The New Pet Nutrition Facts Box: What Dog Food Companies Don’t Want You to Know

Think your dog’s food is healthy just because the label says “natural”? Think again.

Dog food companies have spent years hiding excess carbs behind confusing, outdated labels. But change is finally here—with the introduction of the new Pet Nutrition Facts box. In this episode, Em sits down with pet food reform advocate Daniel Schulof to uncover how labeling has misled dog parents for decades—and what you really need to know about what’s in your dog’s bowl.

In this episode:

• Learn how to decode the new Pet Nutrition Facts box like a pro

• Understand why high-carb formulas are linked to weight gain and poor health in dogs

• Discover how to feed your dog with more clarity and confidence—starting today

  
  

Press play to finally cut through the confusion and give your dog the nutrition they deserve—without falling for marketing hype.

The Dog Who Asked for More Extras:

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This podcast explores real-life dog behavior and training through the lens of a canine nutritionist, dog coach, and retired vet tech—diving into reactivity, dog obedience, dog health, dog food, dog habits, dog lifestyle, canine enrichment, pet enrichment, dog myths, and what it actually takes to support reactive dogs safely and calmly. Whether you’re a dog mom navigating reactivity, building the human–dog bond, choosing dog products, or just trying to create a calmer dog life with your canine, you’ll find grounded strategies to build trust, improve dog behavior, and help your dog feel safe, understood, and supported.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
What if your dog's food label finally told you the truth, down
to carbs, calories and clear measurement just like ours?
Welcome to the dog who Asked formore, the podcast helping dog
parents who feel stuck and overwhelmed by their pup finally
let go of the guilt. Learn to communicate clearly and
build the bond you've always dreamed of through a partnership

(00:21):
based approach that combines training, nutrition and
enrichment instead of chasing the quick fixes that don't
actually work. I'm M And in this episode you'll
learn why current dog food labels are so confusing and how
brands have gotten away with hiding carbs.
How the new Pet Nutrition Facts box changes everything, giving

(00:43):
you human style clarity on what's really inside your dog
food bag and what it means for your dog's health and your
wallet so you can finally make good decisions with confidence.
Because once you know how to read a label, you'll never look
at a bag of dog food the same way.
Daniel Shuloff is a pet nutrition expert and a familiar

(01:03):
voice on the show, and he's hereto walk us through the
monumental shift happening rightnow in pet food labeling.
The Association of American FeedControl Officials, better known
as AFCO, has unveiled a brand new pet nutrition facts box for
the first time in more than 40 years.
Let's start here. Why did the guaranteed analysis

(01:24):
system last so long and what issues has it caused for pet
guardians? Consumers, the advocacy groups
that purport to represent them, folks within the companion
animal public health community have all been pushing for
changes similar to what we are now seeing take place for

(01:44):
something on the order of 15 to 20 years.
The USFDA, the national government agency that governs
both the at a federal level, thelabeling of human foods and pet
foods, established the NutritionFacts panel.
I'm holding up, for anybody listening on audio, my can of
Coke 0. What you can see right here is

(02:05):
the FDA's nutrition Facts panel,and that's been in place for
decades. Anybody that consumes humans
packaged foods has become prettyfamiliar with what it shows.
And though you'll get folks who will quibble with the layout and
the content there, it's minimal.Most folks see it as a good
comprehensive summary of what's inside this product

(02:27):
nutritionally ever since that's been in place place.
Once Upon a time, companion animals, dogs and cats were
generally thought of like closerto livestock animals then they
currently are right now. If you, you know, spend any time
looking at the pet food industryas an industry, you've heard
somebody trying to sound smart talking about the humanization

(02:49):
of pets. This is bit we're we're
constantly told this is a big trend in the industry and that
it's it's what we all need to bethinking about.
And it really is just a fancy way of saying people love their
dogs like their parts of their family.
They don't think of them as animals.
That gets a special privilege ofsharing their home.
For me, I don't have kids. These are my kids.
Basically. It's the same emotional

(03:10):
hardwiring that would make me like stoked on my kids and
loving of kids is that. And the vast majority of pet
owners in the Western world feelthe same.
And so it makes sense that we'd be interested in understanding
the food we're feeding them in asimilar way.
So the way we get to understand it when it comes to the food
that we're eating for ourselves.And so for, you know, a period

(03:31):
of nearly two decades, folks have been pushing back on the
old guaranteed analysis panel. And the reason they've been
doing that is because it doesn'tgive you that level of basic
understanding that the FDA's nutrition facts panel does.
If you're listening to the show right now, think back to the
very first time you walked into a pet store to buy food for the

(03:52):
your very first dog or cat. Take yourself back in time to
that lovely moment and just think about the first time you
were thinking about what do I feed this dog?
And you looked at the nutrition,you went, you looked at the back
of the bag. You may have been going
expecting the exact same thing as you see on a can of Coke.
And you then discovered that it doesn't look like that.
It's got expressions on a percentage basis, what

(04:15):
percentage of the product is water versus what percentage is
ash, what percentage is protein?And it's got minimums and
maximum. It doesn't have a number.
Don't just say this is how many grams of this stuff is in the
food says it's well, it's we know it's at least this much or
it's no more than this much. And it's got jargon and
terminology and stuff like that on there too.

(04:35):
You needed somebody to explain it to you.
I would wager Once Upon a time it was like, OK, what does this
mean? Let me go talk to the owner of
the pet store because it's not intuitive.
It's long been a source because of that gap between what the
guaranteed analysis panel shows requires and what the, you know,
modern scientific study and testing can reveal is huge.
That gap is big. And so folks have wanted more

(04:58):
for a long time. You also asked about why it's
taken so long. And on this, I can only
speculate because the organization that sets the
rules, AFCO, operates by committee.
And so they have discreet littlesubparts for their organization
that play various roles in creating and setting and

(05:19):
publicizing and making official their nutritional labeling
rules. And I'm not Privy to all those
committee discussions, but I cantell you based on my
observations, what I see, what Isuspect is happening, which is
that they're dragging their feetintentionally because it's bad
for industry to implement these new rules.
In my eyes, the most important problem with the guaranteed

(05:42):
analysis as you see it right now, maybe you're sitting at
home, you've got your your bag of dog food, you flip that thing
over and you're looking at it right now.
One of the things that springs out of me first when I look at
it, there is no line item for carbohydrate content.
OK, carbohydrate content, as youwould expect is a part of every
one of the FDA's nutrition factspanel.

