Which Pedigree Homestyle Meals Recipes Get Our Best Ratings?

Pedigree Homestyle Meals Dog Food receives the Advisor’s lowest-tier rating of 1.5 stars.

The Pedigree Homestyle Meals product line includes the 2 canned dog foods listed below.

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

Recipe and Label Analysis

Pedigree Homestyle Meals Roasted Chicken, Rice and Vegetable Flavor was selected to represent both products in the line for detailed recipe and nutrient analysis.

Label and nutrient data below are calculated using dry matter basis.

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Ingredient Analysis

The first ingredient in this dog food is water, which adds nothing but moisture to this food. Water is a routine finding in most canned dog foods.

The second ingredient is chicken. Chicken is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chicken”.¹

Chicken is naturally rich in the ten essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The third ingredient includes meat by-products, an item made from slaughterhouse waste. This is what’s left of slaughtered animals after all the prime striated muscle cuts have been removed.

With the exception of hair, horns, teeth and hooves, this item can include almost any other part of the animal.²

What’s worse, this particular item is anonymous. So, the meat itself can come from any combination of cattle, pigs, sheep or goats — which can make identifying specific food allergies impossible.

Although most meat by-products can be nutritious, we do not consider such vaguely described (generic) ingredients to be as high in quality as those derived from a named animal source.

The fourth ingredient is wheat flour, a highly-refined product of wheat milling. Like corn, wheat is an inexpensive and controversial cereal grain of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

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

The fifth ingredient is wheat gluten. Gluten is the rubbery residue remaining once wheat has had most of its starchy carbohydrate washed out of it.

Although wheat gluten contains 80% protein, this ingredient would be expected to have a lower biological value than meat.

Compared to meat, glutens are inferior plant-based proteins low in some of the essential amino acids dogs need for life.

This inexpensive plant-based ingredient can significantly 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 is salt (also known as sodium chloride). Salt is a common additive in many dog foods. That’s because sodium is a necessary mineral for all animals — including humans.

However, since the actual amount of salt added to this recipe isn’t disclosed on the list of ingredients, it’s impossible to judge the nutritional value of this item.

The seventh ingredient includes dried peas. Dried peas are a good source of carbohydrates. Plus they’re naturally rich in dietary fiber.

However, dried peas contain about 27% protein, a factor that must be considered when judging the meat content of this dog food.

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

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 Pedigree product.

With 4 notable exceptions…

First, we’re always disappointed to find artificial coloring in any pet food. Coloring is used to make the product more appealing to you, not your dog. After all, do you really think your dog cares what color his food is?

Next, we find dried potato, a dehydrated item usually made from the by-products of potato processing. In most cases, dried potato can contain about 10% dry matter protein which can have a slight affect on our estimate of the total meat content of this recipe.

In addition, this recipe contains selenium. There’s no indication as to the actual selenium compound used in this recipe.

This item may be sodium selenite, a controversial form of the mineral selenium. Sodium selenite appears to be nutritionally inferior to the more natural source of selenium found in selenium yeast.

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. Chelated minerals are usually associated with higher quality dog foods.

Nutrient Analysis

Based on its ingredients alone, Pedigree Homestyle Meals looks like a below-average wet product.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 44%, a fat level of 17% and estimated carbohydrates of about 31%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 44% and a mean fat level of 17%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 31% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 38%.

Which means this Pedigree product line contains…

Above-average protein. Below-average fat. And above-average carbs when compared to other canned dog foods.

When you consider the protein-boosting effect of wheat gluten, dried peas and dried potato, this looks like the profile of a canned product containing a moderate amount of meat.

Our Rating of Pedigree Homestyle Meals Dog Food

Pedigree Homestyle Meals is a grain-inclusive canned dog food using a moderate amount of named meat and unnamed meat by-product as its dominant source of animal protein, thus earning the brand 1.5 stars.

Not recommended.

Pedigree Homestyle Meals Dog Food Recall History

The following automated list (if present) includes all dog food recalls related to Pedigree through April.

• Pedigree Dog Food Recall Expanded (9/1/2014)
• Pedigree Dog Food Recall (8/27/2014)
• Pedigree Dog Food Recall (6/30/2012)

You can view a complete list of all dog food recalls since 2009 here.

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More Pedigree Brand Reviews

The following Pedigree dog food reviews are also posted on this website:

• Pedigree Chopped Ground Dinner Dog Food Review (Canned)
• Pedigree Dog Food Review (Dry)
• Pedigree Dog Food Review (Pouch)