What you feed your pet is one of the most important things you need to consider. The food they eat is directly linked to their health, happiness, and overall wellbeing, so it’s important that any pet food you buy is good quality and beneficial to their health. Here are three key red flags to look out for that you should avoid in your pet’s food.
Artificial Colours
Additives in general aren’t needed in pet food, but artificial colours are certainly something you should be looking out for. The reason why these are such a red flag is that they’re just not needed in pet food! Your pet certainly won’t care what colour food they’re eating; it’s simply to entice pet owners rather than offer any benefit to your pet.
Generally, you want your pet food to be as natural as possible, so it’s best to avoid anything that could be added that isn’t helpful to your pet. Food dyes have no benefit, and though they may not have any adverse effect for your pet, they don’t add any nutrition. With pet food, simple is always best, and opting for a company like Reveal that only uses natural, limited ingredients keeps dinner time easy and healthy.
Meat Meal
Meat meal is a big red flag, and if spotted on an ingredients list, it should be avoided at all cost. Many pet owners don’t know what meat meal actually is, and the name is intentional to hide that. Meat meal is generally made up of the parts of animals that us humans wouldn’t eat – this means offal, bones, and connective tissue to name but a few.
These parts of the animal aren’t eaten by humans for a reason – they offer very little nutritional benefit in comparison to good quality meat. The process of creating meat meal also means it needs preservatives and antioxidants added, meaning you move further and further away from natural, good quality pet food. If you don’t know where the meat comes from, then it’s best to avoid it!
BHA
Remember those artificial preservatives we mentioned before? They shouldn’t be added to pet food, but we want to focus specifically on BHA. BHA is generally added to extend shelf life in pet food and treats, but there has been a lot of backlash regarding the safety of BHA and whether it may cause some harmful long-term effects for your pet.
For example, one of the biggest controversies surrounded BHA is that it may be linked to cancer in animals. When you feed your pet the same food each day, this significantly increases their risk of developing serious health problems in the future. Avoiding BHA is important to reduce the risk of serious illness in your pet.
With pet food, the best choice for any pet is to choose something natural with few (yet good quality) ingredients. Make sure you understand exactly what is being given to your pet, and generally avoid any additives or chemicals, especially ones that you don’t know.
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