(06:03):
They they'll let you use a few different versions of the chart,
the FDA depending on how big your product is, but but they
all have carbohydrate content onthat.
It's something that we as consumers think about that's
relevant to our decision making regarding whether we think of
something as healthy or unhealthy.
And we should I wrote a whole book that's about this one
subject, 2016. It pumps this book that's just

(06:25):
basically like carbohydrate is the devil for dogs and cats as a
matter of nutritional science. It does things to their bodies,
their metabolism that other nutrients don't do.
So every consumer, and you don'thave to have read my book to
think of carbs as relevant to your decision making regarding
your dog. The guaranteed Analysis panel
not only doesn't require brands to disclose the carbohydrate

(06:48):
content, it prohibits them from disclosing the total
carbohydrate content. So you look at this bag of dog
food and you go, well, whatever it does say on here, I know
nothing about the carbohydrate content.
That alone is a colossal problem, but it's really, really
good for industry. And so when I say to you that I
suspect that what's going on here is AFCO has been dragging

(07:11):
its feet because it's good for industry.
This is because in essence, carbohydrate is the backbone of
the US pet food ecosystem. It's the nutrient that is most
widespread by far in the industry.
If you took all the dog food in the country, put it all into one
big ball, and then broke that ball up by nutrient class,
protein, fat, carbohydrate, carbohydrate makes up the

(07:33):
biggest part of that by far. It is the backbone.
It's it's the main part of the system.
And brands know the people generally, whether, no matter
how scientifically literate theyare, they know that people don't
love carbs these days. And so they don't want to tell
consumers that their products are 5060% carbohydrate.
In fact, I want to suggest the opposite.
And having a labeling regime that doesn't require that makes

(07:55):
it really easy. And so in essence, for decades
now, AFCO has been dragging its feet on this, and it's still
dragging them for reasons. I'm sure we'll get to it later
in the show. One of the biggest light bulb
moments for me when I went through my CPCN was learning
that most brands of dog foods are 40 to 60 up to 70%

(08:17):
carbohydrates and dogs have zerorequirements for carbohydrates
and yet 40 to 60% of every single meal is is something that
they have 0 requirements for. That was mind blowing to me.
And like you said, they don't disclose that on the label.
You have to know how to do the math in order to figure out what

(08:38):
percentage of carbohydrates are in your dog's food.
And there is a formula for it. And I couldn't tell you what the
formula is right now, but it's in my CPCN handbook and they
tell you exactly how to do it. And let me tell you, I've gone
through all of the big ones and looked and I haven't found one
that is less than 30% out of allof the big household brands that

(09:01):
everyone could probably name. It's the case with fresh and raw
brands as well. Now it's like the farmers
thought it's 30% carbohydrate. Like everybody you know, there's
a reason that it's so pervasive.And if you don't have to think
too hard about it for too long to figure out what it is,
Carbohydrate has a dollar for ona dollar for dollar basis.
Carbohydrate is the cheap nutrient.

(09:21):
You can raise a field of corn and then harvest it and then dry
it out and stick it in the side silo for a very long period of
time in a way that you cannot ifyou're trying to cultivate a
calorie of meat based protein like a lamb or a chicken, don't
work that way. You have to raise the animal.
You have to feed the animal, slaughter the animal and then

(09:42):
once you have the raw materials,it's not shelf stable.
Don't think about this. A silo of carcass animal is not
good. So roughly speaking, just like
estimate a calorie of carbohydrate cost a pet food
company as an ingredient about 110th what a calorie of meat
based protein costs. So if you're running the books
at Purina or wherever, you have a huge incentive if you can get

(10:06):
away with it, to use as much carbohydrate as you can in the
product. And that's a big part of the
logic in how these guys formulate their products, which
would all be fine. Shelf stability is a good thing,
all else being equal. Shelf stability, great, OK,
that's easier. We don't have to eat it in four
days or it's going to spoil. There's plenty that's great

(10:26):
about that kind of thing. It's just that unfortunately,
carbohydrates, not only are theylike not required for any aspect
of canine nutrition, they actively do bad things to dogs
and that's why it's a problem. We got a tough, tough
environment when it comes to that tough place to be a
consumer right now. It's going to get better with
the new rules. But the one thing if you're

(10:48):
listening of this show and you feel a sense of confusion and
just being lost when you go try to make a good decision for your
dog knows that you're not alone.And that's understating it.
That is the default state that even well educated,
well-intentioned, thoughtful, hard working pet food consumers
are occupying, because it's justa horrible information

(11:10):
environment and it's perfectly natural to feel confused and not
know what you're. Doing it is so normal to feel
confused and also learning that veterinarians unless they
specialize in nutrition, only have to take one to three hours
of education in nutrition to become a veterinarian.

(11:30):
It was a little bit disheartening for me.
So if you have a veterinarian that says eat, you know this
prescription diet, eat this dietfrom PetSmart, eat whatever.
And they're showing you all of these brands that you know are
probably the brands that we're mostly concerned about here.
I would love for you to ask yourveterinarian how many hours of
education they have in nutritionand then maybe think about

(11:53):
hiring somebody to help you figure out a better diet for
your dog. Because if they're just
recommending what the industry is telling them to recommend,
because we've talked about this before, Science Diet is on the
back of the veterinarians education book for their
nutrition courses that they are paying for that part of their
education to be featured and be a brand that is recommended by

(12:16):
veterinarians. So I want you to sit with that
for just a second because I think it's so important to
remember that this is an industry and that industries are
here to make money and that it'snot always about what's healthy
for our pets. So that's why this label change
is so huge. Yeah, when I wrote my book,
veterinarians play a unique rolethat you got to talk about when

(12:38):
you talk about companion animal nutrition and companion animal
public health in the state of pet food consumer awareness.
And if we're feeling confused, it's clearly an important role.
Most people, studies show, look to their veterinary and trust
their veterinarians perspective on nutritional matters.
My perspective when I wrote the book was mostly as you just

(13:00):
articulated it. That the reason, the kind of
primary thing why you get bad information coming out of vets
because I wholeheartedly endorsethat statement that like
nutritional information coming out of vets is systematically
wrong and in predictable ways and is often very wrong, was
more or less the same as you. Like the education such as it is

(13:23):
at vet schools is poor in that it's just there's not enough of
it. I wrote all about it in my book.
My friend went to one of the best veterinary schools in the
country, went to NC State University and she gave me the
text that they were required to use in their veterinary
nutrition elective. And it's like a 30 page pamphlet
that covers not dog nutrition, OK.

(13:43):
It's like all species, all nutritional topics that you're
possibly going to come up in 30 pages.
This literally is like a hand drawn sheep on the front of it.
And by comparison, my book aboutone subject, obesity in one
species, dogs, 400 pages long. It's just not a great deal of
information. And that's clearly not good

(14:03):
enough. As I speak these words in
wherever it is, August of 2025, I have really come to believe
that an even bigger problem is that vets are really raised up
and trained in a environment that has systemic
misinformation, that they are actively taught stuff that is
not true and that colors their perspectives on what reality is,

(14:26):
what nutritional science actually shows.
And that trickles down into people.
And you've flagged some of the like reasons why and some of the
ways that that comes out. But it's a deep topic.
If you are a a giant multinational corporation that's
engaged in some systemic misinformation that you're
trying to mislead people about some scientific stuff, it's a

(14:48):
great time to be alive. 2025 is a nice time for that.
And the reason for that is that there are wackos all over the
Internet that see a conspiracy behind everything, every
possible corner. And so when someone listens to
this and a guy like me says there's there's this huge

(15:08):
conspiracy thing going on in theveterinary nutrition world where
big, huge influential corporations are actively trying
to mislead vets. It's tough to distinguish that
from the guy that's like, Oh yeah, birds aren't real or
whatever. Like you have to get into the
weeds to evaluate whether I'm that guy or whether I'm somebody
that's done something that's really unearthed or real thing

