Please share this page with everyone you know that has a
pet, it could save their life.
There is no such thing as a "healthy cheap" pet food, you
get what you pay for there, however with that said price doesn't guarantee
quality either. Many of the high priced brands sold in local stores and in the
vets office are just as unhealthy as the cheap stuff. You need to start looking
at the ingredients list and learn what they are putting in the bag.
Pets should die from old
age not from cancer and disease and especially NOT
prematurely from what we feed them! Do you realize what you feed your pet
directly impacts their health? If I am able to change the
health of just one pet by educating their owner about pet
food nutrition or better said, "lack" of it, I will feel that our Annie did
not die in vane.
I only wish I had found
this information sooner.
For me, this meant buying our
pets the "premium" or "high priced" food at the local
grocery or pet food store. If its expensive it must be good
right?
In July of 2006 our white German Shepherd Annie was
diagnosed and died from cancer at age 5. Why her? I kept asking
myself, she always seemed so healthy, and we did buy her the
"expensive" food. What happened? She was very active and loved playing with her
Frisbee, she was so full of life. I was shocked by a chilling
statement our vet made after they put her to
sleep, cancer, she said was
the number one disease that they see in their office today.
WHAT? But why?
After countless hours of
research on the internet I found the answer, along with many
other hidden and dark secrets the pet food industry is hiding inside
those colorful bags of food with healthy looking pictures
and catchy slogans printed on the outside.
The truth is most pet food
companies today are just garbage bins, dumping grounds for
anything and everything that is leftover from the food
industry that is no longer fit for human consumption.
Rendered animals, animal by-products and rancid restaurant
grease are just a few of the nasty, NASTY, ingredients these
companies are putting into your pets food instead of
throwing them into the garbage can where they belong.
You owe it to yourself and to
your pets to find out what you are really feeding them.
Don't take my word for it, search this out for yourself. I
was VERY disturbed at what I discovered.
As part of my research I wanted to find a
company that made a truly healthy and nutritious pet food that I could feed my
pets confidently knowing that it wasn't going to poison them to death. I ordered
food from several different companies all with high quality ingredients and
tried them. My pets and I were most impressed with this company, when I say my
pets, I mean I put my own pets to the taste test wanting to know which food they
preferred. My pets loved the taste of this food hands down over all the others
that I purchased. I would randomly offer them several kinds at once and they
always ate this food first, and as time passed they refused to eat the others
and would wait to eat until I put this food down. Not wanting to waste the food
they didn't care for I decided to
mix a little of it in with this food to use it up. It was kind of humorous
because they would pick
around it eating the good stuff and leave it in the bowl. I have several friends
with pets and I asked them to try this taste test to, they had the same results
as I, so that settled
it for me. With this under my belt I decided to become a rep and share this
information with other pet owners who are in the same sinking boat I was. Poor
quality food is a ticking time bomb in your pet. I urge you to order some free
samples and see for yourself the quality of this food, there is a link below.
I hope you find this webpage
helpful and informative, I thank you for taking the time to
look it over.
If you have the stomach for it, my findings and
the sickening truth about what is really in pet food is written a little
further below.
Interested in getting your pet food for free? You can by
becoming a rep and selling these quality pet products
yourself.
** At this current time we can only ship
within the USA **
Life's Abundance pet foods is one the
healthiest pet foods on the market today. Why are Life's
Abundance Products Better?
They Use Ingredients that are
Nutritious, Plain and Simple
Life's Abundance Premium Dog
Food is made using only quality ingredients. It
is a nutrient dense food with high quality meat proteins.
Their products NEVER contain by-products, cheap hard to
digest fillers and allergy causing ingredients like corn, wheat, dairy, gluten,
artificial flavors, colors, sugars or artificial
preservatives. They NEVER add flavor enhancers or coloring
to replace what high-temperature cooking can destroy. Their
food DOES contain Omega 3 fatty acids, powerful antioxidants
from natural sources, probiotics (supplements that
beneficially improve intestinal balance) and chelated minerals
and all the natural taste your pet will love. Life's
Abundance products are made weekly in smaller batches to
insure you get the freshest food possible. These
products have not been sitting around for months or even
years like most other pet foods on the market today.
DON'T BE FOOLED by advertisements and TV
commercials by pet food manufacturers who "claim" their foods are healthy. I've
seen them and they do look convincing, BUT the bottom line is they can say what
they want but if you take the time to actually look at the ingredients list you
will see truth, the ingredient list on the bag tells the REAL truth. They are
banking on you NOT taking the time to educate yourself and understand what the
ingredients really are. People today are getting more and more health conscious
when it comes to themselves and their families but what about their pets?
