Talk:Science Diet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm willing to believe that there are unhealthy ingredients included in dog foods, but the "Questionable Ingredients" section needs wordsmithing and better sources to be appropriate. Plus, once these ingredients have a NPOV and good source(s), it can be applied to the dozens of other dog food brands that undoubtedly also contain these ingredients. --Quintote 21:11, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:ScienceDiet.jpg

Image:ScienceDiet.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:00, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why is there nothing but a press-release blurb on this topic?

Disclaimer - this is a discussion post, not an edit of the stub entry, and would need edit and citation before anything would be added to the entry.

This is a stub entry, but has had a whole lot of activity. Several of its past versions had useful information that Hills would not necessarily like to be general knowledge. Was it removed by them? Why?

There should be information about the product line, of factual, verifiable nature, beyond the press-release blurb that the whole entry now consists of. (citations needed...)

Things like:

• Science Diet was once primarily marketed through veterinarians, who profited by the sales not only by the markup but with premiums from the manufacturer. Now that Science Diet is available in grocery stores, the void has been filled by a new, more expensive line of specialty foods in the "Prescription Diet(R)" line, only available from veterinarians.
• Science Diet is an expensive, "premium" brand, yet many of their products use the same inexpensive fillers as low-priced grocery-store brands.

Such cheap filler ingredients include:

• Ground corn
• Corn meal
• Corn gluten (a "protein content" enhancer)
• Soybean mill run (waste product of soy processing - heat-treated soybean hulls - used to add fiber bulk and protein to cattle feed)
• Brewer's rice (waste product of adult beverage fermentation processes)
• Chicken by-product meal (consists of skin, beaks, feet, intestines, bones and the occasional feather)
• Wheat
• Wheat bran
• Wheat gluten (another "protein content" enhancer)
• Barley

If you take out the chicken by-product meal, that list sounds a lot like silage. Stuff you feed a cow. Guess what - cows are herbivores. Their intestinal tracts are made for breaking down all that plant matter. Dogs and cats are carnivores - they should be eating meat, not silage. Corn is not easily digested by dogs, and generally speaking, will pass through undigested, giving no benefit to the dog - that's what makes dog "doo" mushy and fluffy - eating dog foods bulked out with grain fillers. Worse, wheat and barley are grains with a high incidence of "food allergy" intolerance reactions. Dogs aren't meant to subsist on plant proteins, and proteins are the most common allergens - feeding your dog wheat and wheat gluten (gluten is the "protein" part of grain) can actually trigger food allergies.

The big food recall with the Chinese pet-food ingredients containing melamine, which was killing our pets, was centered around gluten. The melamine made the "rice gluten" appear in testing to have a higher protein content. When you look at your dog or cat food label and you see "corn gluten" or "wheat gluten" or "rice gluten" on it, high on the list of ingredients, what that is is a cheap way to "pad the numbers" - it makes the "crude protein" percentage higher. It doesn't matter to the pet food manufacturer that it's a protein your dog either won't digest or will have an adverse reaction to - it's "protein." To the uneducated consumer, that means "meat" but what you're buying is more often than not, grain-based protein with a little meat to make it sound like there's meat there.

Regarding chicken by-product meal - the pet food industry will say that the internal organs and bone in chicken by-product meal is good for the cat or dog. This may be true, but when the only meat-related ingredient in a food intended for a carnivore is chicken by-product meal, and the majority of the protein content is not from meat, but from grain fillers that the meat-eating animal doesn't digest anyway - and might develop intolerance for (food allergy) - how is that good nutrition for the animal?

Also, now that Science Diet is available at grocery stores, Hills' super-premium "Prescription Diet(R)" brand - their replacement "only available through a veterinarian" (at a premium price) brand, also, in many formulations, still carry the same cheap filler ingredients, including those listed - often as the main ingredient, sometimes more than one of them in the top four or five ingredients listed.

Their "prescription" formulations intended for dogs with food allergies don't contain corn, wheat or barley filler, but the formulation for dogs with gastrointestinal problems is mostly corn. Gee, that makes sense... give them something that will pass right through.

When was the last time you heard about farmers having problems with feral dogs raiding their cornfields? Usually, they're raiding the henhouse... As Judge Judy says, don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining. Whothehey (talk) 05:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)