(15:30):
here. And it's like, man, the amount
of show it takes to cover just helping people see that
difference. We filed this big lawsuit over
this. It's what the evidence actually
shows and how the investigative stuff works is a it's a process,
man. We're inherently at a
disadvantage trying to prove that up.
But to the extent that anybody thinks that they're inclined to

(15:51):
trust me, my hand before God, there is a significant and it
for me. It's the problem of companion
animal nutrition these days is the broad misinformation
campaign that veterinarians are subjected to by virtue of just
trying to practice in good faithin the US.
It's a disaster. It is a disaster, and
unfortunately, it takes a lot ofpeople like you and a lot of

(16:14):
people like me pushing that misinformation out there and
making the facts readily available to people so that they
can see this is actually a problem.
And then, as you've said many times before in our
conversations, go do their own research and figure out where
they want to stand on it, which is so important.
Totally, totally. Let me hit you with a couple of

(16:36):
if you don't mind. I know we're not here to this is
not an academic conference wherewe're going to have scientific
debate and let's talk about the latest peer reviewed studies,
but this is about the latest peer reviewed studies.
OK, so two things I just want tocall to your attention that
really exemplify how bad the misinformation problem is among
vets in the US. First one has to do with dietary

(16:57):
carbohydrate. So if any of your listeners,
they're themselves a loved one or a pet that's struggle with
diabetes, the disease diabetes, then they'll already know this.
But I'll give you a quick 101 for anybody that's listening.
It doesn't understand what diabetes is.
Diabetes is this like metabolic condition that you can develop

(17:18):
that prevents you from metabolizing carbohydrate well,
process the body uses to break down carbs.
When you eat a piece of bread, what happens is during
digestion, all those complex carbs in the bread, they get
broken down into individual molecules of this stuff called
glucose. It's just sugar and that's what
it goes into your bloodstream isthat's what carbs become before
they go into your bloodstream, your dog's bloodstream.

(17:40):
And there's sugar in the blood at any given point, even if you
don't eat any carbohydrate, there's a certain amount of
sugar that has to be in the blood.
It's part of what your body usesto do all the things it does,
but it can't have too much. If you have too much sugar in
the blood, it's toxic and it will put you in a coma and it
will kill you. It's a finely controlled system
and your body has evolved this great way to keep it in line.

(18:01):
Essentially secrets a hormone. The hormone is called insulin
and insulin when your blood sugar gets up too high, the
insulin comes out and it pushes all that sugar into places like
fat cells and muscle tissue in places it can be non toxically
stored. Diabetic people don't produce
enough insulin. That's their problem.
And so they eat a high carbohydrate meal or their blood

(18:22):
sugar gets too high and they don't make insulin to make it
come back down. OK, huge problem effects
millions and millions of people in a growing and tough to pin
down number of dogs and cats as well large enough there's their
folks are listening to this or nodding along.
If you go to the vet and you go look, so my dog is very thirsty,
this will come symptom of diabetes.
But what's wrong with this guy and they diagnosed diabetes.

(18:45):
What that vet will do is they will say, look, there's two
things diabetes can be managed. You just got it.
You got to manage it. You're going to have to do some
work pet owner and you do. There's two pillars of diabetes
care for pets just as with people, diet and insulin
therapy. So because your body doesn't
make enough insulin, your dog's body doesn't make it up insulin,
you can inject it yourself. So if you have diabetes, you're

(19:05):
very familiar with this, you're constantly pricking your finger
or using some kind of wearable technology to figure out where
your blood sugar is so that you can figure out if you need to
give yourself insulin. Essentially, if your pet has
diabetes, you are doing the samething.
You're going to monitor its blood sugar by pricking its paw
and then you're going to give itthe right amount of insulin it
needs through shots to bring that back in line.

(19:27):
But the other part is diet because the things that you eat
impact your blood sugar. And if you just listen to the
last five minutes of me talking,what is the way you think you
would keep blood sugar levels low?
It pretty obvious obviously to me is you just take the
carbohydrate out of the diet. That's the one that becomes
glucose. Glucose is the thing we're

(19:48):
dealing with here. So we're going to try to reduce
carbohydrate content as much as possible.
Well, not in the veterinary world.
In the veterinary world, if if your vet diagnosis you've done
with diabetes, they will say we're going to put it on a
prescription only diet. That prescription only diet is
called Hills Metabolic and it's 40% adjustable.
That's insanity. OK it.
Is insanity. And the where the scientific

(20:09):
record comes into this is that this spring, I believe in this
so much. It's so obviously the case to me
that this spring results of a peer reviewed study that we had
folks carry out at a major research university about this
very topic got published. I run a startup, I have a dog
food company and as you might guess is low carb dog food,
keto, natural pet foods. We make the lowest carbohydrate

(20:31):
kibble. That's the thing I believe in.
And so we make a product for people who think same things
like that. But huge part of our customer
base are folks whose dogs have diabetic diabetes because they
recognize all this obvious stuff.
They've been on a prescription diet like Hills Metabolic.
They've had a horrible time trying to control their dog's
blood sugar. So try something else.
They try ours. Lo and behold, Oh my God, it's
so much better for my dog's blood sugar, so much lower.

(20:52):
And they're happy. But we're not a big company.
But we spent $150,000, which is like 1520% of our annual
revenue. This is not a small amount.
Carrying out a study at the University of Guelph.
We gave them this money. We said what I want to test is
our diets, which are where generally available, You don't
need a prescription against Hill's Metabolic directly.
And we're going to look at all the metabolic markers.

(21:15):
And so we can say once and for all who's really doing a better
job of this. And it would be really
interesting because if it goes the way I think it'll go, that
should be pretty punchy for vets, right?
Hill's Pet Nutrition, for anyonethat isn't familiar with that
brand, employs more veterinary nutritionists than any other
organization in the history of planet Earth.
OK, they are the brand of their motto and their logo.

(21:40):
Everything has science in it. They try to be a very sciency
brand. They make prescription products
and they distribute them heavilythrough vets.
They got tons of vets on stuff. On the other hand, I'm a guy.
I'm a bald idiot talking into a microphone.
OK, so you would think that thiscompany that does $4 billion a

(22:00):
year in annual revenue and has been around for 60 years and
employers more veterinary would have no problem creating a
better widget than the guy on the couch.
Except that's not at all what the results showed.
Wiped the floor with the leadingprescription only diet for dogs

(22:21):
with diabetes and obesity in theUnited States.
Dogs on our diet had 60% lower blood sugar than dogs on Hills
Metabolic. Think about them.
That is not a small difference. You're talking about less than
half as much sugar in the blood.Not just make a but it's
completely better. And it's not because I am an

(22:43):
idiot savant or anything like that.
It's because a veterinary nutritionist working for Hills
knows that OK, we've made this with very low carbohydrate
content. It would be better for these
dogs with diabetes, but it's going to cost us a fortune and
we'd have to sell it for 400 dollars, and that's not going to
work. So we're just going to put this
other product out. But anyway, you can go.
I'll give you the links. You can put them in the show

