Natura uses feeding tests?

I cannot wait 'til I get my phD (5 more months--already finished my discertation) just so I can have some validation behind my claim....I am even considering writing a book with one of my nutrition professors. We'll see how that goes....

 
Excellent, Papi! I think that's great news. And if you do write a book, you had better let me know where to get it or I will hound you like a, well, like a dog.
 

The fact is I wouldn't have made statements like that a month ago but by listening to members like Sandra, you, and abbysdad I have changed my views and it took guts for all of you to go against the majority of members and stand your ground, so you see, it is worthwhile for you to post on the nutrition threads

It's either guts or foolhardiness.[]

I agree with your posts. And guess what? A lot of people fed Purina, Iams, etc. for decades and dogs lived as long as their going to live, regardless. In the last 10 years with the explosion of the net, anyone can get on and say whatever they want, with or without evidence, and others can believe it. So, some people, after decades of feeding food engineered by others to met the pets needs, they all of a sudden decide, after reading a few different opinions and some downright fantasy, that they were doing wrong all those years.

I'm all for better nutrition and I'm not against any person for their particular feeding style. And I think feeding trials are a valid measure of a food's value, if even for a short while. There is only one feeding trial that I know of that included raw, homecooked, and kibble, with or without supplements and a few have discounted it because it was conducted by Dr. Newman of azmir.com because she is marketing her own brand of supplements.

I would rather feed my dog something he does well on and likes than to force him to eat another food that he doesn't do well on just because it fits into a particular philosophy or looks good enough for a human to eat. As an owner, I don't particularly want my dog to eat by-product. So, the food I feed him has no by-product. If he was free-hunting, however, he would be eating by-product and rancid food every day, for his entire life, however long that may be. Maybe I'm doing wrong by not feeding him a food containing by-product. I'll take that chance. I've been drinking sodas for over 20 years. I eat lunch meat and hot dogs. I eat pizza, which contains more than one food group. I try to achieve some balance every day, but not always accomplish it. Please, someone tell me I'm going to die sometime between 70 and 100.
 
It's something I get from my mother. I will tell the truth as best as I can see it and let the chips fall where they may. This sometimes gets me in trouble at work, because my boss likes to play politics, which is a reality, believe it or not, in the construction biz. People in positions of authority over us who simply do not have a clue. That's not an insult, it is a fact. But you're not supposed to point that out them, even by accident, such as asking a question or suggesting what should've been done. Then they get their feelings hurt and create havoc for me. Such a thing happened recently. So, I've been kissing butt by keeping my mouth shut so that I don't hurt someone's feelings, regardless of how their ineptitude is impacting the job negatively.

Nutro's been in business since 1926.
 

Congrats to your daughter! Tell her the extra years of study will be worth it, so stick with it! Good luck to her also....biochem is a very good field to be in right

 
 Thanks papillon; and what Ron said about you writing a book goes ditto for me. []

And thank you Jessies_mom for the kind giving them something else.  It has nothing at all to do with money,  or  just because "my dad used it", it has to do with my dogs looks, energy, wellness checks, etc.  Of course my Dad used it, his settters and pointers lived a long healty life usually up to 11-12, sometimes as long as 15.  And we are talking days when dogs did not get most vax, ours just got rabies and distermper...I am not even sure all these others were around back then.  They were used in hunting, picked up fleas and ticks (and those day over the counter Hartz   and Sargeants was the limit of flea/tick killer on dogs and neither was good.  At leat that is all WE country folks knew about.)  They did not get wellness checks, blood work annually, dentals--heck, humans rarely even got this things.    We did lose two to distemper, but outside of that, none visited the vets for sickness, only injuries--bad barbed wire cut, hit by car, etc.
 
At 15 Mack had was nearly deaf from all the years of having the gun fired over him, his eyes sight was not good, he had arthritis, he was missing some teeth  and I should mention that at about age 11 he was run over by from and rear tire of pick-up carrying a full load of fence posts.  The old man did not see that white dog Mack was mostly white with some black spots) laying on our dirt driveway He got no meds for his arthritis, etc, but at 15 he still had it in him to go hunt for 30 minutes or so.
 
I saw those dogs last hours in the field, rough brairs, brambles, thickets, and sometimes they were out 7 days a week as family memebers borrowed them.  There is no way on this green earth they could have hunted like that, been in the condition they were in if they had not been getting what they needed from Purina.
 