Without proper nutrition they are targets of sickness and disease just as we
are. I have always been a very health conscious person but honestly never
thought much about what I was feeding my pets until now. This is the third pet
that I have owned that has died prematurely from disease. I have always fed my
pets the popular high priced supermarket food thinking they
were the most nutritious on the market. You owe it to your pet to find out
exactly what you are feeding them.
The following information is very disturbing.
It is the result of countless hours I spent researching this subject.
There is a lot of information written below, I hope you will
take the time read it.
The Sickening Truth
About Pet Food
What is in most dog food today?
It's a question many of us don't think
about. We see nice pictures of whole grains, prime cuts of
meat and human grade vegetables on our pets food bag and
assume there is some chef in a pet food kitchen cooking up
the best food for our beloved pets.
Unfortunately this is far from the truth,
More than 95% of US pets derive their nutritional needs from
a single source, processed pet foods. When people think of
pet food many envision whole chicken meat, choice cuts of
beef, fresh grains and all the nutrition that their dog or
cat would ever need, images that pet food manufacturers
promote in their advertisements and print on their food
bags. What these companies do not reveal is that instead of
wholesome chicken meat, they have substituted chicken heads,
feet, feathers and intestines. Those choice cuts of beef are
really cow brains, tongues, esophagi, fetal tissue
dangerously high in hormones and even diseased and cancerous
meat. Those whole grains have had the starch removed for
corn starch powder and the oil extracted for corn oil or
they are just hulls and other remnants from the milling
process. Grains used that are truly whole have usually been
deemed unfit for human consumption because of mold,
contaminants, poor quality or poor handling practices. Pet
food is one of worlds most synthetic edible products,
containing virtually no whole ingredients.
The pet food industry is an 11 billion
dollar a year, unregulated operation that feeds on the
garbage that otherwise would and should end up in a
landfill. Pet food manufacturers have become masters at
getting pets to eat things they would normally turn their
nose up at.
Pet food scientists have learned that it's
possible to take a mixture of inedible garbage, fortify it
with artificial vitamins and minerals, preserve it so it can
sit on the grocery shelf for more than a year, add dyes to
make it attractive and then extrude it into whimsical
shapes, making it appealing to us humans so we will purchase
it. Unfortunately what makes up most of dog and cat food
today comes from the rendering plant. To render, as defined
in Webster's Dictionary, is to process as for industrial
use; to render livestock carcasses and to extract oil from
fat, blubber, etc., by melting. Some things that go into
rendering are:
* Road kill that can't be buried on the
roadside.
* The "4-D's" of cattle; dead, dying,
diseased and disabled
* Rancid restaurant grease
* Euthanized pets, this is NO joke! (I talk more about this later in the
article)
When chickens, lambs, cattle, pigs and
other animals are slaughtered for food, usually only the
lean muscle is cut off for human consumption. This leaves
about 50% of a carcass left over. These leftovers are what
become what we so commonly find on pet food labels such as
"meat and bone meal" or "by-products". So basically what
pets are eating are lungs, ligaments, bones, blood and
intestines.
When dead animals from pastures are picked
up, they may not be rendered for up to a week after they
have died. Because of this it is estimated that E. coli
bacteria contaminates more than 50% of meat materials. The
rendering process destroys the E. coli bacteria, but it does
not eliminate the endotoxins bacteria that is released when
they die. These endotoxins, which can cause sickness and
disease, are not tested for by pet food manufacturers.
Slaughterhouses where cattle, pigs, lambs
and other animals meet their fate provide more fuel for
rendering. After slaughter, heads, feet, skin, hair,
feathers, carpel and tarsal joints and mammary (milking)
glands are removed. This material is sent to rendering.
Animals that have died on their way to slaughter are also
rendered. Cancerous tissue, tumors and worm infested organs
are rendered. Injection sites, blood clots and any other
inessential parts are rendered. Stomach and bowels are
rendered. Contaminated material including blood is rendered.
Carcasses with high levels of drugs or pesticides in excess
of limits prescribed under the FDA (not fit for human
consumption) are rendered.
At the rendering plant, slaughterhouse
material, supermarket refuse, rancid restaurant grease, dead
livestock, road kill and euthanized pets are dumped into
huge containers. A machine slowly grinds the entire mess.