(23:04):
notes. But those two studies got
published this spring and they show this thing that you widely
hear when you walk into the vet's office is absolute
nonsense. It's just totally wrong.
They've been totally misled about it.
And unfortunately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
dogs that suffer from diabetes are paying the cost of it.
Yeah, remind me what the percentage of carbohydrates in
your food is again? Five 1/8 what it is in Hills

(23:28):
Metabolic and it's the same price.
We had a third diet when we ran the study also.
We just made one up that was thesame exact macronutrient content
as Hills but without some of thebells and whistles.
I don't even know what they are off the top of my head, but it's
got like carnitine and some other like micronutrient type
stuff that Hills is like. This is what really moves the
needle on diabetes and blood sugar and the our garden variety

(23:51):
diet that we made-up. And Hill's Metabolic, it there's
a difference, It's marginal. The difference between US and
Hill's metabolic was mega OK because the carbohydrate just
make one with less carbs. Your dog's blood sugar is going
to be lower. It's that simple.
Yeah. And yet they're, you know,
100,000 plus vets in the US and a huge percentage of them, you
go in, ask your vets tomorrow morning what's the best way to

(24:13):
feed a dog with diabetes, and the answer is a prescription
only diet like this one. And it's they're wrong.
It's just that simple. It's crazy, but I.
Feel like we're finally getting to the point where people are
starting to do enough research that they're realizing that it's
not the right diet. And again, it's conversations
like these, yeah, that push the needle.

(24:34):
But I agree with you. It's not how I was saying before
that my tone when I wrote my book was like, I feel for vets
and I, I can't with a straight face say, look, if I got raised,
if I went to school, paid a couple $100,000 to get an
advanced degree earned all thesethings there, read all these
seemingly scientific sounding things and then some guy on the

(24:57):
Internet is going to come wrong and tell me I'm wrong.
It is really hard to engage withthe right level of stuff on
that. Fuck what you've been told and
it's risky for your career. Get that wrong and you end up
being a pariah. Like it's a big deal.
And so I sympathize with how effective misinformation systems
can be in that way. But when it comes to diabetes,

(25:20):
it's like it's just so straightforward.
Plane in 5 minutes. And anyone who's familiar with
that disease knows how it works.I have less sympathy with vets
over that because it's just seems like professional
negligence that you can't know how diabetes works, like you
can't just know the most basic aspects of it.
It starts to make me upset when I hear get those customer

(25:41):
service tickets from my customers saying my vet thinks,
you know, I'm having great results, I should switch back to
Hills Metabolic for whatever reason.
And it's just like, yeah, that'skind of upsetting.
Is it better that this is happening in the Internet era
where you and I can have an intelligent conversation about
this, people listen and maybe their minds get changed for the
better? Yes, in a way.

(26:01):
On the other hand, it's the WildWest on the Internet and there's
going to be people talking abouthow birds aren't real.
The birds aren't real of dog food, whatever that is just
mixed in as much as as there is good stuff.
And so because it's not going through the scientific
community, the whole that whole opinion, animal nutritional
science community is broken, bigtime broken beyond the scope of

(26:22):
this conversation. But it's essentially industry
pays for all the work that's done.
And so that has huge problems functioning scientific community
is a good thing for truth and advancing knowledge.
There are systems and institutions that help separate
the screwball theories from the stuff that has merit and that
those don't exist as much on theInternet.
And so you do have this problem of like, don't believe

(26:45):
everything you read on the Internet.
And we're competing with these. Those are the there are no birds
people. And so it's that too.
It would be better if it was just a healthy veterinary
nutrition community, but it's not.
I'm gonna say something that's gonna be.
Really controversial here, especially for this.
Is it birds or Craig? Is that?
Weird what to say right now. No, but I have AI.

(27:05):
Have a birds are fake kind of like purview for you.
As long as we have influencers accepting paychecks to promote
brands of food without doing actual nutritional research and
understanding what they're promoting, the industry is going
to continue to have problems because people are still going

(27:27):
to say Oh well, so and so that has half a million followers or
30,000 followers or whatever feeds their dog this, it must be
fine. But I guarantee that influencer
cannot tell you anything about why that food is good, what the
percentage of carbohydrates is, if it will work for your dog,
does your dog have diabetes, allthese things.
Think about where you're gettingyour information as well as what

(27:50):
I'm saying. I am an influencer, OK, I am,
but let me tell you guys how much research I do before I
bring people like Daniel onto the show or I feed my dogs
Daniel's food or other brands offood because I dive in deep.
I went and got a certification for it.
I mean, that should tell you howcrazy I am about this stuff.
It's super important that you really, really go all the way in

(28:14):
and unscrew all of the bolts andpeel back all of the layers and
look, because while something might be great for my dog, it
might not be great for your dog.And you've really got to figure
those things out and it's tough.I'm.
Sorry, our new nutritional labels that require that
consumers get all the raw information that they should

(28:36):
have to make good and well informed decisions about what
they're going to feed their dog.Is that a step in the right
direction? You bet.
A big step in the right direction.
You can't do it without that. Like give me a break.
But building a intellectual framework that allows you to
make good judgments about what'sgood, bad or indifferent about
the nutritional information thatyou see is a totally separate

(28:58):
exercise. And it's a it's a challenge.
It's the one that like we were Iwas saying before is you got to
become scientifically at least alittle bit scientifically
literate. You have to be able to listen to
this show. Go what is this guy talking
about? Then just spend 30 seconds
finding the paper, not finding somebody that agrees, disagrees,
whatever with what I'm saying. Go find the paper.
Go take a look at it. See if it says what I just told

(29:20):
you it says and do that same exercise when you're testing
claims that you find that influencers make.
Trust me, I wish that there was a better method than that.
If there was something at this stage that was less legwork but
got you the right results, I'd be telling you what it is.
I promise you. The unfortunate truth is like me

(29:42):
telling you to trust me, or Emily telling you to trust her.
That is not a scalable, trustworthy process because
anybody else can do it too, and anybody can sound persuasive or
punchy over a 30 minute conversation.
Most I can't with a straight face say to your listeners
that's good advice, just list find somebody that you trust and

(30:02):
listen to them. Got to be able to run it down
for yourself. It shouldn't be that way.
That's not how a lot of information like like academic
disciplines work. It's not the case with physics.
I do not know how cold fusion works.
I do not know how a nuclear bombis made.
But I don't doubt the physicistsat MIT because the system is a

(30:26):
functional one. It's not corrupted by industry
trying to shape it to industry'sends.
And so it works. It allows us to all make good
decisions about whether we want nuclear power or nuclear war or
whatever without really understanding how that stuff
works at a granular level. It doesn't work like that in
companion animal nutrition. That's the key.
Takeo is like, there's so much bad information in the

(30:48):
veterinary community that way. You ought to be able to do.
Go to your vet, ask them. They tell you reliable
information that you can act on,you can't do.
And until that gets fixed, and that's the work of folks like me
and Emily is trying to correct that situation, which is a
generational problem. Until that gets fixed, the
answer is, I'm sorry, you got todo it yourself.
I'm trying to put as much information as I can out there

