Hi Trevor V,
This site evaluates diets based on ingredients and favors higher protein diets.
Veterinary nutritionists usually would not use an ingredient list to evaluate a diet. Instead they focus more on the company and evaluate based on other criteria as most do not feel you can tell the quality of a diet by looking at an ingredient list. Criteria they use are things like: Does the company employ a veterinary nutritionist? What are the credentials of the person formulating the diet? does the company make it products or outsource production? Can the company answer nutritional inquires correctly? Does the company contribute to nutritional research? Does the company feed trial their diets? Will the company provide a nutritional analysis on request? Does the company test their foods for nutrients or just calculate what they think they are? What are the companies quality control measures?
Because of the difference in focus the food will rate differently. When evaluated by the above criteria the companies that your vet recommended score highly and many 5 star foods would fail miserably.
When choosing my dog’s food I use company criteria over ingredients. The food I feed rates 2.5 stars.
