit. I’m not exactly proud of how much energy I’ve spent de-tubering each pile of Sojos, but the process does seem to make the ingredients less, um, discernible on the way out.

With the formula thus compromised, I ended up using dollops of Sojos only to supplement up to 50% of their meals. Their poops were no longer nearly as colorful, and Bowpi didn’t throw up potato chunks anymore.

However, something else started to happen to Bowpi. She started to nibble and lick at her forearms, as well as the tops of her toes.

28 June 2011

This could be entirely coincidental, or even a result of environmental allergies and not food-related. There’s a section of text on the bag that addresses my concern:

Q: What if my dog has allergies?

Because Sojos isn’t processed into a pellet or sprayed with synthetic additives (which can burden the body with toxicity), your pet shouldn’t experience allergic reactions like they might with traditional pet foods. (Sojo’s bag)

Okay, but I’m not entirely convinced yet. Considering that Bowpi had such problem-free skin and fur last year, and because the location of her itchy spots is so oddly dispersed (despite appearances, she’s actually NOT licking her belly any more than usual)… well, I’m leaning towards this being a reaction to some ingredient in the food. Maybe pecans, a protein that she hasn’t previously been exposed to? At any rate, no more Sojos for Bowpi, and I’m monitoring her skin in the meantime. I’ll return to edit this review if her condition does not drastically improve several weeks after quitting Sojos.

Obviously, your mileage may vary depending on your pet’s particular food sensitivities. Bowdu hasn’t been breaking out like Bowpi, so he is still getting the de-potatoed mix. But I’m throwing out what feels like a quarter of the contents to make this work for us. This wastefulness, in addition to the inconvenient reconstitution process (which has me serving cold food, not something I prefer to do except in summer months), is why I doubt I’ll be trying this brand of dehydrated dog food again.

Final Grade: B-