Purina One Natural Blends Versus the Good Life Recipe Food for Dogs
The two dog food products are very similar in that the packaging of both dog foods claims that the food is manufactured with natural ingredients and that it is healthy for your dog. Both products are dry dog foods.
I decided to make a more detailed examination of the products. I compared the products in five areas (for this project I examined The Goodlife Recipe's real chicken, brown rice & vegetables and Purina One Natural Blend's chicken and oat meal formula):
Ingredients
I took a look at the first seven ingredients listed on the packaging of each dog food. (Note, there were more than seven ingredients in each dog food, I just looked at the first seven because packaging laws require that ingredients be listed in the order of greatest amount to least amount.) Here is what I found.
Purina One Naturals: chicken, corn gluten meal, poultry byproduct meal, brown rice, oat meal, whole grain corn, and whole grain wheat.
The Goodlife Recipe: ground corn, chicken by-product meal, corn gluten meal, chicken animal fat, whole grain brown rice, natural poultry flavor, and dried peas
I was pleased to see that first seven ingredients were natural sounding and not the names of chemicals. If the ingredients were truly listed on the package in order from greatest to least amount, then that means that both products do contain mostly natural ingredients.
Nutrition
For the nutrition comparison I looked at five areas: crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber, moisture, and linoleic acid. (These nutritional elements are listed on the product label.) First, I wondered what linoleic acid was so I looked it up and found an answer on Yahoo Pets. Apparently linoleic acid meets the fat requirement for dogs.
I found that both dog foods contain the same amount of crude protein, (min) 26%. Purina One Natural Blends contains significantly more crude fat, (min) 16% than Goodlife Recipe (min) 10%. The Goodlife Recipe contained slightly more crude fiber (max) 4% than Purina One Natural Blends (max) 3%. The two dog foods contained an identical amount of moisture, (max) 12%. The Goodlife Recipe had slightly more linoleic acid than Purina One Natural Blends, (max) 1.5 % versus (max) 1.4%.
Quantity Required
At 16 and ½ pounds my dog is fairly small. I wondered how much of each food would meet her daily requirement. According to the packaging, I will need to feed her a little bit more of the The Goodlife Recipe dog food (1 ¾ cup) than the Purina One Natural Blends dog food (1 ½ cup).
Appearance
The two dog foods differ in appearance. The Purina One Natural Blends dog food is comprised of dry morsels that are roughly uniform in shape and color. The Goodlife Recipe dog food is made up of dry morsels of varying shapes and sizes. The differences between the morsel shapes and sizes may just be cosmetic, but I almost thought that I could see the various ingredients in the dog food: greenish morsels for the dried peas, tan morsels for the chicken animal fat, small lightly colored morsels for the ground corn, and so on.
Cost
The Goodlife Recipe dog food is slightly cheaper. I got a small package (4 lbs) of The Goodlife Recipe dog food for slightly over $4.00 at my local grocery store. This makes The Goodlife Recipe dog food just a little bit more than $1.00 a pound. The Purina One Natural Blends dog food was a little more expensive. I got a 2 lb container of Purina One Natural Blends dog food for slightly over $3.00. This makes the Purina One dog food about $1.50 a pound.
Let the Dog Decide
All in all, the products seemed very similar to me. As I mentioned earlier we had been using the Purina One Natural Blends product and our dog seemed healthy and happy. When we switched to The Goodlife Recipe I could detect no differences in the dog's health or behavior.
I decided to let the dog decide which dog food she preferred. I placed a handful of each dog food on the floor about a foot a part and waited to see which dog food the dog would choose. After sniffing both dog foods, our dog gobbled up all of the Goodlife Recipe dog food. She did eventually eat the Purina One Natural Blends dog food, but only after repeatedly checking the spot where the Goodlife Recipe dog food had been.
So, there you have it right from our dog's mouth. The Goodlife Recipe dog food has a slight advantage over Purina One Natural Blends dog food
Published by Laura Spencer
I am a freelance writer and blogger with over 19 years of researching, writing, copywriting and editing business documentation. My experience also includes creating online help systems for software packages... View profile
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- Yahoo Pets (pets.yahoo.com/pets/dogs/hn/nutrients_in_pet_foods)
- Linoleic acid meets the fat requirement for dogs.
- Purina One Natural Blends and The Goodlife Recipe are very similar.
- Purina One Natural Blends costs more per pound.
