Premium and Super-Premium Dog Foods: What’s the Difference?
What is the difference between super-premium and premium dog foods? In a nutshell, the quality of the ingredients, and to a lesser degree, how they are processed (which will be discussed in a another post).
First we showed how to tell the difference between economy and premium dog foods. You look at the label and see what kind of ingredients are listed as the top dog food ingredients. Economy dog foods use lots of grains, and meat and grain by-products. Premium dog foods use these to a lesser extent.
Super-premium dog foods will have much higher quality meat sources, some even human grade. You will also see almost no by-products of any kind, meat or grain. More fruits and vegetables are listed, and again, these are not by-products, but the actual whole ingredient.
Many super-premium dog foods will also be organic. Many of our dogs problems can be attributed to the amount of chemicals that they ingest with their normal dog food. Even humans are seeing the health advantages of organic foods with many more organic choices for us in the grocery stores.
Some super-premium dog foods are listed as holistic. This confuses some people because a food really cannot be defined as ‘holistic’. Holistic means to treat as a whole, and food would only be a part. But essentially, what the companies are trying to get across is that their ‘holistic’ dog food is pure and natural, usually organic, such that eating it will not only help your dog’s overall health, it will not harm it (no artificial colors, preservatives, …).
So with the better quality of ingredients, the price will definitely be more expensive. Is it worth it? I’d say so based upon two main princples:
1) Something that needs to always be considered is that the healthier the dog food, the less quantity your dog needs to eat. You will feed him less and your dog’s stools will also be smaller (because he is actually utilizing more of the food). So, if you bought a 20 lb bag of food that lasted 3 weeks, you may only need a 15 lb bag of super-premium for the same amount of time (results will vary based on your dog). When you do the math, you’ll see that you really aren’t paying that much more for the super-premium.
2) If your dog has allergies or is prone to illness of any kind, you will most likely see an incredible change when you start feeding him a super-premium food. Your dog will be healthier and able to resist many of the problems he has today. This will result in less trips to the vets and any special medicines that were needed. This in turn, will result in smaller vet bills. I, myself, now only have to take my dogs to the vets for their vaccinations (and I’m seriously re-considering that – but that will probably be a whole different blog after careful investigation).
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