Now there is some confusion here--some say Purina is not as good was it was back then, then someone else comes also and says it is better today.  I don't know, I just know it works for my dogs.  I also know it will not work for every day.  Because I have never used Eukanuiba, Pedigree, etc, I have no idea how well they would work for my dogs, so i only use Purina in my posts as it is what I use and am happy with.  Also, I was pleased  with Science diet for getting the weight off Kaycee.  Buck is on the  formula for kidney infection and I do not know the outcome of that yet.  may be please, may be very unhappy.
 
I have said before and I will say again, i am not defending Purina, I am defending the fact that it works great for my dogs and  that the top of the line is not always best for some dogs.  it is for others,
 
Oh, someone said i wouldn't know if the  TO, EP , etc would work better for my dogs if I didn't try it.  I learned with my Hunter that better does not always work, is not always better.  I went "better" for him by putting him on proHeart6 and it was not better for him, it killed him. Had I stuck with Interceptor, well, that is a different story.
 

Sandra you're comparing a heartworm shot with food..Not quite a valid comparison.

I was also going to ask you about how would you know if your dogs wouldnt do even better on a premium food? I have heard owners say so many times "that they thought their dogs were doing great on X food,until they changed to better food" and realised their dogs wernt doing so well after all [&:]

Personally i would be too worried to feed a food with ingredients of unknown origin.I want to know exactly what it is my dogs are eating. I feed my dogs on the same principles as i use to feed my family,and i would not serve my kids up anything that had even a shadow of  doubt attached to it,i dont buy products that state "meat products" or "derivatives" of anything on the ingredient list,and i sure as heck arent going to feed stuff like that to my dogs either.I dont buy or eat sausages or that gross pressed sandwich meat stuff coz i have no idea whats in it [:'(]

My daughters friend has probably never had a fresh homecooked meal in her life,the family lives on processed junk and tv dinners [:@] But she seems to be doing ok,but i bet she would do a hell of a lot better if she had the opportunity to have healthy food every single day.

I have personally met 3 dogs in the past year who have died from cancer,2 were fed purina dog chow and the other pedigree,i would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that years of being fed junk food and inproper/Lack of nourishment attributed greatly to their demise(i just can not see how a company can use good ingredients and sell the end product at such a cheap price,cheap products have to mean cheap ingredients),Top line ingredients usually mean a top line price tag).I bet there are thousands of other dogs just like them out there who's owners wouldnt even think to connect food to their dogs diseases.

My point with the Proheart 6 is that it was suppose to be better for my dog and it wasn't.   It may have been better for other dogs, but not my Hunter. What is suppose to be better isn't always better.  Also, Just becuase a company says their food is this, that, and yonder does not make it true.  Most assume that Science Diet, Pedigree, Purina, Iams,  etc  contain everything except the Devils' poop, and those premium  foods contain only perfect ingredients    As I have said many times, nothing is as perfect, as good, as advertised (be on on the label, Tv, magazine, web.)
 
How many of us have actually been in one of the plants and seen with our own eyes what goes into the dog food?  Watched it being made so we  KNOW for sure it is everything it is suppose to be?   I have even see a couple of times where people have posted that such and such a company (one not liked on this board) gets by with such and such by this or that way.  Well, I don't know that same doesn't apply for the premium companies as well.  It is like the example I gave of the time my sister and ordered a burger combo that included fries and onion rings and she said before it arrived she bet there would only be 2 onion rings, just enough to be able to put the S on the end of ring and make it sound like we were actually a serving of onion rigs.  When the meals arrived, she had called it right--we each had 2 onion rings.  Now the menu didn't say you got a full serving, but that was the implication.  French Fries and Onion Rings.  Why not a full serving of the onion rings and just 2 fries?
 
BBBBB drive-in in XXXXXX Texas advertised ON TV about their famous hand breaded onion rings.  Thing is, at the time my hubby was delivering for ZZZZZ foods AND they delivered the already breaded  onion rings to BBBBB (and several other resturants) and we use to buy the boxes of them ourself from ZZZZZ .  The public was lead to believe those onion rings were hand breaded right at Sonic and that was not true. False advertisng?  I don't know.  They never actually said the onion rings were hand breaded there, but they sure implied it.  Were they really hand breaded at the plant? Don't know, but it would take thousands to hand bread the amount that was delivered just on the trucks from the one food service place in one where hubby worked--and there were 3-4 other food service places.
 
