Dog Foods - Help in making the choice easier

[nymph]

Believe it or not, good, healthy food don't need to be expensive. Only in North America (comparatively of course) that healthy food are so outrageously priced, and junk food are so widely available and promoted as tasty. The reason? We were taught to believe that GOOD FOOD WILL COST MONEY.

I'm not disagreeing with most of you here: I feed my Diego Nutro large breed puppy chow, and I probably won't touch Iams ever.

The reason I brought up this discussion is that I'm a little bit bothered by these "rules" in raising pets, e.g. we should only feed dogs certain food; dogs should only react in certain way (no barking, or only 3 barks then shut up, no biting, no licking, and the list goes on). What happened to the simple times when these "rules" didn't exist? My God, how did my parents' generation ever survive these years without rules?!

I sometimes find it a little ironic that we are only concerned with animal by-products, what about the chemicals in pet food? What about the preservatives and hormones and genetically-engineered vegetables? I was told by my local duck farmer that all their ducks are 47 days old. 47 days to have a full grown duck! Do you also know that over 70% of our vegetables, human-grade vegetables, are genetically-engineered? So why are we only concerned with by-products? Because WE WERE TOLD SO by commercial marketing. Some companies target a different market in order to sell their products, it's all part of their marketing strategy. Are these companies vastly different from the makers of Iams or Eukanuba or Pedigree? You'd be the judge.

Finally for prin, I guess you are (in your own words) a sensitive person, well unless you are a true vegan, you really have no say in the so called "animal cruelty" discussion, do you? Yes I eat chicken feet, I also eat pig knuckles, goose liver, snails and many more weird food. We are often turned off by things we don't know much of, it's human nature. What's important, I think, is to keep an open mind and don't jump right to conclusion. Do you agree?

[Prin]

Ok-- I don't have a problem with other people eating feet or hooves or whatever. I don't think that that is cruel in anyway. I was just brought up on really bland food and I am not very adventurous. I willl never be a vegan though...

As for GMO-- that's a whole other debate and as I am a biology student and have studied that extensively, I won't get into that. Let me just leave it at this: a lot of anti-GMO groups don't know the technology involved and GMO is a term used for such a wide variety of products that you can't distinguish the bad from the good with that one term. If you cross pollinate two plants that aren't geographically near each other, you can call it GMO.

As for chemicals in the foods, yes, people are concerned. That is why people no longer by food with BHT in it, for one example.

no licking

.... My doggies would be banned from the world... The only "rules" I follow are the ones that have to do with my dog affecting other people. All these "new" rules-- I guess they came in with the training techniques that view dogs as children.