New Recipes for Orijen Dog Food

A good SCIENTIFIC paper on glycemic and insulin response in dogs fed various diets is

Glycemic and Insulinemic Responses after Ingestion of Commercial Foods in Healthy Dogs: Influence of Food Composition1,2

Patrick Nguyen,3 Henri Dumon, Vincent Biourge* and Etienne Pouteau

© 1998 American Society for Nutritional Sciences. J. Nutr. 128: 2654S–2658S, 1998.

Hi Newelm

You may want to look into the Wysong Epigen STARCH FREE Kibble dog food. It has only ~9% carbohydrates, they also make a raw dehydrated that is only 9% carbs as well – Archetype.

Hi Mike,

Trying to post on another thread, thought you might want the feed back. I reached a healthy paragraph and I can’t add or delete. I locked it up. Both in the reply and the comment box…

Test #B via Disqus Moderation reply

Test #5

LOW GLYCEMIC INDEX MISREPRESENTATION- ORIJEN – When one considers the amount of marketing hype and vast monetary expenditures that go into making a dog food internationally branded and available overnight in nearly all retail outlets one needs to carefully examine the science behind claims made about the quality and features of a particular food. Case in point – The lawsuit, filed in March 2009, alleges Natura’s website and labeling contain “a large number of misleading and false statements relating primarily to assertions concerning the human-grade quality of its food.” The plaintiff alleged that these statements included such claims as “We only use ingredients you’d eat yourself,” “All of our human grade dog and cat foods are carefully cooked and tested…” and “Natura’s products use only human grade ingredients.”

As part of the settlement, which U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel preliminarily approved earlier this month, Natura would stop promoting its pet food products as human grade, human quality or as something that “you would eat yourself.”

Natura also would establish a $2.15 million settlement fund. The settlement fund will be used to make payments to class members, as well as cover attorneys’ fees, costs and expenses.
ORIJEN – Low Glycemic index award! Based on the very method of determining a GI for a food substance an entire diet containing various carbohydrate (SUGAR) sources can not have a GI and therefore claiming a diet such as Orijen dog food is a low glycemic index food is just plain BAD SCIENCE and MARKETING HYPE. It is possible that the mixture of ingredients results in a low glycemic load but that is VASTLY different then a low glycemic index! Russet potato, sweet potato, and peas are ALL very high GI foods! Only by adding the high meat content can the whole diet be a low GLYCEMIC LOAD diet. The bottom line is the sugar sources used in Orijen are among the highest GI foods available and WILL raise an animals blood glucose level higher and faster then table sugar (sucrose). DOGS ARE CARNIVORES and do not need sugar. CARBOHYDRATES ARE SUGARS!

Glycemic Index

In the past, carbohydrates were classified as simple or complex based on the number of simple sugars in the molecule. Carbohydrates composed of one or two simple sugars like fructose or sucrose (table sugar; a disaccharide composed of one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose) were labeled simple, while starchy foods were labeled complex because starch is composed of long chains of the simple sugar, glucose. Advice to eat less simple and more complex carbohydrates (i.e., polysaccharides) was based on the assumption that consuming starchy foods would lead to smaller increases in blood glucose than sugary foods. This assumption turned out to be too simplistic since the blood glucose (glycemic) response to “complex” carbohydrates has been found to vary considerably. A more accurate indicator of the relative glycemic response to dietary carbohydrates should be glycemic load, which incorporates the relative quality and quantity of carbohydrates in the diet characterized by the glycemic index (GI).

Measuring the Glycemic Index

To determine the glycemic index of a food, volunteers are typically given a test food that provides 50 grams of carbohydrate and a control food (white bread or pure glucose) that provides the same amount of carbohydrate on different days. Blood samples for the determination of glucose are taken prior to eating and at regular intervals after eating over the next several hours. The changes in blood glucose over time are plotted as a curve. The glycemic index is calculated as the area under the glucose curve after the test food is eaten, divided by the corresponding area after the control food is eaten. The value is multiplied by 100 to represent a percentage of the control food.

Glycemic Load
The glycemic index compares the potential of foods containing the same amount of carbohydrate to raise blood glucose. However, the amount of carbohydrate consumed also affects blood glucose levels and insulin responses. The glycemic load (GL) of a food is calculated by multiplying the glycemic index by the amount of carbohydrate in grams provided by a food and dividing the total by 100. Dietary glycemic load is the sum of the glycemic loads for all foods consumed in the diet. The concept of glycemic load was developed by scientists to simultaneously describe the quality (glycemic index) and quantity of carbohydrate in a meal or diet.

See the science behind the marketing hype and be an educated “thinking person”.
Feed foods based on science not clever marketing!

See the GI’s for yourself go to Sydney University Glycemic Index Service

One thing I noticed, the original formula when listing a meat ingredient would say FRESH boundless salmon or FRESH unless chicken. The new formula just says boneless chicken. They took out the word fresh…it made me wonder why? Does the word fresh in the ingredients make a difference, or is it the same freshness as it was before?

hello lauren do you know why orijen is available in my country new zealand but acana isnt? I dont really care just curious is all.