(31:10):
that helps people, but at the end of the day, if I said yeah,
trust me and you'll be good to go.
You don't want to hear that. Don't do that.
I do think that I honestly do. If you listen to me, I think
you're gonna get things right. I work hard on these things, but
I got to teach you how to fish. Can't just give a man a fish.
That's exactly where I started. This podcast was so that here's
a starting point. I'm asking the questions, here's

(31:33):
some resources for you to look into this.
Now go and do your other research and compare it to what
I've given you and see where youend up.
Maybe we agree, maybe we don't. Maybe you find something that
you can bring back to me and I can learn something.
It just really is a lot of back and forth.
But transparency is the biggest thing.
That's a huge issue. Mainly my main issue with the

(31:54):
the pet nutrition. And so this label changing, the
pet nutrition facts box changingis going to give people a little
bit more of an in depth look into what's actually in their
food. So can you walk everybody a
little bit through what are we going to see that we're going to
maybe understand a little bit better, maybe going to make us a

(32:15):
little bit more uncomfortable, things like that, that will be
on the label that we should be looking for?
Yes. So like the broad?
Strokes like kind of fundamentaltake home, it goes like this
guaranteed analysis panel came into being because Once Upon a
time we treated companion animals more or less livestock
and that our concerns back then in that era were hucksters

(32:37):
selling foods that weren't actually even foods.
They wouldn't keep the animal alive is Dan's great dog
whatever. And it wasn't even really food.
It was cardboardy whatever and it didn't have the things the
animal needs to stay alive. The guaranteed analysis panel
shows in some amount of nutritional content on a
minimums maximum types of basis.It allows you to say, OK, this

(32:58):
guy's food has got enough protein in it that it's not
going to cause my dog to starve to death.
But what's happened over time with the humanization of pets is
that's not what we're trying to do anymore.
We go and we know if you get a commercial pet food from the
store, it's got enough in there to keep your dog alive.
That's not the issue. We're all, we're good with that.
What the issue is, is how to optimize its long term health,

(33:19):
how to reduce its chronic disease risk over time, how to
extend its lifespan as much as you can.
The way you think about your ownnutrition, you don't go, well,
geez, if I eat this doughnut versus if I eat this stalk of
broccoli, is it possible that I'm going to starve to death
because it's not actually food? No, you're going to pull
calories out of both of them andyou can make energy out of them.

(33:39):
One's less good for your long term health.
And it's like that with dogs andcats.
And what the Pet Nutrition Factspanel, which is the new label
that's taking over for the guaranteed analysis panel does
is it gives you the ability to do that kind of stuff.
Most notably, it tells you on a grams basis, protein, fat,
carbonyl, carbohydrate, just like on the human FDA nutrition

(34:01):
facts. Now when when I go about looking
for a pet food product, the thing that the evidence very
clearly to my eyes shows that ifyou want to optimize your dog's
long term health, all else beingequal, the thing that moves the
needle the most is increase protein as much as you can, meat
based protein and reduce carbohydrate intake.
Once Upon a time you couldn't dothat.

(34:22):
If you if you go to the pet store today, because these new
rules haven't taken effect yet, you still are going to have
problems with that. The new ones you can a good way
to think about. I'll give you a link M that you
can put into the show notes thathas Afco's presentation on this.
It's hard to talk about what a visual thing is, but I'll put
the link in the show notes so people can check it out.

(34:42):
But a good way to approximate what it's going to look like is
just go buy, you know, a bag of chips or a frozen lasagna or
whatever and go look at the way that it's the nutritional
content is presented there because it's going to be like
that. That's the fundamental
difference is that now we've gotcarbohydrate and we don't have
everything exclusively on what'scalled an as fed percentage

(35:02):
basis. One of the challenges right now
in pet food labeling, to my eyes, it's less of a problem
than not knowing how much carbohydrates in there, but it's
a significant thing is that different pet food products,
different kinds of pet food products have really different
moisture contents. And or a raw or a fresh pet food

(35:23):
product has something like 75% moisture.
It's just the human body is made-up of a lot of water.
Animals are made-up of a lot of water.
And if you're not taking the water out of it and making it
shelf stable, any one of those kinds of products is a large
chunk of it is moisture. Whereas kibble products, it's
like 10% moisture, they're driedout so they don't spoil, and

(35:43):
there's just much less water in it.
So for every calorie of nutrition that's in either one
of those types of things, the amount of water that is
alongside that calorie varies dramatically.
Guaranteed Analysis Panel requires brands to disclose
their nutritional content on what's called an as fed basis.
That means if you just take thisstuff out of the bag and feed it
to a dog, what percentage of it is protein, fat, moisture or

(36:09):
carbohydrate or ash? And So what that means is that a
raw or a canned diet where 1/3 of the calories come from
protein, the guaranteed analysisprotein number on that product
is going to be like 10% because 75% of what comes out of the can
and you get to your dog is water.

(36:29):
So you're only talking about 25%of it is calories and 1/3 of
that is protein. So 25 / 3 is like 8%, whereas
exact same nutritional profile. If it was a kibble, there was
only 10% moisture. The number on the bag would be
30 something percent exact same nutritional content.

(36:50):
And so so it's a bananas way to require consumers to try to have
to figure things out. Now you're going to be able to
do the apples to apples comparison that you really ought
to be doing. Otherwise you can get the wool
pulled over your eyes by folks who celebrate high moisture
products and it winds up with a comparatively low carbohydrate
number or comparatively high protein number.

(37:10):
Interact bottle just in case, anyone.
'S wondering the protein minimumthat your dog should have should
be 60%. I don't know if there's any
kibbles that meet that requirement that like the bigger
brand ones, especially when we're hitting like 40 to 70% in
carbohydrates, they're not hitting that 60% minimum and
that's not even, no, not even it's and it's like 22% is what

(37:34):
is the minimum 22. Is the minimum in the sense that
that's what AFCO and the FDA require if you're going to sell
pet food in the store, all it so-called complete and balanced.
It's got to be 22 1/2 percent protein for puppies, 18 1/2 for
adult dogs. And they all are essentially
most of them playing a game or they're trying to get as close
to that number but be just aboveit as possible.

(37:57):
But like you said, that's a third as much protein as a wolf
is getting in just walking around being a wolf, a third,
that's a big difference. It's a big difference.
We wonder about our dogs body conditions and why one dog is
thin and fit and looks great versus why maybe a dog is over
beast and not so active. I can guarantee you that the

(38:19):
main difference is how they're fed.
There are. Plenty of ways to take
carbohydrate out of the diet of your dog.
Feeding our products is not the only one you could feed a raw
diet. A good raw diet is all meat.
So 0 carbohydrate. That's a way to do it.
You can make stuff yourself. You can go to the butcher and
get your meat products and feed your dog that.

(38:40):
Or you could pick the next lowest carbohydrate people you
can find. That's not a great answer
because they're like 2530%. If you take the carbohydrate out
of your dog's diet for six months and you don't go at the
end of that, oh, my dog looks like the, you know, the pit bull
from the fighting ring, basically in terms of body.
Oh, oh, I can see its ribs. I can see its muscle definition.

