# Science Diet and Royal Canin Good or Bad?



## Tagrenine (Aug 20, 2019)

Both are good foods  you’re correct in your assumption about by products as well. They’re used in raw diets, though I think people would feel more comfortable if by products became the individual organ/by product being fed.
If I had to choose, I would choose Royal Canin because I’ve fed it before and like it. I currently feed Purina.
Any food with a whole meat (deboned for example) can be a little misleading. The food may be at the top of the ingredient list, but may not constitute as much food as the consumer realizes because it was weighed when it was still full of water.


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## puddles everywhere (May 13, 2016)

Both are good foods. But you have more options and still stay within the WSAVA suggestions/guidelines. Lots of people really like Eukanuba or Iams as well as Proplan. It all comes down to what your pup likes and needs. LOL and your budget.
As far as vet recommendations this is usually guided by what they sell


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## Keikogoldengirl (Jun 15, 2020)

Very helpful! Thank you!


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## 3 goldens (Sep 30, 2005)

When golden boy put on a lot of weight and it turned out to be low thyroid, he was put on thyroid eds and Science Diet weight loss food, he got back down to normal.a When my golden girl kayCee put on a lot of weight after being inactive for knee surgery, she was put on the same food and lost weight. When golden boy got a severe kidney infection,he was put on the Sconce Diet kidney food (KD I think it was called) for a month along with antibiotics. He never had another infection. When Great Pyrenees Sir Moose was diagnosed with liver disease and put on Royal Canin hepatic food, he would nto eat it. He was already losing weight but lost even more and faster while on the hepatic food. He went from 115 to 78 pounds. I gave up, researched, started cooking his food and he went back up to 92 pounds. Also, he had been given 6 months tops to live, and we had him for 23 months.

Princess Jewel, our Great Pyrenees gets tired of food and I change up every bag. Mostly use Purina One, but switch to other rands like Nutrish. I do love Purian. All our birdogs when I was growing up were on Purina Dog Chow and they lived long lives, great hunters. Daddy never stopped feeding it til his death in '78 and I fed it for years, just plain old Purina dog chow.


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## Maggie'sVoice (Apr 4, 2018)

You want a meat meal before any grains or fruits and veggies. Understanding the ingredient list and how it's arranged... It's all done by weight PRIOR to processing. The heaviest is 1st on the list, so on and so forth. But a fresh meat like chicken is 70% of it's weight is water and when taking the kibble to 10% moisture, the fresh chicken really becomes the 7th it 8th ingredient in the list. They can't weigh the chicken at the end so it has to be done before it's all made. Also fresh chicken is cooked twice. Originally and then cooked again making the kibble.

A meat meal is dehydrated and only cooked once making the kibble, but chicken meal is already in a dry powder form when they start so it's moisture is already removed so where the chicken meal is listed on the interesting list it's where it stays. So if you see a list that starts with chicken, chicken meal or just chicken meal, you have more meat than anything else in the food. If the list starts chicken, brown rice, wheat, ground corn, the rice, wheat and corn is more that the chicken in that food. Any meal works this way. Chicken meal, lamb meal, beef meal, any meat meal.

As far as by-products, there is 3 grades. 1, 2, 3. One is just muscle meat and organ meat, nothing else. 2 can have bone included and companies use that if their formulation is light on the calcium in the food, they will use a grade 2... and 3 can have feet, feathers and other "middlings" included which is what you will see in non premium foods in grocery and mass market stores like Walmart, target and tractor supply. These being low end foods like beneful, dog chow, ol Roy, dad's. There is also a meal version of by-products as well.

Just so you know, the basic definition of by-products from AAFCO is when something isn't in it's original form or has been altered, so TECHNICALLY chicken meal is a form of by-product as the water has been removed so it's altered.

Either food will be fine to feed. But based on the above you can read the ingredient list and better understand what really going on.


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## Ontariodogsitter (Feb 23, 2020)

Great summary, Thank you.


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## pawsnpaca (Nov 11, 2014)

My hesitation in feeding a kibble with "by products" comes from concern about how those by-products are handled. If they are "human grade" (e.g., come from healthy animals and treated with care at the slaughter house - kept clean and refrigerated on their way to the dog-food manufacturer, etc.) they can be a healthy source of protein and nutrients. However, there are horror stories of these ingredients coming from "down, diseased or dying" livestock (considered unfit for human consumption), or swept up from the slaughter-house floor and stored unrefrigerated in giant barrels for days before being shipped to the pet food manufacturers. Determining whether a dog food uses the former and not the latter can take a fair amount of independent research and investigation.

