Pet food packaging is designed to sell, and most of what is printed in large letters is marketing. The useful information is in small type on the back, and once you know where to look, comparing two foods takes about two minutes.
The four things that actually matter
1. Complete or complementary
A complete food provides everything the dog needs. A complementary one does not, and is intended to be fed alongside something else: most wet toppers, many treats and some fresh products fall into this category. Feeding a complementary product as the whole diet produces deficiencies over months.
This single word decides whether the rest of the label is even relevant.
2. The life stage
Growth, adult, or all life stages. A food formulated for growth has a different mineral and energy balance, which matters for puppies, and particularly for large-breed puppies, where a dedicated large-breed growth formula is the right choice. "All life stages" means it meets the growth requirement, which usually makes it richer than a sedentary adult needs.
3. Calories
The most useful number on the bag and often the hardest to find: energy per 100 grams, sometimes written as metabolisable energy or kcal/100 g. Two foods can look similar and differ by a third in calories, which changes the portion completely.
If it is not on the packaging, it is usually on the manufacturer's website. A brand that will not tell you is telling you something.
4. The feeding guide
Written for the average active, entire dog and calculated on ideal weight rather than current weight. For a neutered dog living a normal city life, expect to end up ten to twenty per cent below it. Use it as a starting point, then adjust by hand: ribs easily felt, a waist visible from above, a tuck from the side.
Feed for the weight your dog should be, not the weight it is. Then check by hand every month and adjust by ten per cent at a time.
Reading the ingredient list properly
Ingredients are listed by weight before cooking. Fresh chicken is roughly seventy per cent water, so "fresh chicken" at the top of a list may contribute less to the finished food than a meal listed lower down. That is not a trick in itself, it is simply how the rule works, and it is why the first ingredient is a weaker signal than people think.
Some other terms worth knowing. "Meat and animal derivatives" is a permitted category description rather than an accusation; a named species, "chicken", tells you more than an unnamed category. "Derivatives of vegetable origin" is similarly broad. Fixed formulas keep the same ingredients batch to batch, which matters for a dog with sensitivities; open formulas change with commodity prices.
Grain-free is a marketing category rather than a nutritional one, and it is not automatically better: grains are a useful energy source for most dogs, and only a small proportion have a genuine grain-related problem.
The analytical constituents
The panel listing protein, fat, fibre, ash and moisture is less informative than it looks, because the figures are percentages of the food as sold. A wet food with eight per cent protein and a dry food with twenty-six per cent may be equivalent once you account for the water.
If you want to compare wet with dry properly, compare on a dry-matter basis, or simply compare calories and the recommended daily amount, which achieves the same thing with less arithmetic.
Claims that mean little
- Premium, super-premium, holistic, human-grade: none of these has a regulated meaning
- Ancestral or wolf-inspired: marketing, and dogs are not wolves nutritionally
- Natural, which is loosely used
- No fillers, which is a term with no definition
- Vet recommended, unless it is a veterinary therapeutic diet with a stated indication, which is a different category of product entirely
Practical comparison in two minutes
- Check both say complete, and for the right life stage
- Find the calories per 100 g for each
- Work out the daily amount for your dog's ideal weight, and from that the cost per day rather than per bag
- Check the protein source is named if that matters for your dog
- Check whether the formula is fixed, if you are managing sensitivities
- Then, and only then, look at the price
Storage, which affects quality
Keep dry food in its own bag, sealed, inside a container rather than tipped loose into one: the bag is a barrier against light and moisture and carries the batch number. Note the best-before date and use a bag within a few weeks of opening for a small dog, since fat oxidises and palatability falls. Wet food goes in the fridge once opened and is used within the window on the tin.
If a dog suddenly refuses a food it has always eaten, check the batch and the date before assuming fussiness, and consider whether the dog's mouth might be sore.
When the label is not the question
Persistent itching, chronic soft stools, recurrent ear infections and poor coat are veterinary questions rather than shopping questions. Changing brands repeatedly in search of a fix wastes months and makes a real elimination trial impossible later, because the dog has by then eaten most available proteins.
And whatever you feed, weigh it, count the treats inside the daily total, and tell everyone who feeds your dog what the amount is. The most carefully chosen food in the world does nothing if the portion is decided by eye and topped up by three different people.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
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