After it is chipped or shredded, it is cooked at 220 - 270
degrees F. for approximately 20 minutes to one hour. The
grease or tallow rises to the top where it is removed from
the mixture. This is the source of animal fat in most pet
foods on the market today. The remaining material, the raw,
is then put into a press where the moisture is squeezed out,
we now have the meat and bone meal that is added to most pet
foods today.
Animals wouldn't normally eat this stuff
in the wild, so why will they eat it out of their bowls?
Their noses are tricked by the smell of it. Pet food
manufacturers are masters at getting a pet to eat something
they would normally turn their nose up at.
These flavors usually come from rancid
restaurant grease, you know from those big dumpsters you see
in the back parking lot. This grease is often outside for
weeks, exposed to extreme temperatures with no regard for
its future use. The rancid grease is then picked up by fat
blenders who mix the animal and vegetable fats together,
stabilize them with powerful antioxidants to prevent further
spoilage, then they sell it to pet food manufacturers.
Rancid, heavily preserved fats are extremely difficult to
for animals to digest and can lead to a host of pet health
problems including digestive upsets, diarrhea, gas and bad
breath. These fats are sprayed directly onto the kibble or
nuggets to make an otherwise distasteful product palatable.
Two thirds of the pet food manufactured in
the US today contain synthetic preservatives, of the
remaining one third, 90% includes ingredients already
stabilized by synthetic preservatives. Be wary of pet foods
that advertise as preservative free, if they using animal
by-products or ingredients that have been rendered they will
mostly like contain preservatives. Pet food manufacturers
are not required to list preservatives they themselves have
not added. Here are some of the chemical preservatives that
are used in pet food today:
*BHA
(butylated hydroxyanisole) - known to cause kidney and
liver dysfunction
*BHT
(butylated hydroxytolulene) - known to cause kidney and
liver dysfunction
*Ethoxyquin - suspected of
causing cancer
*Propylene glycol (also used as automotive antifreeze)
causes destruction of red blood cells
Other Cheap Fillers
Once considered a filler by the pet food
industry, the amount of grain products, especially corn,
used in pet food has risen sharply over the last decade to
where it is usually one or two of the top three ingredients.
For instance one Purina brand lists ground yellow corn,
poultry by-products and corn gluten meal as its top three
ingredients. Notice that two of the three ingredients are
corn based products from the same source. This is an
industry practice know as splitting. When components of the
same ingredient are listed separately (ground yellow corn
and corn gluten meal) it appears that there is less corn
then poultry-by products, when it truth the corn ingredients
when added together may weigh more then the chicken
by-products.
Are there really euthanized pets in pet food?
Unfortunately when a vet tells a grieving
pet owner they will "take care" of their dead loved one,
they usually mean sending it off with a disposal company for
rendering. This is all perfectly legal. Many veterinarians
and especially shelters don't have the money to bury or
cremate animals. I know from personal experience that
cremation is not cheap and fees can start at $110 and go up
from there depending on what options you choose.
A rendering plant employee was quoted as
saying to a reporter in Sacramento, "thousands and thousands
of pounds of dogs and cats are picked up and brought here
everyday". Although many in the pet food industry deny they
use euthanized animals, proof that the practice goes on
continues to surface. Research done on rendering plants that
sell meat to pet food companies found that the rendering
plants accept everything from road kill, dead zoo animals
and euthanized pets from both shelters and veterinary
clinics. One such plant was found to have rendered 11 tons
of dogs and cats in one week! Another plant in California
reported processing an average of 200 ton of dogs and cats
per month.
In the 1990's veterinarians began
reporting to the FDA/CVM that the drug they used for
anesthetizing and euthanizing pets, sodium pentobarital,
seemed to be losing its effectiveness. This prompted the CVM
to research the cause. In 1998 they went about testing dry
dog food containing the ingredients meat and bone meal,
animal digest and animal fat. They found the drug sodium
pentobarital in 31 of the 37 pet foods tested. They
concluded that animals were becoming immune to the drug from
eating food laced with sodium pentobarbital, and the likely
source of the chemical was euthanized animals.
The Unfortunate Reality is...
