Home Reviews Good Natured Dog Food (Canned)

Good Natured Dog Food (Canned)

By Mike Sagman

Updated: October 6, 2023

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Rating:

Good Natured canned dog food receives the Advisor’s second-lowest tier rating of 2.5 stars.

The Good Natured product line includes 7 canned dog foods.

Each recipe below includes its related AAFCO nutrient profile when available on the product’s official webpage: Growth, Maintenance, All Life Stages, Supplemental or Unspecified.

Important: Because many websites do not reliably specify which Growth or All Life Stages recipes are safe for large breed puppies, we do not include that data in this report. Be sure to check actual packaging for that information.

• Good Natured Beef & Vegetable Casserole [U]
• Good Natured Lamb & Vegetable Casserole [U]
• Good Natured Chicken & Vegetable in Gravy [U]
• Good Natured Puppy Beef & Vegetable in Gravy [U]
• Good Natured Puppy Chicken & Vegetable in Gravy [U]
• Good Natured Chicken, Turkey & Vegetable in Gravy [U]
• Good Natured Chicken, Salmon & Vegetable Casserole [U]

Good Natured Beef & Vegetable Casserole was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

The first ingredient in this dog food is beef broth. Broths are of only modest nutritional value. Yet because they add both flavor and moisture to a dog food, they are a common addition component in many canned products.

The second ingredient is chicken. Chicken is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chicken”.²

The third ingredient is beef. Beef is defined as “the clean flesh derived from slaughtered cattle” and includes skeletal muscle or the muscle tissues of the tongue, diaphragm, heart or esophagus.³

Both chicken and beef are naturally rich in all ten essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The fourth ingredient is animal liver. Normally, liver can be considered a quality component. However, in this case, the source of the liver is not identified. For this reason, it’s impossible to judge the quality of this item.

The fifth ingredient is turkey, another quality, raw item.

The sixth ingredient is rice flour. Rice flour is made from either white or brown rice and is considered a gluten-free substitute for wheat flour.

The seventh ingredient lists carrots. Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, minerals and dietary fiber.

The eighth ingredient is potato. Potatoes can be considered a gluten-free source of digestible carbohydrates. Yet with the exception of perhaps their caloric content, potatoes are of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

The ninth ingredient is dried egg product, a dehydrated form of shell-free eggs. Quality can vary significantly. Lower grade egg product can even come from commercial hatcheries — from eggs that have failed to hatch.

In any case, eggs are easy to digest and have an exceptionally high biological value.

From here, the list goes on to include a number of other items.

But to be realistic, ingredients located this far down the list (other than nutritional supplements) are not likely to affect the overall rating of this product.

With two notable exceptions…

First, carrageenan is a gelatin-like thickening agent extracted from seaweed. Although carrageenan has been used as a food additive for hundreds of years, there appears to be some recent controversy regarding its long term biological safety.

And lastly, with the exception of copper, the minerals listed here do not appear to be chelated. And that can make them more difficult to absorb. Non-chelated minerals are usually associated with lower quality dog foods.

Good Natured Canned Dog Food
The Bottom Line

Judging by its ingredients alone, Good Natured canned dog food looks like an average wet product.

But ingredient quality by itself cannot tell the whole story. We still need to estimate the product’s meat content before determining a final rating.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 41%, a fat level of 32% and estimated carbohydrates of about 19%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 44% and a mean fat level of 29%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 19% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 66%.

Above-average protein. Above-average fat. And below-average carbs when compared to a typical wet dog food.

Free of any plant-based protein boosters, this looks like the profile of a canned dog food containing a notable amount of meat.

However, with 56% of the total calories in our example coming from fat versus just 30% from protein, some recipes may not be suitable for every animal.

Bottom line?

Good Natured is a meat-based canned dog food using a notable amount of named meats as its main sources of animal protein, thus earning the brand 2.5 stars.

Not recommended.

It’s unfortunate the company chose to include unnamed animal liver in its recipes. Without this controversial ingredient, we may have been compelled to award this line a higher rating.

Please note certain recipes are sometimes given a higher or lower rating based upon our estimate of their total meat content and (when appropriate) their fat-to-protein ratios.

Good Natured Dog Food
Recall History

The following list (if present) includes all dog food recalls since 2009 directly related to this product line. If there are no recalls listed in this section, we have not yet reported any events.

You can view a complete list of all dog food recalls sorted by date. Or view the same list sorted alphabetically by brand.

To learn why our ratings have nothing to do with a product’s recall history, please visit our Dog Food Recalls FAQ page.

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Dog Food Coupons
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Notes and Updates