Fresh Dog Food: A Review of Refrigerated Dog Food Sold in Stores

Today, more and more passionate, educated, dog-loving entrepreneurs are turning their attention to improving the health of their dogs and innovating new ways to feed quality dog foods. As they do, it’s getting more and more difficult to slot the resulting products into categories for review.

This is just one of the reasons we’ve never before reviewed dog foods in this category – for short, we’ll call it “fresh cooked foods.” When you start drilling down into how fresh dog foods are made, there is so much variety that the category really should be considered as a group with several sub-categories. Some of the products are essentially pureed; others look more like a meatloaf before it’s cooked, complete with chunks of vegetables mixed in; still others present more like those non-refrigerated preserved foods that are sold in plastic tubes, something that looks like a cross between a roll of salami and a tube of liverwurst.

Another big reason for our hesitation: For some years after the first product of this type came on the market, it was the only product in the category, and we weren’t big fans of its ingredients.

Also, other products came into the group and didn’t last; we’re thinking here of several companies who sent us samples of foods they made and “canned” in the old-fashioned sense of the word – cooked in glass jars, like your grandmother “puts up” plum jam or stewed tomatoes. It just didn’t seem scalable, and apparently wasn’t (since they are no longer in business).

Cooked Dog Food, Fed Fresh

But let’s focus on the things that these products (mostly) do have in common:

1. All of them have a high meat content – and most of them claim to use meats and perhaps other ingredients that are graded for human consumption. To fully understand these claims, see “What’s Human Quality?” below.

2. All of them use “fresh” meats; this includes meat that has been frozen to preserve freshness. In other words, none of the meats used were previously cooked before mixing at the point of manufacture.

3. All of the products are cooked – at varying temperatures and with various methods, but they have all been heated to the point that any pathogenic bacteria that may have been present on any ingredient should have been rendered harmless.

4. Most of them don’t contain preservatives. If it is formulated with fresh ingredients, cooked, immediately chilled or frozen, and shipped in an appropriate cold-shipping container, kept in a refrigerator, and fed promptly after opening, the food shouldn’t need preservatives.

5. All (save one, Freshpet) are available on a subscription basis for direct delivery to your door. (Freshpet is the only product sold in supermarkets; it’s also sold in pet supply stores.)

What Is “Human Quality” Dog Food?

When discussing their ingredients, many pet food companies use the phrase “human grade.” You have to understand that this is not a legal term, and its misuse probably causes more confusion – some of it intentional – than any other phrase used in the pet food industry.

The legal term for what an ordinary person would think of as “human food” is “edible” – but usually, only food-industry people are familiar with this term. So, in an effort to communicate the quality of their ingredients to consumers, manufacturers of products who use truly edible ingredients will often use some variation of “human grade,” such as “human quality” or “fit for humans.”

Understand this, though: If the company makes its product in a manufacturing plant that is not USDA-inspected and -approved for the manufacture of edible products, or that manufacturing facility contains even one ingredient that is not edible, then legally, it cannot claim that its products contain either “human grade” or edible ingredients. By law, an edible ingredient is one that has never departed from the custody of USDA-inspected and -approved food growers and processors.

Only those companies whose products were made at a USDA-inspected and -approved kitchen (which are not permitted to contain even one “feed grade” ingredient) can claim that they use edible or human-grade ingredients.

There are pet food companies who really do buy edible ingredients but don’t make their products in USDA kitchens – and believe me when I say they can be very creative when trying to find phrases that convey the quality of their ingredients without running afoul of state feed control officials (this is who is responsible for surveillance and enforcement of feed labeling laws). The problem for consumers is that there are also pet food companies who likewise use creative language to suggest that their products are made with edible ingredients, when in fact they don’t. Like, not at all.

Moral of the story? If you want to be as certain as one can be that your dog’s food is made with edible ingredients, look for a product made in a USDA-inspected and -approved kitchen. The only other option is to personally know the company’s owners and/or operators, visit the manufacturing site frequently, and inspect the ingredients yourself. There may be a few of you who are able to do all that!

Fresh Dog Food: WDJ’s Usual Food Selection Criteria Apply

There are certain things we always look for in a wholesome and superior diet for our dogs, no matter what type. Virtually all of the manufacturers offering products in this category use ingredients that meet our usual selection criteria, such as whole, named sources of animal protein (i.e., chicken, beef, and lamb, rather than “meat” or “poultry”); whole food ingredients (such as rice rather than rice flour, and tomatoes rather than tomato pomace); and of course, no artificial colors or flavors.

All of the companies on the following pages offer products that meet all of our selection criteria – but some of the products are higher in quality than others. Some are quite expensive. We wouldn’t necessarily say that cost is a perfect indicator of quality, but it’s a pretty good one. If some of the products are beyond your budget, don’t despair: We would consider every one of these products to be healthier and of a higher quality than any kibble or canned product.

How We Ranked These Fresh Cooked Dog Foods

We are often asked to rank the products that we include in our reviews, and, as always, we have to decline. Only you can decide what you can afford to spend, and only your dog can determine if a particular food will work for him. The product’s performance in your dog is everything – and what works for your dog might be a disaster for mine.

That said . . .

In addition to our normal selection criteria, when shopping for products we feed to our dogs, we also consider some “soft” criteria regarding the companies – factors that have more to do with the feel or personality of the company than the ingredients or protein levels of the foods.

You should be aware that there are pet food company owners who are full of passion and knowledge, but who lack the resources to really pull off top-quality ingredient sourcing or quality control. On the far other end of the spectrum, there are companies who are helmed by folks with amazing business acumen and connections who don’t necessarily live and breathe for dogs. Large and/or well-funded companies have the resources to invest in the best manufacturing equipment and facilities for consistent, safe products – but do the principals care about ingredient quality as much as some of the smaller companies?

We like to buy from the companies that are of a sufficient size to sign manufacturing contracts with reputable manufacturers and invest in employee training and quality control testing and equipment – but not so big that they don’t know exactly where on a map every single ingredient in their products is sourced from.

We appreciate that it can be challenging to identify companies that are occupying that sweet spot, somewhere between enough success and not too much. For what it’s worth, in the following pages, we will try to give you enough information about each company for you to judge where your own zone of comfort might lie: with the giant companies who should have their own plants and control every aspect of manufacturing, but whose formulas are a tad corporate? Or with the smaller outfits who oversee contract manufacturers on just a few production runs each month, but whose ingredients are locally sourced from sustainable farms where the humanely raised food animals live their entire lives on grass?

It’s tough to have to choose, but it seems that when it comes to food, you can’t have it both ways.