My 12 1/2 year old irish Setter did die of bone cancer in his rear leg, but I never for one second think that all those years on Purina brought it on.  "Zeke", an 8 year old raw fed golden  died of cancer last year on one of my golden boards.   She was feeding raw in the hopes of preventing cancer after she had lost another dog earlier  and she still feeds raw to her other dogs.  Raw feeding didn't stop "Zeke's" cancer any more than Purina caused Boots' cancer. 
 
I tried "better" for Buck years ago (I can't even remember the brand) and it made him throw up each time he ate it.  Better was not best for him.  And I am not going to try every food on the market--looking for the "perfect food"  when what they are being fed now works for them.  I will not run the risk of making them sick or causing problems with "better" stuff.  i know people, hubby included, who get headaches drinking premium beer, but no problem on the old cheap stuff--and vice versa.   He won't even try a new beer because of the risk of headache.
 
The day I do not believe my dogs are as fit as they can be will be the day I will go hunting for a different food.    You say why not change now and not risk it?  I could and then find they are worse off for the new food and I should have stayed put.  I think there are a few here that had this exerince.

I have personally met 3 dogs in the past year who have died from cancer,2 were fed purina dog chow and the other pedigree,i would be willing to bet my bottom dollar that years of being fed junk food and inproper/Lack of nourishment attributed greatly to their demise(i just can not see how a company can use good ingredients and sell the end product at such a cheap price,cheap products have to mean cheap ingredients),Top line ingredients usually mean a top line price tag).I bet there are thousands of other dogs just like them out there who's owners wouldnt even think to connect food to their dogs diseases.

 
 
Okay, to start with it is very easy to for them to be able to use the same quality of ingredeints and charge less.  It is called volume sales.  I learned all about this when I worked sales 40 years ago.  First, you take the large chain store i worked for and the much smaller one down the street.    We could charge less for the same product--and make more.  Works like this.
 
They would buy 100 wrenches at $1 each  ($100 cost) and sell them for $2 each ($200) and that would be a profit of $100.  Meanwhile my store would buy 500 of the same wrenches and because of buying in bulk, would pay  $.98 each for them, ($490) and we would sell them 20c cheaper than the store store the street--sell them for $1.80 each ($900).  So even tho it was the idental wrench, our profit ($900 sales minus $490 cost) would be $410.  Their profit for the same wrench ($200 sales mines $100 cost) would be $100.  And that is how it works when you have larger companies going up against smaller ones.  (Ron can probably back my math on this)
 
So this is how Purina, Hills, etc, etc can sell for less but still use top ingredients.  (I am not saying they use the best, but then i don't know that the premium use the best either.)  They buy in bulk, they get it for cheaper, and because they sell so much more, they can afford to sell it for less and still make more profit than smaller companies.
 
I also have to add that I will bet my bottom dollar many dogs on premium dog food has died of cancer.  It is kinda funny because there was a thread going about maybe the preminum is not as nutritional as thought and talk  about all the nutritionists and vets hired by these big companies.    So i gather you think that only the nutitionist and vets hired by the premium brands actually know anything about  nutrition and the ones hired by Hills, Purina, etc, etc don't enough enough about nutrition to put in a gnat's eye and just slap an OKAY on anything the companies want to do.  Otherwise you would not be calling it junk. 
 

The day I do not believe my dogs are as fit as they can be will be the day I will go hunting for a different food. You say why not change now and not risk it? I could and then find they are worse off for the new food and I should have stayed put. I think there are a few here that had this exerince.

 
Exactly. Some of us, such as myself, have only tried one "premium" food, considered the best of the best here, and it didn't work. Others have tried all of the "premiums" with no luck and went back to on of the standard names. If Innova didn't work, why should an Innova wannabe be any better?
 
 

So even tho it was the idental wrench, our profit ($900 sales minus $490 cost) would be $410. Their profit for the same wrench ($200 sales mines $100 cost) would be $100. And that is how it works when you have larger companies going up against smaller ones

 
Your math is dead on. I say that not because you and I feed a food considered of less quality and viability but because your math is correct. Math is math, I love it too much. And it illustrates business principles adequately. For example, I buy Shadow's food in the 40 lb bag. So, I am averaging 88 cents a lb. A smaller bag would have a higher cost per pound, not counting more trips to the store to get it. Buying in bulk reduces unit cost.
 