(39:02):
That's what a dog with 10% body fat looks like.
And that happens all the time ifyou take carbohydrate out of its
diet. They just center out at what is
a healthy body composition. We're 10 to 15%.
There are admittedly a lot of ways to take weight off of the
dog. If your dog is fat and you go to
the vet and say the dog needs tolose weight, they can tell you a

(39:25):
lot of things to do that would work.
Take the dog on a lot more exercise.
It's going to lose weight. Everything else the same.
Take it for a lot, actually, it's going to lose weight, no
doubt about it. Hold everything else the same,
but only feed it half as much food.
You're going to lose weight, Same thing.
But the only reason there's sucha thing as an overweight or
obese dog is because of carbohydrate.
You can't make a dog fat in the first instance unless you fatten

(39:46):
it up with carbohydrate, period.On one level, it's great to have
a Saint Bernard. On another, it's tough because I
can't bring him in here and put him on the screen, But you can
find him in our marketing materials.
If you poke around. But think of a Saint Bernard in
your head. He does not look like that.
You can see his ribs. You can see the veins on his
muscles. And I walk him every day.

(40:07):
He gets a mile, mile and a half walk.
But these big dogs that are veryshort muzzles, I live in a hot
area. You can't walk them that much.
He doesn't get a ton of exercise.
He's built like a rock. And it's not because he gets
some special fancy. I'm exercising them all the time
type thing. Just don't feed them
carbohydrate and the glucose doesn't go into the that tissue
and the animals can't get fat. It's like the proof is with

(40:28):
diabetes. The proof is in the pudding like
in one day, because those folks are measuring their dog's blood
sugar on a daily basis. And so if you feed them
something and it lowers the blood sugar, they know about it.
That's it. Obesity and body composition.
The proof is still in the pudding.
It takes a little longer. You don't lose like body fat in
a day, but over a three month period of time, your dog, if

(40:48):
your dog is fat, your dog will lose a big chunk of its body fat
just taking the carbs out of itsdiet.
It's a problem with so much of the pet food industry these days
is built around health related marketing kind of everybody
that's selling pet food is saying we make the uniquely
healthy stuff for XY and Z read for whatever reasons they say
choose us. There's some value brands, but

(41:10):
generally speaking, everybody issaying we make the healthy
stuff, choose us. And you as a consumer have to
evaluate all their different little pitches and make a choice
for yourself. But the vast majority one I
would recommend as a like sort of divining rod, a good test to
figure out whether you should trust some brand in its claim or

(41:30):
not is are the health benefits they're talking about
measurable? Are they things that I can
observe changes in a concrete way over time?
Maybe some of these things ring a bell for you.
And shinier coat, You heard that.
You ever see a pet food that tells you your dogs has going to
have a shinier coat or better energy?
Those kinds of things, those aredesigned for a reason, supports

(41:56):
healthy functioning. Those words are chosen really
carefully because #1 it's not concrete.
There's no way to measure shininess of coke.
That's not real. That's it's very easy to make it
in the eye of the beholder. Yeah #2 it's not measurable.
Can't be reduced to that kind ofthing.
And so very few things can go like that.
And so one of them, fortunately,is body composition.

(42:18):
And so you want to take fat off dog.
Super easy, super straightforward.
It's funny because you. Just mentioned all those terms,
but it's my understanding that AFCO had to redefine words like
natural, organic and human gradebecause of how they were being
used in marketing on dog food bags.
Yeah, so they define. All sorts of terms AFCO does

(42:39):
such that if you're going to usethat term on your label, it's
going to mean something specificand they're going to be able to
tell you whether you're being straight and above board or not.
And yeah, they update those definitions over time because
people do take advantage of them.
They are not perfect right now. To me, it is not natural.
Just because a dog can digest carbohydrate like a human being

(43:00):
can digest A doughnut, it is notnatural to feed it something
that its ancestors didn't need for 99.9% of their evolution and
would make it so that you couldn't call any carbohydrate
rich products natural. And obviously plenty do.
There's a brand that's called Natural Balance.
They only make products that arehigh in carbohydrate content.

(43:20):
Is that a natural balance for a dog?
I don't think so. So it depends.
I'm a relatively litigious guy, meaning they're getting a lot of
lawsuits because I am educated as a lawyer, I have a law
background and unlike a lot of people, well, I think the court
system is a reasonably good way if used appropriately for
getting better, getting good social outcomes.
I'm just using an example. I don't want to get a nasty gram

(43:42):
for natural balance for this, but I probably will.
The brand natural balance, is that a natural balance for a
dog? No, not really.
Is anybody going to do anything about it and stop them from
doing that? Well, apparently not because
they do hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue a year and
there's continuing to use the brand.
If somebody came along and fileda lawsuit on behalf of consumers
and said, but this is deceptive advertising because this isn't

(44:05):
natural in the sense that my dog's ancestors never ate this,
nor is it balanced because any definition of balance would
reflect what's actually natural for the animal.
That stuff is out there happening all the time, and it
sometimes takes people to actually do something about it.
And so sometimes AFCO updates its rules because folks are
taking advantage of it. But even if you give AFCO all

(44:27):
the credit in the world and you say, oh, they're quite well run,
they're doing their job really well, they're still always going
to be loopholes. You and I were talking about
ingredient splitting, beginning of the show.
That's a loophole. It exists because the reason
it's a pervasive practice is it's kind of this effective,
sneaky, sneaky way to mislead people.
And it kind of falls between thecracks of Afco's rules.

(44:48):
And now everybody that sells petfood is trying to mislead people
about how much meat is in their product.
Does it? And they're playing whack A
mole. If you're a regulator, like
there's industries always tryingto get taken advantage.
And so, yeah, it's tough. I heard this a lot.
Before I got my certification, which was the first three
ingredients that you should see on your pet food when you're

(45:08):
looking to buy is meat, bone andorgan meat.
And while that is true, those are the three ingredients that
you should look for. There are things when it comes
to that that you need to be verycareful of, like chicken meal,
beef meal, things like that. Those are byproducts.
We want actual organ meat, actual bone, actual meat.

(45:29):
And so you have to know exactly what you're supposed to be
looking for, not just think, well, chicken meal, that's meat,
it's not. You have to understand what the
difference of those three thingsis because brands are starting
to catch on to that. And now they're moving those
ingredients that might look likewhat you want it to be up to the
front of the list. That's the bigger problem.

(45:49):
Is that? It's not that, but the rule you
just articulate is a reasonable rule in a world in which the
brand doesn't have to tell the consumer how much carbohydrate
is in there. It's a pretty good way to think
trying to get to a product that's mostly meat, the stuff
the dogs should be eating, and less of the agricultural stuff
that they should. But it's been around for long

(46:10):
enough. Because carbohydrate disclosure
has not been a thing. Rules of thumb like that have
become the best way to go about making a good decision.
Well if it's a raw diet, probably going to be low in
carbohydrate content because it's got all the moisture in it,
but it doesn't have to be shelf stable in the same way.
That's kind of why carbs get used at all in kibble world.
Is it like helps it stay together and stays shelf stable.