Huge food manufacturers use pet food
companies as a cheap and profitable way of disposing of the
waste from their human food manufacturing plants. Here is a
list of some of these companies and the pet foods they
manufacture:
* Nestle: Alpo, Fancy Feast, Friskies,
Mighty Dog, Purina
* Heinz: 9 lives, Amore, Gravy Train,
Kibbles-n-Bits, Nature's Recipe
* Colgate-Palmolive: Hill's Science Diet
* Proctor & Gamble: Iams, Eukanuba
* Mars: Kal Kan, Mealtime, Sheba,
Waltman's
Below are ingredient comparison charts
that I complied of some well know pet foods on the market
today. I think you will be surprised at the lack of
nutrition these foods actually have.
Pet Food Comparison
Charts
I have compiled a dog and cat food
comparison chart listing some of the more popular pet food
brands on the market today and listed the "less" desirable
ingredients in red.
This information was taken directly off
each brands website where the information is readily
available. Keep in mind that ingredients are listed in
descending order by weight just as human food, meaning the
ingredient listed first is the ingredient that is used the
most or makes up most of the food and so forth. For example
if corn is listed once (or twice with some brands) as one of
the first three ingredients that is much less desirable then
if it was listed as the eighth ingredient.
I've included a glossary following the
charts that explains each of the undesirable ingredients.
The best way to determine the quality of
your pets food is to carefully read and understand the
labels. While reading the label ask yourself the following
questions, does the food use high quality ingredients? Is
there a quality meat source as one of the first two
ingredients instead of a by-product?
If you love your pet and value their heath
I hope you will take this information to heart or better yet
take some time to do a little research of your own so you
can see the truth for yourself. We were shocked at how much
information there was on this subject and how easy it was to
find. We only wished for our pets sake we had found this
information sooner.
Dog Food
Life's Abundance
Chicken meal, ground brown
rice, oat groats, chicken fat, dried beet pulp, brewers dried yeast, flax seed meal,
natural flavors
Eukanuba Adult
Chicken,
chicken-by product meal,
corn
meal,
ground whole
grain sorghum,
brewers rice,
chicken fat, ground whole grain barley,
dried beet pulp
Iams ProActive Chunks
Chicken,
corn meal,
ground whole grain sorghum,
chicken
by-product meal,
dried beet pulp, chicken flavor
(don't say what its from), chicken fat
Kibbles N Bits Original
Corn,
soybean meal,�
wheat flour,
beef and bone
meal,
animal fat,
ground wheat flour,
animal fat
BHA
used as preservatives,
corn
syrup,
wheat middlings
Pedigree Complete Nutrition
Ground
yellow corn,
meat
and bone meal,
ground whole wheat,
corn gluten
meal, animal fat
(preserved with
BHA/BHT),
wheat mill run (wheat
middlings),
chicken
by-product meal,
natural flavor
Pro-Pak Adult Chunk
Chicken meal, ground yellow
corn, chicken fat, rice flour, dried beet
pulp, natural flavoring, flaxseed,
yeast culture
Purina Beneful Original
Ground
yellow corn,
chicken
by-product meal,
corn gluten
meal, whole wheat
flour,
beef tallow, rice
flour, soy flour
Purina Dog Chow Complete
Formula
Ground
yellow corn,
poultry
by-product meal,
animal fat,
corn
gluten meal,
brewers
rice,
soybean meal,
animal
digest
Science Diet Adult
Chicken,
ground whole grain corn,
ground whole grain sorghum, ground whole grain
wheat, chicken
by product meal,
soybean meal,
corn
gluten
meal,
animal fat
Cat Food
Life's Abundance
Chicken meal, ground brown rice, chicken fat,
dried beet pulp (sugar removed), egg product, catfish meal, brewers dried yeast,
chicken liver meal
Eukanuba Adult Cat
Formula
Chicken,
chicken
by-product meal,
corn meal,
corn grits,
animal fats,
dried beet pulp, dried egg product, natural
flavor
Flint River Ranch Adult
and Kitten Formula
Chicken meal,
ground yellow corn,
lamb meal,
corn gluten meal,
chicken fat, ground whole wheat, dried brewers
yeast, fish meal,
corn germ
meal
Iams ProActive
Adult
Chicken,
chicken by-product meal,
corn grits,
ground whole grain sorghum,
corn meal, chicken
fat, fish meal, dried beet pulp
Pro-Pac Adult Formula
Chicken meal, rice flour,
ground yellow corn,
chicken fat, corn gluten
meal,
dried beet pulp, fish meal, dried egg product
Purina
One Smartblend
Chicken,
brewers rice,
corn
gluten,
poultry
by-products,
wheat flour,
animal fat,
wheat gluten,
animal fat
Science Diet Adult
Chicken by-product meal,
brewer's rice,
corn gluten meal, whole grain corn,
powdered cellulose, chicken liver flavor,
soybean oil,
animal fat
Glossary
Animal
Digest:
This is the dry by-product of rendered
meat. During rendering, all usable animal parts (including
fetal tissues and glandular wastes) are heated in vats and
the liquid is separated from the dry meal. This meal is
covered with charcoal and labeled "unfit for human
consumption" before processing it into pet food.
