Premium Dog Kibble

Those of us who share our lives with a dog know they are not a pet but part of the family, which is why we take care to feed them a really good kibble. But premium dog food brands are not always high quality, because they run some deeply misleading ad campaigns.

That is why, here at SoyUnPerro.com, we have analysed the best premium dog food brands, looking for the products with the highest-quality ingredients and the best overall composition. And these are the results we came to.

What Does a Kibble Need to Contain to Count as Premium?

Putting "premium", "super-premium" or "top of the range" on the label is not enough, since that is simply advertising, and it is often there purely to drive sales.

A premium dog food brand has to formulate recipes containing high-quality ingredients in the right amounts to cover a dog's nutritional needs.

Thanks to the many studies carried out in healthy dogs, we can say that the best kibble for dogs is the one containing a large amount of quality meat products, followed by a small amount of carbohydrate and a little fruit and vegetables.

What Ingredients Should Quality Dog Food Not Contain?

Kibble brands play a great deal with the wording on their product labels to try to confuse the consumer, particularly when they know they are not using high-quality ingredients.

For instance, a high-quality dog food containing "meat by-products" is not and never will be a premium kibble. Because meat by-products are used only in low-quality kibbles.

The same goes for animal meals, or for vague labelling such as "chicken", with no indication of whether that means meat, bone or waste. Premium brands always specify their ingredients, because they have nothing to hide.

Here is a short list of items that stop a kibble from qualifying as premium. If you read them on a dog food label, it is because that product is not premium:

• Meat by-products / meat derivatives
• Animal meal
• Wheat / Maize

Why Do Some Kibble Brands Claim to Be Premium When They Are Not?

It all comes down to marketing strategies to improve their sales and, as a result, increase their profits. But at the same time it is a way of deceiving the consumers with the least experience of picking out a good premium dog kibble.

Imagine you manufacture a low- or mid-range kibble and you want to compete with other high-quality brands. What do you do? The logical thing would be to improve the quality of your product… but unfortunately, that is not what happens.

What tends to happen instead is that they put more money into marketing firms, who tell them that offering that same product under a "premium" banner and with a nice photo of a dog will boost sales considerably. Don't let yourself be taken in — always check the quality of the kibble you intend to buy, and don't let the advertising guide you.

The Best Premium Dog Food Brands

After analysing dozens and dozens of brands, digging into the ingredients they use and the amounts of each, we came to realise that the vast majority of dog kibbles claiming to be premium are nothing of the sort.

Only a handful of brands have genuinely put time and resources into making high-quality products, earning the right to be considered premium dog food.

NFNatcane

This is quite possibly the best premium dog kibble brand we have analysed and tried with our own dogs. It is an up-and-coming Spanish company investing heavily in quality and very little in marketing.

It is not sold "by the truckload" the way other brands are, in every outlet going, and its quality is beyond question, using a high percentage of dehydrated meats in its recipes, which are then hydrolysed to make them even more digestible for dogs.

The Gourmet range in particular is becoming very well known thanks to its good results and the word of mouth from those who have already tried it. On quality alone it has no direct competitors, and its prices are excellent too.

• Official NFNatcane website

Orijen

This is quite possibly the best known brand of them all, though not for its quality so much as for the enormous advertising campaigns it runs. That said, among dog kibbles of foreign origin, Orijen can be considered a premium product.

The problem this brand presents is that on its ingredient labels it tends to give the percentages as "fresh meat", which means we cannot work out the amount precisely, since fresh meat comes down to very little once the water is lost.

Even so, it is a product worth bearing in mind, though its prices are somewhat higher because it is imported from Canada — something that has no bearing on quality, given that other Spanish companies offer similar or better quality at more competitive prices.

• Official Orijen website

Our personal advice is to look through these brands for the ranges you think will suit your dog best, buy one of each (not at the same time — when one is running out, buy another), and let your dog be the one to tell you which they prefer. Believe us, you will notice.