(46:33):
So like there was a time, I think most people have learned
to see through this book where grain free became very popular
because Once Upon a time it was a reasonably good rule of thumb
for trying to approximate. Is this diet higher in meat or
lower in meat? And the same thing is true for
general rules of thumb based on the ingredient list for are the
first five ingredients all meatsor are the first three this,

(46:56):
that and the other thing? Not bad, but there's such
popular pieces of advice now andthe regulatory system is not
airtight. And so brands have reacted to
that. They have learned how to be
misleading in light of that. And So what you have is brands
taking the overall meat content,slicing that into 100 different
individual ingredients and stuffing them all at the

(47:18):
beginning of the ingredient list.
So that you look at your bag of 40% carbohydrate something and
you read through the 1st 2 linesof ingredients across the whole
bag and they're all meat. And you're like, good, I'm good
to go. And there's no carbohydrate
number on there. So yeah, you'd be forgiven for
thinking that's mostly a meat product.
But what they've done is they'vesplit the carbohydrate

(47:38):
ingredients into lower quantities on an individual
basis than any of those meat ingredients, but just kind of
hitting them behind there. And if you have 30 different
kinds of carbohydrate, red lentils, green lentils, green
peas and Black Eyed Peas and allthe things, you can hide that
behind 10 meat ingredients 1st and still be selling a 40%

(47:59):
carbohydrate product. That's an example of that.
Generalized strategies like the brands know how people are
thinking about the ingredient list and trying to approximate
what that means about the helpfulness of the product, and
so they know that well enough totake advantage of it.
That stuff's been around long enough that they're taking
advantage of it. And so it stops being a good
rule. Basically, it stops being a good

(48:20):
rule of thumb because it's no longer reliable.
Things are changing here. Which is going to help, but from
what I understand this is a six year implementation.
Yeah. And so it's going to take time.
Yeah, the rules got adopted. In the end of the year 2023
session, Afcos 23 session, they got published for the first time
in Afcos 2024 model rules. When they got published, they

(48:43):
all AFCO also published what it calls a recommendation for a six
year enforcement discretion period, meaning that if this is
the rule, you got to just use this new facts panel now.
But if you don't use it, nobody's going to enforce it
against you as yet. Nobody's going to say that's
what's wrong. You got to I'm going to penalize
you for this. You pull your bags off the

(49:04):
shelf, anything like that. And they said we're going to
give them six years to get compliant.
Let me tell you as the CEO of a pet food company, logic behind
that, the facial logic, the given logic for that is, well,
you have to give these brands, they're going to have to label
it differently. And to in order to do that,
they're going to have to test stuff probably.

(49:25):
And then after they run the test, they're going to have to
update their labels to make surethat the labels have the new
chart on them. That is not a six year exercise.
That is a 1/4 exercise period. Every brand that's selling pet
food knows exactly how much carbohydrate is in their food
already. That's a fact.
In order to change your bags that the new numbers are on the

(49:48):
new chart. It's not six years.
Nobody is building their productline with a six year kind of
like timeline in mind. But new trends come up a lot and
people embrace the new trends and all that kind of stuff.
It doesn't go on six years. It seems to me that the six year
enforcement discretion period, it's kind of one last kick in

(50:08):
the wherever you don't want to be kicked by AFCO, like one last
really big drag in your feet. This isn't going to have teeth
until 2030. It's a long time.
And so brands now, brands like mine are getting compliant as
quickly as possible. I want to be the first compliant
brand in the US Then at least onsome level, consumers can start

(50:30):
to expect that if you're not listening to the show Prime, you
know this has happened, okay. And so you're not going to know
what you're missing until you see what you're missing.
And by embracing the new stuff as quickly as possible, I'm
helping to start creating some pressure.
But I'm a tiny brand and the vast majority industry wants to
wait till the absolute last second on this one.

(50:50):
And so it's just going to be slow.
I would be, I think, blowing smoke up somebody's rear end if
I said you as a consumer can help by exerting pressure.
Realistically, I don't think that's going to be how it's
going to work. You can ask your pet food brand
why they haven't adopted the newlabeling yet and then judge

(51:11):
their answer and see if it feelslike it holds water to you and
use that sort of shape how you think about that brand going
forward. I'd encourage you to do that.
Prove me wrong, Pet Owners of America.
I just think the likelihood thatenough people rally and start
demanding this of individual brands is going to be But I'd
love to be wrong. We would all love to be wrong.
And in this area, just to see some change would be so

(51:34):
important. And this isn't just it's not
just pet food, right? It's treats and supplements that
are getting this makeover as well.
I think that's right. That's.
An excellent question, though I don't know the answer to that.
100% it's the supplements. The carbohydrate thing isn't
nearly as big of an issue there for a couple of reasons.

(51:54):
One, treat don't make up a very large percentage of your dog's
diet. What percentage of the calories
each day come from treats? Percent.
It's like 5 or 10. Percent, it's not very much, so
you switch. From a sort of 30% of that is
carbohydrate right now and you switch to 0, what's 30% of 10?
That's 3% of the diet. It's kind of small potatoes in

(52:17):
that regard. And that's somebody that feeds
probably a lot of treats. I don't really feed treats to my
dog even though we make treats. Second though is unlike kibble,
there are lots of different kinds of ways of making dog
treats that don't require carbohydrates to hold it
together. We sell freeze dried single
ingredient chicken liver treats.There's 0 carbohydrate and our
kibble is legitimately novel andwe're the only ones doing it not

(52:40):
treats. There are lots of, lots of
brands where you can go right now, find a freeze dried 0
carbohydrate treat. It's not too hard to find better
than not having that disclosure on there.
But it's also the revolution is that these kibble brands that
have been going out there telling folks for decades, eat
your dog just like a wolf by feeding our wolf Pebble are

(53:01):
going to have to look people in the eye and be like, well, yeah,
it's 65% carbohydrate and peopleare gonna be pissed.
What do you think the? Biggest challenge about changing
your label has been so far nothing.
What are some things? That could be challenging about
that. If you call up, I don't know,
Blue Buffalo and you say, why haven't you guys changed your
label yet? And they go, well, it's gonna

(53:21):
take us six years. What do I think the reasons
would be? I have no idea.
You don't have to disclose the carbohydrate content on your
label. So when I say brands all know,
maybe some are just legitimatelylike, no, we don't even.
I don't really know. I never thought about that.
I just look at what I have to for AFCO.
I just think that's ridiculous. And so I think they all know.

(53:43):
We certainly do. Every batch we produce gets
nutritional analytics. One thing that we try to sell to
people, quality that's very important to our customers is
the nutritional content, the protein percentage, the
carbohydrate percentage, all that kind of stuff.
And so we keep an eye on that stuff.
Maybe that's we do more than theaverage bear.
Nah, don't get it twisted. This is not rocket science for
these brands. There's no major challenge and

(54:04):
that's exactly what I wanted. To hear because like you said,
six years is a long time and there's shouldn't be any reason,
one, that is taking six years and two, it's not that difficult
to be honest. It really isn't that difficult
to be honest. And if we have to him and Haw
around it so that we can continue to sell bags of food
without people starting to wonder if it's okay to be

(54:25):
feeding our food, then there arebigger problems at play.
I don't want, I don't know, man,I have a like everybody.
I got a like a grandiosity and asense of self importance.
I guess there's not too many brands that can authentically
embrace an honesty policy. They are doing things that
either they don't have a professional level understanding

(54:46):
and the nutritional science sideof it, or they know it's not
good. They know that what they're
selling is problematic and couldbe a lot better if they changed
it in a big fundamental way. And that's not some of the
brands. It's like 90% plus of the
brands, ones that if you're listening to the show and you
like they can't just lean into being above board honest.
We'll tell you what's wrong withour stuff.
We'll tell you what's good aboutit.

