Home Reviews Hi-Point Dog Food Review (Dry)

Hi-Point Dog Food Review (Dry)

By Mike Sagman

Updated: April 22, 2024

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Not Recommended

Rating:

Hi-Point Dog Food receives the Advisor’s lowest-tier rating of 1 star.

The Hi-Point Dog Food product line includes 6 dry 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.

• Hi-Point Mini Chunk [M]
• Hi-Point Highly Active [A]
• Hi-Point Active Soy Free [A]
• Hi-Point Supreme (3.5 stars) [A]
• Hi-Point Moderately Active Adult [A]
• Hi-Point Extreme Athlete (3.5 stars) [A]

Recipe and Label Analysis

Hi-Point Moderately Active Adult was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

Ingredient Analysis

The first ingredient in this dog food is pork meat and bone meal, a dry “rendered product from (pork) tissues, including bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents”.¹

Pork and bone meal may have a lower digestibility than most other meat meals.

Scientists believe this decreased protein quality may be due to the ingredient’s higher ash and lower essential amino acid content.²

On the brighter side, pork and bone meals are meat concentrates and contain nearly 300% more protein than fresh pork.

The second ingredient is corn. Corn is an inexpensive and controversial cereal grain. And aside from its energy content, this grain is of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

For this reason, we do not consider corn a preferred component in any dog food.

The third ingredient includes wheat. Wheat is another cereal grain and subject to the same issues as corn (previously discussed).

The fourth ingredient is hominy feed. Hominy feed is a cereal grain by-product consisting of corn bran, corn germ and unextracted starchy portions left over after milling corn.

Aside from its energy content, this item is more typically found in cattle feed and is of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

The fifth item is soybean meal, a by-product of soybean oil production more commonly found in farm animal feeds.

Although soybean meal contains 48% protein, this ingredient would be expected to have a lower biological value than meat.

And less costly plant-based products like this can notably boost the total protein reported on the label – a factor that must be considered when judging the actual meat content of this dog food.

The sixth ingredient includes corn distillers grains with solubles, a by-product of the ethanol (bio-fuel) industry. This low quality ingredient is frequently found in cattle feed and only rarely used to make pet food.

The next ingredient is poultry fat. Poultry fat is obtained from rendering, a process similar to making soup in which the fat itself is skimmed from the surface of the liquid.

Poultry fat is high in linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid essential for life.

However, poultry fat is a relatively generic ingredient and can be considered lower in quality than a similar item from a named source animal (like chicken fat).

What’s worse, this fat is preserved with BHA and BHT. Both of these chemical additives are suspected cancer-causing agents (carcinogens).

The eighth ingredient is animal digest. Animal digest is a chemically hydrolyzed mixture of animal by-products that is typically sprayed onto the surface of a dry kibble to improve its taste.

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 three notable exceptions…

First, we find no mention of probiotics, friendly bacteria applied to the surface of the kibble after processing to help with digestion.

Next, the minerals listed here do not appear to be chelated. And that can make them more difficult to absorb. Chelated minerals are usually associated with higher quality dog foods.

And lastly, this food contains menadione, a controversial form of vitamin K linked to liver toxicity, allergies and the abnormal break-down of red blood cells.

Since vitamin K isn’t required by AAFCO in either of its dog food nutrient profiles, we question the use of this substance in any canine formulation.

Hi-Point Dog Food Review

Judging by its ingredients alone, Hi-Point Dog Food looks like a below-average dry 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 24%, a fat level of 11% and estimated carbohydrates of about 57%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 27% and a mean fat level of 15%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 49% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 56%.

Near-average protein. Near-average fat. And near-average carbs when compared to a typical dry dog food.

When you consider the protein-boosting effect of the soybean meal, this looks like the profile of a kibble containing a moderate amount of meat.

Bottom line?

Hi-Point is a grain-inclusive dry dog food using a moderate amount of named meat meals as its main source of animal protein, thus earning the brand 1 star.

Not recommended.

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.

Notes and Updates