Feathers. Beaks. Hooves. What do these three animal body parts all have in common?
Give up? All three contain an unusually high percentage of protein.
But unfortunately… worthless protein… protein that’s nearly impossible for any dog to digest.
High Content May Not Mean High Quality
Just because a particular dog food boasts a high protein content doesn’t necessarily mean the protein is beneficial.
You see… a product’s stated protein percentage ignores a very important factor… its quality… its nutritional value to the dog.
In other words… a protein’s “usability”.
Biological value… or “BV” as it is known… is a scientific way to compare the usability… and digestibility… of different protein ingredients.
BV uses a number value to indicate how easily a protein is taken up by a dog’s tissues. So, the higher a protein’s biological value… the better its usability.
For those readers who tend to be mathematically inclined… the formula for biological value looks like this…
BV = (protein used/protein available) x 100
The Incredible (Edible) Egg
Due to their nearly perfect usability, chicken eggs are used as the official benchmark by which all other proteins are judged. So, eggs are assigned a reference biological value of 100.
Take a look at the following table1. Notice the substantial difference in protein usability of these typical ingredients…
From this table, it’s easy to conclude…
Animal protein can be expected to demonstrate a significantly higher biological value than vegetable protein
In other words… animal proteins are simply more nutritionally usable.
That’s why it’s so important to make it a habit to check every dog food label’s list of ingredients. And rate the product’s main source of protein. Otherwise… you may be depriving your dog of quality nutrition.
Be sure to read my article… Why You Must Never Trust Stated Protein Percentages to Compare Dog Foods.
- Palika, Liz, The Consumers Guide to Dog Food, New York, Howell Book House, 1996 ↩
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it is so stressful to read the lable on dog food’s. i believe our dog’s are what they eat.i look at my dog’s then look at other people dog’s and i know mine are very healthy just by the skin and coat and those clear bright eye’s and how happy they are. i have a yorkie and he is very calm but very active and my toy mini schanuzer is a picture of health… we have recently adopted 3 new 4 legged kids due to two families out of work and moving out of state it has only been about one week and the new 4 legged kids are looking much better and it’s all about the food. i make home made food and use home made with halo’s dry formula on the new kids… they came with no food to make it easy on the new food given but they all had no tummy issue’s at this food. and i can say i feel like i am giving them a new start to health and a longer life as well as being happy or they would have been turned into the animal shelter i fell man or animal we are what we eat and the dog company that uses by-products need to stop and if they make dog food should make food not left over hulls of whta food was and use what a dog or cat live on not get by on until they get sick from no food as a whole but fill up the bag with too many vitamin’s/ minerals in some a over load. that is why i made my pets food and that is why i am using halo for the new kid’s along with my home made food i don’t know if they will be put compeletly on home made yet or not i did not want to change what they ate the new kids but i trust halo in fact i do not know what the two families feed these new adopted dog’s but their coats were just awful and in only a few day’s it is starting to shine so that is what food is about. working from the inside out. i wish the dog food companies would go out of business that use left over junk i will never buy junk by-products, ever. food is just that food and not only that but what a dog needs not just to fill it up.just do your research and research more and more even at what goes on the table for humans as well.something needs to change in the food business period.heathy is what everyone is wanting.thank you very much