Is your food complete and balanced? What is the nutritional profile?Updated 6 months ago

Yes, absolutely. We have gone to great lengths to ensure that our diet is complete and balanced, which means that we provide all the essential nutrients that adult dogs need to thrive in the right proportions. Our diets are formulated to meet AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) nutritional profile for adult maintenance, which specifies the minimum (and sometimes maximum) amount of the 35+ essential nutrients that are known to be necessary in a dog’s diet. 

All essential nutrients can be sourced without animal-derived ingredients, so the formulation process is similar to other meat-inclusive canine diets. Using plant-based protein and fat sources just changes which nutrients require additional consideration, as minerals like phosphorus are abundant in chicken recipes and more scarce in plant proteins.

First, we align on the nutritional goals for the food. We designed our initial adult and senior formulas to be higher in protein, dietary fiber, and omega-3 fat than the typical dog food, with a target of 25-30% of calories from protein. We also establish guidelines around our ingredient approach, including certain target compositions of food groups (i.e which legumes, whole grains, vegetables, and oilseeds to include)

We then use the same software virtually every large pet food company uses to calculate the different combinations of ingredients we could use to hit our nutritional target and fulfill all essential nutrient requirements. There are many feasible combinations of inclusion rates that would be nutritionally acceptable, and we use factors like ingredient sustainability (i.e. barley vs. rice water requirements) and palatability to choose the permutation that we have proven dogs will like and will meet our sustainability targets. 

Once the formula is dialed in and reviewed by our team of experts, we run a test batch at the bakery and send it to a laboratory for actual nutritional analysis (versus the “book” values the formulation software provides) to ensure dogs are getting exactly what we promise on our labels. Depending on the analysis, we either move forward with production or make slight adjustments. For each batch of food, we send a sample to a laboratory for analysis to ensure it meets our standards and nutritional requirements, as we recognize slight variations in plant quality can affect the nutrient content.  This activity is more than the large companies do, and we publish the test results on our website. Our most recent analyses are available here.