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Pet Food Marketing Hype - The Inside Scoop From a Holistic Veterinarian
A trip down your pet food aisle nowadays will boggle the mind with all the wonderful claims made by manufacturers because of their particular products. But what's the truth behind all this marvelous hype? You might be very surprised...let's take a look.

1. Niche claims. Today, should you have an indoor cat, a canine athlete, a Persian, a Bloodhound, a Yorkie, or perhaps a pet with a tender tummy or itchy feet, you can find a food "designed" just for your pet's personal needs. Niche marketing is here in a big way in your pet food industry. Felix Health Reviews prefer to feel special, and a product with specific appeal will sell better than an over-all product like "puppy food." But the reality is there are only two nutritional standards against which all pet foods are measured (adult and growth/gestation/lactation)-everything else is marketing. Your best bet is really a food made with top quality things that satisfies "All Life Stages."

2. "Natural" or "Organic" claims. This is of "natural" adopted by AAFCO is quite broad, and allows for artificially processed ingredients that most people would consider very unnatural indeed. The word "organic," alternatively, has a very strict legal definition that the USDA has ruled applies to pet food. However, some companies are adept at evading the intent of the rules. For example, the name of the business or product could be intentionally misleading. For example, some companies use terms like "Nature" or "Natural" in the brand, whether or not their products fit this is of natural.

3. Ingredient quality claims. Plenty of pet foods claim they contain "human grade" ingredients. This is usually a completely meaningless term-which is why the pet food companies get away with using it. Exactly the same pertains to "USDA inspected" or similar phrases. The implication is that the food is made using things that are passed by the USDA for human consumption, but there are plenty of ways around this. For instance, a facility might be USDA-inspected during the day, however the pet food is manufactured at night after the inspector goes home. The use of such terms should be viewed as a "Hype Alert."

4. "Meat is the first ingredient" claim. A claim that a named meat (chicken, lamb, etc.) is the #1 ingredient is generally seen for dry food. Ingredients are listed on the label by weight, and raw chicken weighs a lot, since contains a lot of water. In the event that you look further down the list, you're likely to see ingredients such as chicken or poultry by-product meal, meat-and-bone meal, corn gluten meal, soybean meal, or other dry protein. Meals have had the fat and water removed, and basically contain a dry, lightweight, high-protein powder. more info doesn't take much raw chicken to weigh greater than a great big pile of this powder. Not only that, but the "chicken" used in dry food is truly a slurry of about 90% water; so the truth is the food is founded on the protein meal, with hardly any "chicken" found.

This has turn into a extremely popular marketing gimmick, even in premium and "health food" type brands. Since Felix Health Reviews is currently deploying it, any meaning it could once have had is so watered-down that you may just as well ignore it.

5. Special ingredient claims. Most of the high-end pet foods today rely on the marketing selling point of people-food ingredients such as fruits, herbs, vegetables, and a variety of supplements such as for example glucosamine or probiotics. However, the amounts of these items actually within the food are small and not therapeutic. Vegetables and fruit are usually scraps and rejects from processors of human foods-certainly not the whole, fresh ingredients they want you to picture. Such ingredients don't provide a significant health benefit and so are just a marketing gimmick.

It's a jungle on the market...Pet food advertising is becoming extremely sophisticated over the last few years. It is critical to know what is hype and what's real, in order to make informed decisions in what to feed your pets.

Dr. Jean Hofve is a retired holistic veterinarian with a particular fascination with nutrition and behavior. Her informational website, http://www.littlebigcat.com, features a thorough free article library on feline health and pet nutrition, in addition to a free e-newsletter. Dr. Hofve founded Spirit Essences Holistic Remedies for Animals (http://www.spiritessence.com) in 1995; and it remains the only line of flower essence formulas created by a veterinarian. She is a certified Medicine Woman within the Nemenhah Native American Traditional Organization who uses holistic remedies as a part of body-mind-spiritual healing.
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