Of all the things that you and every pet lover gives or provides to their pets like cats and dogs, pet food is one of the most important aspects of your pets well-being. It is not only because it keeps your pets appetite satisfied, but instead, it also helps your pets physically nourished inside and out. Pet foods compared to its status a decade ago, have seen a lot of significant improvements when it comes to what’s included in the label in terms of nutritional aspects, the price and the regulations that’s now being implemented in it.
In order for you to further understand the kind of pet food you give to your well-loved pets, let’s go ahead and discuss one of the most important part of the pet food you buy, the label. The label is what indicates the ingredients and the nutrients included in it. It somewhat tells you the kind of nutritional values that your pets get from it. Now, let’s go ahead and talk about it further.
What Is a Pet Food Label?
In general, this is a legal statement that’s regulated by a governing body known as the AAFCO or the Association of American Feed Control Officials. It’s also the primary way from which you as a pet owner communicate to the pet food manufacturer. Now, let’s decipher what makes a pet food label.
Deciphering a Pet Food Label
As a pet owner, you would usually look into the label of the food you buy for you pets. The thing is that it often leads to confusion as to whether the things you see in it is needed by your pets or if it’s going to do something good for your pets. Normally, you’d look into the ingredients of it, but what pet owner does is to neglect the nutrients included in the pet food you buy.
What’s recommended by most experts is that you should look into both the ingredients and the nutritional values that your pets could get from the pet food you buy. More importantly, you should have a further look into the nutrients included in it. Why?
There’s a big difference between the nutrients and ingredients that’s included in a pet food. Ingredients are key factors that drive the nutrients a pet food can provide, while nutrients are components of food in support of your pet’s life as well as being metabolically important and useful to your pets. Let’s take meat such as lamb and chicken for example.
These ingredients are what provide fatty acids and protein to your pets. Meat ingredients are often listed on the latter part of the label since it contains water, while dry ingredients like grains are listed first on the list, because they are dry. Now, whenever you buy a pet food, you should always make a guaranteed analysis to ensure that your pets get the most out of what you buy for them.
Pet food is a key factor that contributes greatly to your pet’s well-being. That’s why it’s necessary that you understand the things included in the pet food you buy for them. Now, are you ready to go shopping for pet food? Well, you should check the label and for sure, you’d never go wrong with it.