When we order pipe, we try to buy bulk. We try to buy pipe in master bundles. If we only order 300 feet at a time, we are paying for separating bundles, delivery trip charge, waiting for this to happen. It takes less time and in the end costs less money to buy the master bundle. This translates into lower overall job costs and higher profit margin on the cost effectiveness of the whole project.
 
The big companies can afford to have vets and nutrionists on staff or permanent retainer to not only tweak and adjust recipes but answer any and all questions for both company and consumer.
 

 As far as whether or not Jessie would do as well on brands like Purina or Pedigree I don't have the option of knowing because Jessie is very allergic to chicken. I have checked the formulas of all the "major" brands and the only one that has absolutely no chicken is Nutro Natural Choice Lamb and Rice, which Ron feeds. Eukanuba " Natural" lamb has natural chicken flavor and Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Skin and Stomach has animal digest which they make from the internal organs of chicken and pork which are not bad ingredients but neither food is a true allergy formula. While it is true that the large companies can buy in bulk and pay less, animal digest is a less expensive way of adding protein instead of using another meat meal. With most holistic companies, the source of protein for which the product is named is the only meat used in the product so if you have a dog allergic to chicken or beef you don't have to worry about it being in the food; one exception I know of is Nature's Variety Venison which uses natural lamb flavor but dogs are much more likely to be allergic to beef or chicken.  My vet prefers Jessie to be eating Eagle Pack instead of a prescription food since she is doing so well.
  I don't believe it's fair to link cancer in dogs with ingredients in dog food; I think vets are better at diagnosing it than they were in the past and irresponsible breeding is the main cause for breeds like Boxers and Goldens having a disproportionate amount of cancer. However, there is some anecdotal evidence that once a dog is diagnosed with cancer a raw diet can increase thier survival time.
  When I started the thread about the ability of small companies to balance thier formulas as well as large companies I was a little concerned but after John's response and the information from smilee and jogo, as well as shlep's points it is much less of an issue to me.
   I still believe that the majority of us aren't qualified to tell someone that they are feeding thier dog "junk" which is why I'm not going to do it anymore; while I never said those exact words I would say " Beneful is not a good food." Given that millions of dogs are healthy on that and other grocery store brands and they are formulated by those who have degrees in animal nutrition I think we should respect the decision of those who use these foods and not offer an unsolicited opinion. If someone asks for an opinion on a certain food they use or wants suggestions for "better" foods than I think it's fine to suggest foods which have in our opinion better ingredients.

ORIGINAL: jessies_mom

I don't believe it's fair to link cancer in dogs with ingredients in dog food; I think vets are better at diagnosing it than they were in the past and irresponsible breeding is the main cause for breeds like Boxers and Goldens having a disproportionate amount of cancer. However, there is some anecdotal evidence that once a dog is diagnosed with cancer a raw diet can increase thier survival time.

I tend to agree with this except in the case of BHA, BHT, and Ethoxyquin. I really believe these ingredients are dangerous and should be banned from use in any and all food, human or dog.

ORIGINAL: ron2

If Innova didn't work, why should an Innova wannabe be any better?

That's kind of silly logic to me. Does every food you eat agree with your stomach? Why would you think that a different food, by a different comapny, with different ingredients and a different GA would be an Innova wannbe or that your dog would react the same to it?

Other niche market foods aren't "Innova wannabes". They all have their own missions, philosophies, market directions, and some have been around a lot longer than Natura (Innova).  One has to evaluate any food on its own merit.  No one is obligated to change feeds from what works for them, but "If one Innova product doesn't work  . . .then no other food in that niche will work either" is misplaced generalization.

When I was feeding California Natural (made by Innovas mother company) I called the 800 number on the bag.  I talked to a rep who said no animal testing was done excpet taste tests on their own pets.
 
Iam stinks !  arent  they a Proctor and Gamble compnay - biggest animal abusers on the planet? 

If it is true that dogs fed urina get cancer and dogs fed holistic foods don't, or even have a reduced risk, that would be noble prize winning stuff.