(55:07):
You can't do that because they are selling something that's
like hero really bad for dogs. And so it's rare that you can
find that. I would say so yeah, judge,
judge. People are be skeptical when
your brand is talking to you. I don't know.
Do you get a lot of pet food executives on your show?
So. Yes and no.

(55:27):
I have people that that do want to come on the show and, and
brands that want to come on the show.
And a lot of them I turn down, especially spending the last
couple of months traveling around going to things like
Global Pet Expo and Super Zoo where I have met that want to
bring on, you know, certain brands onto the podcast that I
have turned down because I don'tagree with their food.

(55:49):
I don't want to promote their food, but I also have lots of
other brands that will be comingon and I have done and some
pretty deep investigation, read the books, read the ingredients,
test it out on my dogs, see if it works or not.
And if my dogs have a bad reaction to it, you can
guarantee that they're not goingto come on the show.
I'm very, very picky when it comes to that stuff.

(56:09):
Dog food is a huge part of the pet industry for obvious
reasons. And I want to be very diligent
and very careful about what I'm promoting because I don't want
somebody's dog to suffer becauseof a recommendation that I made.
I mean I did that for long enough as a vet tech so to do
on. One level my reaction to that is
like have them on anyway. If you don't like their

(56:31):
products, better reason to have them on because you can skew or
you can ask them the hard questions.
You're subject to your interviewnow and they got a but that's
unpleasant and it might not be the tone you're going for.
Well, and if they wanna. Pull the episode after that,
that's just a waste of time. The point I was.
Trying to make is I'm never gonna tell you to pull an
episode. You just run with this you ask
me whatever you want I will tellyou what's good, bad and

(56:53):
indifferent about our stuff. The reason you don't get is if
you tried to do that with so many brands, even if you don't
love them, bring them on the show.
But do that and yeah, it's goingto be you're not going to get
satisfying answers. There was somebody.
When I was at Super Zoo and we were talking about diet and
things like that, and she said, how many brands have you ever

(57:14):
asked what are those natural spices or natural ingredients?
And she said, how many have you done that with?
And so for the rest of the day when I was visiting food booths,
I asked them, well, what are theingredients in this?
And let me tell you, there are about 3 people that were able to
tell me what those were. And the other people were just
like, I don't know. And I was like, OK, well there's

(57:36):
something to this then. So that's, that's another rabbit
hole that I'm going to be going down because you should know
what those natural ingredients are.
Are they actually natural? Are they natural spices,
flavoring, whatever did we put them in to enhance the flavor?
Or are they actually natural flavors that are just in there
for whatever reason? So yeah, I thought it was very
interesting that I was unable toget a lot of clear answers on

(57:59):
that. Just one item on the food bag.
Yeah, two separate. Problems.
There's the lack of knowledge, which is for sure a thing.
Things you should be able to getanswers to in modern American
consumer culture. You can't should be that way.
You should know. You should be able to know.
And then there's the lack of education among the folks that

(58:20):
are telling you about it. And then they're just like,
can't understand the context, going to mislead, all that kind
of nonsense. It's wild.
It's a wild industry, that's forsure.
I appreciate you coming on againand going over this information
with us. I think it's really important
that we are educating and telling people what's next, what
to be looking for, and now they know they can read your book,

(58:42):
they can reach out to you, they can understand a little bit more
about this. We'll have those peer review
studies in the episode description.
What would you like to leave ourlisteners with today?
The only thing beyond. That that I think is worth
noting is if you've made it thisfar in the episode and you're
like, this guy knows what he's doing.
He's highlighting real problems and he's actually doing things
to try to fix them. One thing you can do is you can

(59:03):
become a shareholder in the company.
We have a dog food company that makes low carb dog food because
I, I believe all the things I'vetalked about on this show that
it's carbide the devil for dogs and cats and we're the only one
doing it, which means that Afco's new regulations, we're
going to be the first brand in the country to do it.
And when this change happens on an industry wide basis, one of

(59:24):
our biggest product challenges as a business is most of our
potential customers don't know how much carbohydrate is in
their existing food. They think already that they're
feeding a product like ours. And so when these new
regulations come into effect, it's going to blow a lot of
people's minds. So if you think that is the
recipe for our company taking off, you might want to consider
buying some shares and investingin our company.

(59:46):
I've been on the show to talk about the big lawsuit that we
filed over the DCM controversy. I've created a nonprofit.
We do a lot of things that are just all trying to solve this
generational problem. This veterinary community is
really cutting us into a pickle here.
How do we fix that? How do we get it back to a place
where they have solid, trustworthy knowledge base that
we can return to a world where we're like, have a question, ask

(01:00:08):
your vet, get a good answer, move.
Forward, if you believe in that,if you believe we're doing that
kind of stuff, you can buy some shares.
I'll give them the link. It's really easy to do.
It's not like I'm only speaking right now to, you know,
professional investors and like wealthy people.
You can buy $250 worth of sharesand it's like just as easy as
buying shares of Tesla. They're not publicly traded on

(01:00:30):
the New York Stock Exchange, butit's an Internet based platform
where it's just like, click, click, click, OK, buy 1000
shares and buy 250 shares. And it's helpful for us.
A lot of our customers have bought in, invested already.
And it gives me the sense of, yeah, I'm representing these
people now. They own a piece of the company.
I am accountable to that I gottastay on mission or they can kick

(01:00:52):
me out. You know, effectively they can
take over and run things differently than if I'm falling
off track. So I really like it as a
accountability that measure. And if you think we're doing
good things or you think, oh, this is the future of pet food
like I do, then pop over, take some of your savings and put it
into us instead of into some company that you hate.
That's good advice and to. Back a company that feels so

(01:01:13):
strongly about pet health. You can't go wrong.
So we'll make sure that you havethe link.
We'll make sure that you have the discount code so that you
can get your bag of food and tryit out.
And remember, these new labels are going to help us make so
many smarter choices for our dogs.
Be kind, spread joy, and invest in brands of dog food that have

(01:01:34):
your dog's health interest first, thank you for listening
to the dog who asked for more and for investing in your dog's
well-being today. If you've ever stood in the pet
food aisle feeling totally overwhelmed, you are not alone.
With so many options, it's easy to feel like you'll never know
what's actually right for your dog.
That's why I created a free nutrition resource to help you

(01:01:56):
cut through the noise and make more confident choices in your
pups health. You'll find the link in the show
notes. New episodes drop every Monday
and Wednesday. I'll see you next time.