butchcommunist:

The video starts off with the guy trying some silly tests put forth by YouTubers to find the “best” kibble, then performing his own tests. His test of dragging bags to see which is most durable is pretty dumb imo, BUT he does provide a really valuable metric for judging how MUCH of what is in your dog’s food, called the salt test, which he starts explaining around 6:38. I also think he exaggerates the likelihood of getting excessively high amounts of vitamins in dog foods from accidents in plants, since the same could be said of literally any ingredient involved in the process of making the kibble.

Dog foods, by law, cannot contain more than 1% salt, and ingredients lists are listed from most prominent ingredient to least prominent ingredient. This means that, if an ingredient comes after salt on the list, no matter how prominently it is featured on the label or in marketing material, we know that the kibble is made up of less than 1% that ingredient. The salt test thing helped me evaluate the CLAIMS of different brands of dog foods that they contain cranberries or blueberries in meaningful measure. I did not decide to go with a brand in this video but the salt test helped me pick out a brand of kibble that ACTUALLY contained substantial amounts of real meat, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, salmon, etc.

Personally my research has led me to the conclusions 1) that raw food diets are perfectly fine except for the risk of food poisoning from E. Coli, salmonella, etc, and 2) that many kibbles have a lot of vitamins added because the cooking process can remove so much nutrient content from the kibble ingredients. I have reasoned based on these two factors that I’d like to go with a diet of quality kibble supplemented with fresh veggies, fruits, cooked meats, etc, since I would just prefer not to have to constantly cook meat for my dog and do not want to risk food poisoning my dog either.