Should we be thanking Purina?

Actually Royal Canin is a bigger pet food company than Purina, because it's international.

 
As a side note...Purina is 10 times the size of Royal Canin in production and revenue.  Purina is represented in 75 countries around the world, and Royal Canin is in 90 countries, but on a much smaller scale.

Yes, but Royal Canin is now owned by Mars company which is also Pedigree, 9 Lives, Ceasars, Sheba. Royal Canin also makes Kasco dog food and Sensible Choice.  
 
The way I understand it is that Royal Canin is a larger dog food company, but grocery Purina, as it is now owned by Nestle, is a larger company.  Nestle also makes Stoufers and Carnation breakfast and a ton of other stuff.
 
Isn't it funny that the largest dog food companies are both owned by chocolate companies.  No double meaning intended.

What the heck were dogs eating 30 years ago?ORIGINAL: angeltrudelle

Actually, when kibble first came out it was meant to be a supliment to the table scraps and what the dog caught outside. 

I do believe that Purina is a charitable company, but that doesn't mean that I would feed it because I do believe that what I feed my dog has an effect on his health and life span.

ORIGINAL: jojo the pogo

What the heck were dogs eating 30 years ago?ORIGINAL: angeltrudelle

Actually, when kibble first came out it was meant to be a substitute to the table scraps and what the dog caught outside. 

I do believe that Purina is a charitable company, but that doesn't mean that I would feed it because I do believe that what I feed my dog has an effect on his health and life span.

 
The way it was once explained on this board was, if a human person eats junk all their life, they are bound to be more susceptible to illness and disease at some point in their life. Humans have the choice about what they eat and dogs don't. I feel the same way Jojo. I believe what I feed my dogs has an effect on their health. I really don't see how it couldn't. I don't knock anyone for feeding "non-premiuim" foods (I used too), but if I can't eat healthy and good myself, well then I'm gonna make damn sure my dog does! [] 

Personally I don't like Iams or Eukanuba since they use animals to test their products. That's why I stopped using them. I'm so against Purina as it's so much filler in the dog food. I'm thinking if these big dog food companies went out of sponsoring the shows that another big company would pick up the slack. If I had to feed my dog a less nutrious dog food it would be Pedigree. They have come a long ways to make a better product.

30 years ago dogs ate horsemeat and table scraps. They sure didn't eat bags of preserved dehydrated corn meal.

Hmmm that's strange I've never heard the horsemeat one. I'm 53 when I was a kid the dog got leftovers and any kind of dogfood. But when I was on my own and had my first dog it ate dogfood. I didn't think it was smart to give a dog  scraps. Just the way I felt...

If Purina is funding all of these dog events and giving to charity, and really doing such a nice job, even if it is for advertising, they obviously care for animals or they would not be in this business. If they do all of this why would they make such a bad dog food. They should know what should be in a dog food, seeing that they have been in the business for how many years?

I believe it does not matter what you are feeding your dog. I'm sorry, but I don't believe it.

 
You're awfully naive. Purina is in it to make money. Have you heard about all the cats that were killed by cat food companies, who of course knew what they were doing, and failed to add a certain essential nutrient to their formulas?  Have you read any of the scientific research that has been done on dog nutrition? or even human nutrition? Most icky diseases of middle and old age in humans are the direct result of what you ate for the first forty to fifty years of your life. Dogs are no different. Human nutritionists would laugh in your face if you told them that you could make a cute little bag of dry preserved food that contained everything a human needed to eat for their entire life. No different for dogs.
A diet of nothing but kibble, premium or not, is not good for dogs. A diet of garbage like Beneful is the equivalent of raising your child on a diet of cookies and soda plus a daily multi-vitamin.

Dog food used to have a much higher meat content.  Commercial dog feeds were orginally developed to sell animal by-products (most famously surplus horses).  It's only been a couple generations since science has figured out how to make plant products - grains mostly - take the place of meats instead of simply binding them for extrusion - coinciding with the huge drop in price in US grain after WWII.

The major dog food producers then became the megamills, with their access to mill by products.

I feel this is one of the reasons for all the stories we hear - "my grandpa raised all his dogs on Dog Chow and they all lived into their teens."  Dog Chow wasn't a bad product when it was mostly animal by-products - it's still not too awful.  It's just the envelope is gradually getting pushed - how much can we push back the bottom line while still keeping the nutrient profile looking good on paper?  It's odd that Beneful is a new product, or relatively so, compared to Dog Chow - what's the point of coming out with something worse than Dog Chow if not to make the stockholders happy?

I predict in ten years we'll be having the same argument - my dog lived to be ten and ate Beneful his whole life, and he was perfectly healthy, except for the little yeast infections, and the thyroid problem his last few years, and the bone cancer that took him ultimately.

So no, the very existence of Beneful makes me doubt that the folks at Purina look much past the bottom line, whether it's in creating new products or in their charitable efforts.

ORIGINAL: Rottiesrock

Hmmm that's strange I've never heard the horsemeat one. I'm 53 when I was a kid the dog got leftovers and any kind of dogfood. But when I was on my own and had my first dog it ate dogfood. I didn't think it was smart to give a dog  scraps. Just the way I felt...

 
Now we have rendors pick up dead horses, then they fed them to dogs.  The horses used for fox hunting in England were fed to the hounds after death.

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

Beneful is the equivalent of raising your child on a diet of cookies and soda plus a daily multi-vitamin.

That's an excellent analogy[]

Back to the question in the original post, Purina has made a lot of improvements in the last couple years.  For example no more BHA and BHT or ethoxiquin in any of their foods.  And this new Purina Naturals, looks better, not great, but better.

By the way, did you notice that Science Diet followed suit after Beneful came out with their "Nature's Best Line."  But at least the SD versian doesn't contain sugar and loads of salt.  Just anothe example of it's all about advertising.

diet of cookies and soda

 
That's what I had for break, today.
 
"I'm on the Highway to Hell ..."
 

You're awfully naive. Purina is in it to make money. Have you heard about all the cats that were killed by cat food companies, who of course knew what they were doing, and failed to add a certain essential nutrient to their formulas

 
Now, there's the gratuitous rudity I was expecting. The taurine deficiency in cat food is now ancient history and some food companies have actually moved on from that. I guess I could go on about the vikings, in spite of superior steel, being fought off and scared away by the native americans and treat it like it's still an ongoing problem, even though it happened centuries before Columbus conned Isabel into financing another one of funny ideas. A round world? Ha!
 

One thing I have learned is that the ingredient list is not a mathematical formula. So, I'm wondering how it is documented that foods are using less animal protein. Ingredients must be list in order of voume present but it is not a direct correlation or ratio to th amount as fed. A food may list 3 meat sources, 2 grains, and a fat. According to Mordanna's principle, the food is comprised mainly of the ingredients listed to th first source of fat. Even considering that may be true, that doesn't mean the food is 60 percent meat. Nutrient profile and guaranteed analysis still show protein in the 20's. And there are some protein chains in grain that are not present in meat, and vice versa.