Hi,
A new dog food from Seven has appeared in a big way in my local animal feeds outlet. It’s being promoted as grain free and high in meat content, a high end dried food at a mid range price which a new magical process they call freshtrusion technology has made possible. Along with someone called Walter who has lots of buddies in the farming world so he can source fresh British produce at very good prices.
When I punched the ingredients from their senior/light salmon, trout, sweet potato and asparagus variety into the instant review generator it came out at a lowly 2.6 which was a surprise.
I have a 10 year old border collie bitch who’s done very well on James Wellbeloved with a bit of fresh meat mixed in more for flavour than anything but I’m losing faith in JW since their takeover by Mars and have been searching for an alternative.
The more I look the more confused I get to be honest with all kinds of reviews which seem to contradict each other and no guarantee that the supposed 5* dog foods are really worth more than twice the price of the more middling offerings. I wonder how much dogs actually benefit from exotic organic ingredients and how much better value is to be had from cheaper dog foods with apparently similar protein/vitamin/fibre contents.
I’m also wondering how rice has gone from the wonder ingredient it was a few years ago to something to be avoided. Potato surely can’t trump rice, can it?
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Hi ClivePhoto, and welcome to the forum.
I have looked on the internet for this food and, just like you did, I used the review generator using the ingredient list provided on www.gjwtitmuss.co.uk
I think the reason for the low score is that most of the meat comes from fresh source: while this may sound very “natural”, actually fresh meat contains mostly water (about 70%) so the nutritional contribution is not very high. This is confirmed by the fact that the manufacturer had to add pea protein and potato protein to raise the amount of proteins, which still gets to a below-average value of 27%.
Also, it seems to me that the food is quite poor in fat (which is not a good thing for dog food) and high in carbohydrates (called NFE on the manufacturer’s website). While the former may be partially explained by the “senior” formulation, 9% of fat is a very low figure; I really can’t find a reasonable explanation for having high levels of carbs in a senior dog food, given the risks of diabetes.
The algorithm to calculate the food score should however be taken only as a guideline and not as Gospel: much will depend on the individual dog’s needs and for obvious reasons the algorithm can’t take that into account. I invite you however to look at the feeding guidelines too for every food: while premium foods are certainly more expensive, you will need to feed smaller amounts to your dog (to make an example, a 10kg pack of Orijen lasts much longer than a 10kg pack of Bakers) which will reduce the price gap. The “cost per day” box in every food reviewed on this website will give you a fairer comparison.
A final note on rice: in general, there is nothing wrong with it (particularly brown rice) and it’s actually a pretty good nutrient which is also cheap. The biggest problem with rice is that, being a very common ingredient for pet food, it’s recently become highlighted as source for food intolerance together with chicken (incidentally another very popular ingredient for dog food).
I hope this answers all your questions.
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Hello Clive - welcome to the forum. The term ‘freshtrusion’ reminds me of Golden Acres Pet Food company and some of those ingredients are included in some white label products that we have had mentioned on here and are manufactured by this company. Country Kibble on Amazon is one that is similar to these.
As for rice, personally I don’t mind it but I take your point about it not being popular at the moment. As has been said, brown rice is better nutritionally than white and I would have it in preference to white potato. I think it is a case of not having too much of it - for me, that would be no more than one third of the recipe.
I understand your confusion re five star foods and whether they are worth having. It’s really about what suits the dog and for some they are not appropriate, often due to high protein/fat. Anything above 4 stars seems ok to me although I usually take more notice of the lack of red ingredients and the balance of the ingredients. I think that adding fresh food, as you are currently doing is a great idea. It can balance out the nutrition when giving a lower rated food. I have done this myself using cooked veg/fruit/meat/poultry/fish/egg. In such cases, it is probably best not to add carb as the food will already have plenty. If you are interested, Rodney Habib’s article this subject can be found here.
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