18 Comments
Post a CommentThree of the most basic indicators of whether a dog food is healthy or not are:
It shouldn't contain ANY corn (grain-free foods are healthiest, but if there are grains, things like rice and barley are far better than corn and wheat)
It shouldn't contain any non-specific animal products (such as animal fat or poultry by-products)
Two of the first three ingredients should be some form of meat product
On these base alone, both those foods fail hard, and those aren't even all the factors one should consider when selecting a dog food. Another good tip: if you can buy it from places like Walmart, Target, and King Soopers, it probably isn't the best. These places aren't concerned with pet health, and are just trying to bring in their money. Places like Whole Foods and Natural Grocers are better places to purchase foods (especially since foods from those places are organic). Even Pet Smart has at least a few good brands (Blue Buffallo, AvoDerm, and, as mentioned earlier, Natural Ba
My dogs eat the good life recipe ( not the beef kind) for all ages and I also mix their kibble with homemade dog food that I make in the crock pot... I make it with human grade discount meats ( for example, neck bones, pigs feet, turkey, & chicken) also, with rice, oats, eggs, 20% veggies( the best veggies are peas, carrots, string beans and kale and collards), a little garlic (not raw) in the summer to help control fleas, and in the winter some fish oil for added fat to help with the cold weather. I feed them the mix of kibble and doggy stew two times a day and they love it... I know plenty of dogs who have lived LONG healthy lives on eating cheap kibble, but I also feel better personally knowing that I am adding better homemade food to their diet...
Goodlife recipe dog food contains fillers and by products. "by products" include neck, legs, animal fat, and feathers of either beef or chicken. Please educate yourself before advertising the brand.
Goodlife recipe class action (http://hubpages.com/hub/Goodlife_Recipe_Class_Action_Law_Suit)
Nationwide class action lawsuit filed against pet food companies and retailers for misleading consumers regarding the contents of pet food
"Premium" pet food marketed and sold as "Complete and Balanced" has historically contained such items as euthanized dogs and cats, restaurant Grease, hair, hooves, and diseased animals, and other inedible garbage.
Amanda is absolutely right on target.
Dogp eople I know have been traying the raw diet but I'd be concerned about Salmonella
Thanks for all of the additional information on other dog food brands!
Continued... one of my dogs died of cancer and he was a Pedigree eater - see the ingredients of Pedigree (contains chemical preservatives). I cannot confirm the Pedigree killed my dog, but having him eat the same chemical preservative every day didn't help.
I order from Kumpi online and buy from Its a Pets Life in Plymouth MN.
... The End...thanks!
Continued....
I would not trust any of the food in a Petco or Petsmart....the sourcing of the ingredients and the "quality" is suspect. I may sound like a zealot now for non-conventional pet food industry foods, but I can't see trusting my pets lives with food that is sourced from the cheapest sources or the recipes changed to ensure profits stay up (all my view of course).
There is a lot of good information on the newer Pet Food Tales Blog http://www.petfoodtales.com and the pillar of the pet community, the Itchmo Blog and Forum http://www.itchmoforums.com and http://www.itchmo.com.
Check out http://www.kumpi.com and http://www.championpetfoods.com for information about those foods.
I would not feed any food with BHA/BHT as a preservative or any other chemical preservative. On occasion it doesn't hurt for a human to eat on a candy bar, but having that digested for every meal is, in my opinion, unsafe - one of my dogs died of cancer and he was a Pedigree eater - see the ingredient
I switched from Purina Beneful to Nutro to ProPlan and now I'm happily on Kumpi and Orijen. I also find I feed less of this food - so I'm not really spending much more per lb of food. I am not going back to any Purina products - something had to have changed in the recipes - my cats became lethargic and were throwing up on the ProPlan Senior. My dogs would sniff the ProPlan and ProPlan Selects and they would turn their nose away. Something wasn't right. Nutro caused one of my dogs to constantly want to eat grass after meals. So I stopped that. And then I get the mailer from Petsmart saying some of the brands I bought had been recalled.
After being on Kumpi and now mixed with Orijen, my pets are much healthier - the cats don't throw up anymore and I've not had any episodes of them not wanting to eat the food. On occasion I add Instinct wet, by Natures Variety, to the food as they like that texture.
I would not trust any of the food in a Petco or Petsmart....the sourcing of the ingredi
hace un tiempo que tengo tomandolo, es realmente una bebida cool so lo invito a que la traten y veran que no se arrepentiran se lo aseguro