Blue Buffalo Dog Food with “Life Source Bits”
Buy BLUE Adult Formula for Dogs from PetsMart
I’m always looking for pet food I can actually trust to feed my dogs and know they’re getting healthy, nutritional food, but usually I can only find it in specialty dog stores. They eat home-prepared meals for breakfast, but dinner is usually a quick bite of kibble and/or chopped up dog food logs.
So I was happy to find Blue Buffalo’s product lines of food for dogs and cats at my local PetSmart store. They’re made with human-grade chicken (or lamb), vegetables, and whole grains. (Did I mention that what’s healthy for you is generally healthy for your dogs, too?) The “Life Source Bits” included in the kibble contain added nutrients and anti-oxidants and are cold-formed (no heat used) to preserve efficacy.
I now keep two types of kibble on hand for my dogs. One is the Blue Buffalo “BLUE Adult Formula for Dogs” (the chicken version), and the other is any one of several top-quality specialty dog foods such as Innova’s new Evo line.
Of course, high-quality kibble is perfect for clicker training. Reinforce your dog like crazy, then cut down on supper a bit….
April 6th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Like many other pet owners, with the recent pet food recall and scary news about contaminants, I took a closer look at the food I’ve been feeding my pets. And I started wondering about those unpronouncable chemical names for supplements that were at the bottom of the ingredient lists…
On the Dog Food Project site at http://www.dogfoodproject.com I learned that the synthetic form of Vitamin K (derivatives of menadione) is suspected of causing several problems and has been banned from use in human food and supplements in Europe and by the FDA. I also learned that Blue Buffalo has been adding it to their pet food as are many other pet food manufacturers — I saw a form of menadione listed in the ingredients in a can of “natural” pet food in my local natural foods store as I was shopping around for alternatives.
That alarmed me, and I wrote to Blue Buffalo with my concerns — and I also talked to one of my vets.
My vet wasn’t aware of any known problems with Vitamin K3 or menadione derivatives, although he’s going to see if he can dig up more information. What little he could find while I was still in his office indicated that menadione could be toxic if given “parenterally” (any way other than orally, through the digestive tract). If taken orally, microbes in the gastro-intestinal tract change its biologic activity into something closer to Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone, used by vets as an antidote to some poisons). So my vet’s view was that menadione was unlikely to be a problem, even for Nico with his recent autoimmune disease (which he’s recovering from remarkably well!).
Meanwhile, the folks at Blue Buffalo assure me that they have removed all forms of menadione from their food beginning in October of 2006, although there are still bags and cans of food that have it listed in the ingredients as the company is in the process of switching over to bags and labels with updated information.
This is contrary to what’s been recently reported on the Dog Food Project website, but I’m choosing to believe my vet (that menadione is more likely to be a marketing problem than a serious health problem) and Blue Buffalo in this matter. I’ll be looking for menadione on the labels of food I buy in the future (and also possible synonyms for it, including “Vitamin K supplement”) but I’m thinking of it more as a sign that the company’s taking some shortcuts (vitamin K3 is apparnetly cheaper than vitamin K1, which is found naturally in leafy green vegetables) than a real warning sign of something dangerous in the food.
Ann Dupuis
Your Dream Dog