What Does Splitting Mean When It Comes To Labeling In Pet Food?

By Author: Kari Farmer
Total Articles: 16
Comment this article

I try to tell people that meat whether it be beef, chicken, lamb or venison should make up the bulk of what their dog or cat is eating and with a raw or homemade diet it is pretty easy to accomplish this task.

But with commercial pet food you get what you get so to speak and most people are quick to point out that chicken or fish or whatever meat is the first ingredient on their bags or cans label. Therefore they believe or picture it as the main ingredient in the food. But is it really the bulk of the food your pet is eating?

The first ingredient listed on a label always makes up the bulk of the food. That applies to all food that comes premade, canned, or bagged.

So if corn is the first ingredient on the list than you already know that it's making up the most of the food and you can bypass it for a more meaty meal.

But pet food companies obviously want you to buy their food at the least cost to them. Because corn is an inexpensive filler for pet food pet, along with other grains, these pet food companies want to put it in there without us realizing that it is making up the majority of the food ...
... and they use label splitting to accomplish this.

Let's use corn as an example. There is a long list of corn products that can be used in pet food. These include:

Corn Flour - This is the small size, hard part of ground corn that contains modest amounts or none of the bran or germ.

Corn Bran - This is the outer covering of the corn kernel and contains little or none of the starchy part of the germ.

Corn gluten meal - This is the dried remains from the corn after the starch and germ are removed. It is a by-product of processing corn to make corn starch and corn syrup.

So to demonstrate food splitting let's use these corn products in an ingredient list.

Chicken, Corn Flour, Soybean Mill Run 16% (source of fiber), Chicken By-Product Meal, Powdered Cellulose, Corn Gluten Meal, Soybean Meal, Chicken Liver Flavor, Corn Bran, Soybean Oil, pyridoxine hydrochloride, potassium iodide, Vitamin D-3 supplement, folic acid, sodium selenite, biotin. A-4586.

So we may think that chicken is the biggest ingredient and corn flour is the second biggest ingredient but that's not really the case here.

When we pull out all the ingredients that actually come from corn we can see that they are spread around the ingredient list and clearly added together would make the bulk of the food.

Corn as a whole would be the greatest ingredient of this food. And that's how food splitting works.

So check out your pet food and see if you've been feeding what you think you've been feeding or is food splitting with corn or other grains happening to you.
If it is you can bet that it's a trick to make you think otherwise and how much would you trust a food making company that's trying to trick you?

Learning your way around pet food whether it be commercial or homemade can be confusing. Learn how to make the healthiest decision for your pets by doing your research. Sharda Baker can help you do that with years of research behind her. Learn more at http://www.dogsfooddangers.com.