Animal
Fat and Tallow:
Animal fat is a "generic" fat source
that is most often made up of rendered animal fat, rancid
restaurant grease or other oils that are deemed inedible for
humans. Tallow is low quality hard white fat that most
animals find hard to digest.
Brewers Rice: A
processed rice that is missing many of the nutrients contained in whole ground
rice and brown rice. This is not a high quality ingredient, just much cheaper
then whole grain rice.
Cellulose: Dried
wood is the most common source for cellulose, it is processed into fine powder
and used to add bulk and consistency to cheap pet foods. Good for termites maybe
but not dogs and cats.
Chemical Preservatives: Chemical preservatives
include BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT (butylated
hydroxytolulene), propyl gallate, propylene glycol (also
used in automotive antifreeze and is suspected of causing
red blood cell damage) and ethoxquin (suspected of causing
cancer), are all potentially cancer causing agents that your
pets are eating every day.
Chicken
By-products: These are ground parts from poultry
carcasses such as feet, heads, feathers, intestines, necks
and undeveloped eggs and can included any rendered material.
Corn
Products: Corn products including corn meal, gluten
and grits are cheap, allergy causing fillers and are very difficult for
animals to digest.
Flavors: Manufacturers rarely
give any details about what they are using for flavoring especially whether its
made from a natural or chemical substance.
Food
Fragments: Lower end by-products of the food
manufacturing process, examples include wheat bran and
brewers rice which are a waste product of the alcohol
industry.
Ground Whole
Grain Sorghum:
The
feed value of grain sorghum is similar to corn and is grown
primarily as a feed grain for livestock.
Meat
and Bone Meal:
Meat and bone meal or beef and bone
meal are inexpensive sources of animal protein. The protein
in a meal containing a large amount of bone may not be
digestible and fail to provide adequate nutrition.
Meat
Based:
A label that say "meat based" may also include
blood vessels, tendons, organs and other parts of the
rendered animal.
Meat
By-products: Pet grade meat by-products consist of
organs and parts not desired or not fit for human
consumption. This can include organs, bones, blood and fatty
tissue. It can also include brains, feet, heads, intestines
and any other internal parts. Unbelievably, by-products can
also contain cancerous or diseased tissue containing
parasites.
Soy Meal and Flour: Material
left after the oil has been removed from the soybean usually by a mechanical or
solvent extraction process. Much of the nutritional value is lost during this
process. Almost all soy used today is GMO.
Wheat Middlings: An inexpensive
byproduct of food processing, commonly referred to as "floor sweepings" Its
another inexpensive filler with no real nutritional value.
Take a look for yourself
Below are links to some of the more
popular pet foods on the market today, take a look for
yourself and what they have listed as their ingredients.
Click Here To Compare your brand to Life's Abundance:
I have noticed recently as I checked
out some of these major pet food manufacturers and some
other not so major websites that they have chosen change
their way of listing the ingredients for their products on
their websites. They use to list them just as they would be
shown on the ingredient list on the food bag, Now I'm seeing
on many sites where they are NOT showing the exact
ingredient list from the bag, but are only showing some of
the ingredients used in the food and not in any particular
order so they are trying you deceive by how they are
presenting the ingredients and not being honest of what
makes up those ingredients, some show those nice fresh cuts
of prime meat and fresh veggies as they state their
ingredients. My question is why would a pet food
manufacturer want to hide or be deceiving on what they put
into their foods unless they have something to hide. A true
quality pet food manufacturer would NEVER do this, they are
proud of what there are doing, let this be a RED flag! to
everyone! Any company that makes a high quality pet food
will NEVER be vague on what is being used to make it. NEVER!
This is proof to me that the heat is on
and these crappy, pet food manufacturers are feeling
at hit in their pocket books and are trying yet another
tactic to save their sales.
You can go to websites like petsmart.com and others
that sell a variety of pet food and search for brands there, those site
will almost always list the ingredients when the actual manufacturers won't.
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