Nature's Recipe Easy-To-Digest Lamb, Rice & Barley Recipe Cuts in Gravy Stew

The average dog food we reviewed has 39 total ingredients, with 1 controversial ingredient. This product has 3 controversial ingredients. 2 of them are found in the first five ingredients. This is concerning because the first 5 ingredients make up most of the product.

Top 5 Ingredients

Dog food ingredients are listed in descending order of weight. So when looking at a dog food label, take a close look at the first 5 ingredients. They make up about 80% of the total weight.

• Water Sufficient for Processing
  This is just another name for water, which doesn't add nutrients to the food but is routinely used in dog food manufacturing (especially for canned foods). It's a standard dog food ingredient.

• Lamb
  Lamb is generally a healthy dog food ingredient that adds protein, fat and other healthy nutrients to the dog food. Raw meat contains about 75% water which is cooked off during the making of dog food. This leaves only a fraction of the protein content in the final product's weight. We recommend looking for dog foods that also include meat meals in the first five ingredients (pre-cooked meat powder that contains four times the amount of protein).

• Soy Protein Concentrate
  Soy protein concentrate is what's left over of the soybean after removing most of the carbs. While it's high in protein, the nutritional quality (the bioavailability of amino acids) of soy protein concentrate is lower than that of meats. For this reason, we do not consider it a high-quality dog food ingredient.
• Whole Egg Product
  Whole Egg Product are shell-free eggs that have had their moisture removed. While it provides nutrients like protein, it can be made from food-industry waste products such as eggs that failed to hatch. In other words, quality can vary. Because there are better protein sources (like whole eggs or meat) we do not consider this a high-quality dog food ingredient.
• Brown Rice
  Brown rice is whole-grain rice with the inedible outer hull removed. It provides calories, complex carbohydrates and a few other nutrients to dogs. We generally consider it a quality dog food ingredient.

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‍Controversial Ingredients

1. Soy Protein Concentrate
2. Soy Protein Concentrate is not simply good or bad. It's a lower cost ingredient that is one of the most complete vegetable-sourced proteins, but some dogs can have a sensitivity to it. Soy is not generally considered a controversial ingredient, but is controversial when it is used in the top five ingredients (which make up about 80% of the food's weight) where a named meat or lean protein could be more nutritious.

1. Brewer’s Rice
2. Brewer's Rice is basically white rice that has been broken into smaller pieces. It's a waste product of the milling process and considered a low quality ingredient because it's missing many of the nutrients contained in whole ground rice and brown rice.

1. Carrageenan
2. Carrageenan is derived from red algae or seaweed and is used as a gelling or thickening ingredient to bind food together. Evidence has been found that it is potentially inflammatory and toxic to the digestive tract, and may be responsible for colitis, IBS, rheumatoid arthritis, and colon cancer.

‍Country of Origin

Nature's Recipe is USA-made. We like dog foods made in the United States, Canada and Europe because of those regions’ high dog food safety regulations.

Meat & Fat Quality

Lamb and Canola Oil provide meat and added oil in this food. Both show their animal and plant origin clearly, that’s a good thing.

Artificial Preservatives

This product contains 0 controversial artificial preservatives - really great! Here’s a quick primer on this topic: It’s good to know that ‍not all artificial preservatives are bad. That’s because they serve an important purpose, which is to prevent food from spoiling. However, we consider 11 artificial preservatives controversial because of their potential link to cancer and other serious health conditions.

Artificial Colors

No artificial colors, either. Excellent!

Artificial Flavors

Last but not least, we didn’t find artificial flavors in this dog food. No controversial artificial preservatives, colors or flavors - this product aced all three.