Honestly and this is just MY opinion, but I don’t feel there is a huge difference between grain free and grain inclusive. Any type of carbohydrate in a dry kibble is extra ingredients that are only there to bind the food together. AAFCO does not even recognize carbohydrates as a required nutrient for dogs because they can thrive without them. There is only one dry kibble on the market that is close to what a dog would intake carbohydrate wise if it were wild and that is Wysong Epigen 90, as it reads 4% carbs on a dry matter basis.
It really becomes a matter of personal preference. I usually end up feeding grain free because like aquariangt said, grain free foods have a tendency to be higher in protein. However, if you don’t see a whole meat or meat meal within the first three ingredients, you can almost bet your money the protein is coming mainly from plant sources. So do not be deceived by a high protein % if the foods ingredient panel reads something like this for the first few ingredients; Chicken, Peas, Sweet Potatoe, Pea Flour. You have Chicken listed first and thats great, but chicken is 80% water and that moisture is cooked out of the chicken when it becomes extrued into dog kibble. So that means the majority of the food is actually the next 3 ingredients. I’ve seen a lot of grain-free kibbles like this. Even one of my favorite companies- Fromm- is guilty of this.