My objection to foods like Royal Canin and Purina is the high percentage of grains and (less-nutritious) grain fragments in them... certainly far more grains than meat in them. Some foods will use chemical additives and preservatives or non-food fillers (see "powdered cellulose" - aka plant/wood fiber - the in Royal Canin food below). Many of the so-called "boutique" foods just seem to have higher quality ingredients, even if, in the end, they have just as high a percentage of grain (some sort of carbohydrate is necessary in a kibble or it will gum up the extruders).

As an example, below are the list of primary ingredients in Royal Canin Golden Retriever puppy food vs Fromm Gold (I cut off the lists for both when they started to go into the vitamins, etc.)

*Royal Canin*:
Chicken by-product meal, corn, wheat gluten, chicken fat, wheat, brewers rice, brown rice, powdered cellulose, natural flavors, brewers rice flour, dried plain beet pulp, fish oil, vegetable oil, sodium silico aluminate, monocalcium phosphate, potassium chloride, calcium carbonate, psyllium seed husk, fructooligosaccharides, sodium tripolyphosphate...

*Fromm Gold:*
Chicken, chicken meal, chicken broth, oat groats, pearled barley, brown rice, potatoes, menhanden fish meal, dried tomato pomace, chicken fat, dried egg product, chicken liver, whole oats, flaxseed, brewers dried yeast, whole barley, cheese, salmon oil, duck, lamb, carrots, sweet potatoes, celery, alfalfa meal, monosodium phosphate, salt, potasium chloride, EL-Methionine, chicory root extract, taurine, calcium sulfate, choline chloride, chicken cartilage...

I know many people are very happy with how their dogs do on PPP, SD, or Royal Canin,and certainly they have the $$ to have veterinary nutritionists on staff and to do feed trials, _but _my instincts say the ingredients in the Fromm Gold are more likely to give me a healthy, long-lived dog (and my holistic vet agrees with me!). (For the record, I mostly feed a raw diet, since I consider it healthier than _any _kibble.)

We each should be educating ourselves about pet food and how it is made if we want to choose a food we feel good about for our dogs. In the end, the best food for your dog is the food your dog does best on! If you want to do more research to understand some of the concerns about the "big three" dog food companies, the Dog Aware site has a section on diet that goes into details about why certain common ingredients in dog foods are controversial, and the Whole Dog Journal has some articles available online that lists what they use as a criteria for a "good" dog food. You can also Google "The Truth About Pet Food" (that site is more controversial but will be informative in terms of why many pet owners view the foods supported by most vets with suspicion).


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## Maggie'sVoice (Apr 4, 2018)

pawsnpaca said:


> My hesitation in feeding a kibble with "by products" comes from concern about how those by-products are handled. If they are "human grade" (e.g., come from healthy animals and treated with care at the slaughter house - kept clean and refrigerated on their way to the dog-food manufacturer, etc.) they can be a healthy source of protein and nutrients. However, there are horror stories of these ingredients coming from "down, diseased or dying" livestock (considered unfit for human consumption), or swept up from the slaughter-house floor and stored unrefrigerated in giant barrels for days before being shipped to the pet food manufacturers. Determining whether a dog food uses the former and not the latter can take a fair amount of independent research and investigation.
> 
> My objection to foods like Royal Canin and Purina is the high percentage of grains and (less-nutritious) grain fragments in them... certainly far more grains than meat in them. Some foods will use chemical additives and preservatives or non-food fillers (see "powdered cellulose" - aka plant/wood fiber - the in Royal Canin food below). Many of the so-called "boutique" foods just seem to have higher quality ingredients, even if, in the end, they have just as high a percentage of grain (some sort of carbohydrate is necessary in a kibble or it will gum up the extruders).
> 
> ...


The powdered cellulose is not from wood, it's usually from the corn they use. What is and only is undigestible from corn is the outer kernel which is cellulose.

These horror stories are just that, rumors and stories. Like conspiracy theories. Most of these things comes from sources which huge agendas. There is nothing different the animals that are used in dog food then how they are treated for our own food. If that's the case, I assume you will not eat chicken, beef, lamb, pork or other meat yourself?

People get high and mighty over things that don't involve themselves, but when it does they don't usually say anything.


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