75% Moisture In Dog Foods = 25% Dry Matter?

By: Joshua Hacken

In your opinion, which dog food would make a better choice: chicken meal or pure chicken?

Chicken meal is definitely better because it has been cooked to destroy bacteria and other unwanted substances. Chicken, on the other hand, is just chicken.

Water makes up the majority of a chicken's body. When the label on your dog food states 70% whole chicken, this does not really mean it contains 70% chicken. Why? This is because 70% is before the chicken was cooked to remove the bacteria in its body. After cooking, this number should drop. Hence be cautious when looking at these numbers.

To understand deeper about dog foods, you need to know that not all dog foods have the same moisture levels. Some canned foods have moisture levels as high as 80% while other dry foods' moisture levels are as low as 6%. This is important for two reasons.

First, since dog food is priced by its weight, it could get quite expensive because when you buy dog food that is 70% water, you are in fact getting only 30% real food.

The other reason for understanding percent moisture is to help you compare crude protein and fat between brands and between canned and dry. The listings on the label are for the food as it is, not as it would be on a dry matter basis. So without converting both brands of food to a dry matter basis you will not be able to compare them accurately.

Fortunately, the conversion is not that complicated. If a dry dog food has 10% moisture we know that it has 90% dry matter. So we look at the label and check the protein level that reads 20%. Next, we divide the 20 percent protein by the 90% dry matter and we get 22%, which is the amount of protein on a dry matter basis. Does this make sense so far?

Now let us compare this to canned food that has 80% moisture. We know that with 80% moisture we have 20% dry matter. The label shows 5% protein. So we take the 5% and divide it by 20% and we get 25% protein on a dry matter basis. So the canned food has more protein per pound on a dry matter basis after all the water is taken out. We can do the same for fat, fiber and more.

Should you understand how to calculate the amount of protein on a dry matter basis as illustrated above, then you would have a much better understanding of how nutritious a particular dog food is.

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Joshua Hacken Is A Natural Dog Lover Who Has Been Learning Dog Food For The Past Five Years. You Can Grab His Free Guide On Best Dog Food Secrets That Most Dog Owners Will Never Know & What Different Moisture Level In The Best Dog Food means.

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