EoB #8: Dog Food

Last week I saw a sign in a pet store window that made me do a double-take: “Keto food and treats inside!” I say this as a fanatical dog owner and lover who only wants my precious baby, Bean, to have the best of everything: We may have lost the plot when it comes to feeding our pets.

For the last three decades, dog food has slowly shifted from kibble to cuisine. Recently, several key factors have sped the process along, including a rise in obsession with organic, unprocessed foods; the social media pressure to keep up with the Joneses; exposure to hyper-targeted ads; a renewed obsession with healthy living spurred by the pandemic; several high-profile dog food contamination cases under legacy brands; and the spike in pandemic puppies.

The dog food industry is now projected to reach over $23 billion, fueled in part by the trend of mimicking the food owners eat. But how much of it is based on science and how much is just shrewd marketing?

The Land of Milk and Fat With Meat

If you had to guess, when do you think food specifically made for dogs first became a thing? I probably would have said the 40s or 50s - and I would have been thousands of years off.

While the Greeks and Romans certainly weren’t producing Alpo, many early societies had dogs for protection, hunting, farming, and companionship, and it was important that they ate well. (My fellow meathead gym bros will be happy to learn that whey was a common ingredient in ancient homemade dog foods, often mixed with things like bread, meat, and table scraps.)

Dogs’ evolution was shaped by their proximity to humans. While they’re primarily meat-eaters they can, and do, eat a little bit of almost everything - technically they are “omnivores with a carnivorous bias.” Without getting too deep in the weeds, their teeth and the length of their digestive tracts are ideal for meat, but they also have the genes and enzymes necessary for breaking down carbohydrates, like the bread that they were often fed before commercial dog food was available. (This is one of the key differences between dogs and wolves, and will be important later – stick with me.)

From The Docks of London to Antarctica’s Iceburgs

In 1860, James Spratt, an American living in London, noticed dogs begging for sailors’ hardtack at the docks and decided to experiment with making biscuits specifically for them. His product was a hit and by 1870 he had a large-scale manufacturing facility in London, expanding to the United States by 1890.

It’s hard to overstate how innovative Spratt’s product was and how successful he was at marketing it. Spratt’s was the first company to create a billboard in London, featuring illustrations of wild bison they claimed were a key ingredient in their biscuits. Spratt also nailed identifying and marketing to his target audience. While the sailors at the docks may have delighted in feeding strays pieces of biscuit, they weren’t going to buy a box of Spratt’s. Instead, the company focused exclusively on the wealthy - especially English country gentlemen - using “snob appeal.”

Advertisements featured fashionable members of high society with beautiful purebred dogs. The brand established itself as “the principal food of show dogs'' and ran campaigns focused on blue ribbon pups who were Spratt’s loyalists. They also sponsored famous dog shows like Cruft’s to solidify themselves as a premium brand.

Spratt’s dog cakes were even used by expedition teams to Antarctica because they were advertised as being advanced in nutritional science and specifically created for high-performing dogs - plus they were much easier to transport than bags of meat and bones and didn’t require any preparation. (Unfortunately, they tried to feed the dogs about 10 ounces of what were essentially MilkBones each day while on long sled drives and expeditions. All teams eventually needed to supplement their Spratt’s with fish, seals, and whale blubber.)

The pet food industry continued to develop slowly, primarily focused on dry biscuits that sat, nutritionally, somewhere between what we would consider food and treats today. Canned, wet dog food became popular in the 1920s when the brand Ken-L Ration hit supermarket shelves. Their cans and ads promoted “lean, red meat” as a main ingredient, sourced primarily from the hundreds of thousands of military horses left over after World War I. This was not as controversial an ingredient as one might imagine. In 1919 Congress had authorized the Department of Agriculture to oversee inspection of horse meat for human consumption due to the shortage of beef post-war, so the idea of feeding it to dogs wasn’t too much of a reach.

In 1956, established animal feed brand Purina repurposed the manufacturing process of extrusion that had been invented for creating shelf-stable dry foods like cereal, and used it to create the first dog kibble - Dog Chow. This new dry kibble was able to be sold in the bulk bags we know today, quickly making Purina Dog Chow the #1 brand of dog food.

From the launch of Dog Chow until the mid-80s, dog food didn’t change much. In 1986, Purina launched the ProPlan brand of dog food, with real meat as the first ingredient. Several years later, Hill’s Pet Nutrition began marketing dog foods specifically for various breed sizes backed by their own scientific studies. This ten-year period from 1986 to 1996 marks the beginning of a dramatic shift in the way people see their pets, including what they’re fed.

Atkins for Akitas, Vegan for Vizslas

In 1994, the FDA mandated nutrition labeling on all packaged foods and Americans became more aware than ever of what they were putting in their bodies. By the late 90s and early 00s, diets like the South Beach Diet, Atkins, Paleo, and The Zone had become wildly popular. Simultaneously, organic food became more widely available and food production methods have become better at simulating the taste and texture of meat, increasing interest in meat-free lifestyles. Americans have also become more aware of, and afraid of, processed foods.

And what does that mean for our beloved pets, that we treat like (or better than) our own children? If you aren’t eating carbs, or want to go back to your ancestral caveman roots because you genuinely believe it’s good for you, wouldn’t the same apply to your pup? And if processed foods are the root of all evil, should we be feeding them to our dogs? These questions have created a booming pet food niche that has bled over into the mainstream, grocery store brands.

In an interview with The Atlantic, Don Tomala, a pet product branding expert who was involved in the launch of Kibbles’n Bits in the 1980s, recalls that in the old days of dog food, “it was food for your dog—that was about as far as it went.” The kibble flavor was often just “meat” and the packaging and advertisement featured goofy, cartoon dogs. As pet food evolved, two of the first noticeable changes were the shift to identifiable proteins like chicken, salmon, pork, and beef, and more lifestyle imagery featuring real owners and pets together.

Today pet food companies make a dog version of nearly every human trend. There is vegan dog food, low-carb dog food, grain-free dog food (sometimes marketed as gluten-free food), high-protein dog food, raw dog food, non-processed dog food, paleo dog food, and keto dog food. There are dog beers, dog wine, and dog birthday cakes. (There are even dog Chewy Vuitton and Coco Chew-nel accessories, and dog bongs.) If you can buy it for yourself, you can buy it for your dog.

Putting Lipstick On A Pig’s Ear

The marketer in me finds these food trends both brilliant and fascinating. One of the biggest challenges of the modern dog food market is that what dogs want to eat and what people want to feed them can often be at odds. Dogs are primarily driven by smell - the stinkier the better. People, on the other hand, generally do not want intense raw meat smells in their home, potentially all day if their pup is a slow eater. Dogs care very little about color, shape, or texture - sensory cues that humans are ultra-sensitive to when preparing and eating food. While many manufacturers have moved to include whole foods, like berries and vegetables, or create pieces of kibble that look like whole foods, your dog does not care. They basically just want a big, smelly piece of meat, and maybe some grains and veggies soaked in meat juice.

One example of this disconnect is in the semi-recent backlash against byproduct meal, organs, heads and feet in pet food. Many specialty dog foods have leaned into marketing that they only include human-grade food like deboned chicken breast. While Americans may prefer boneless white meat, dogs actually enjoy and thrive on organ meats and bones. It’s a bit ironic that modern consumers will pay a premium for whole meat-only dog food only to supplement their dogs’ diets with special treats of marrow bones, bully sticks, pigs ears, chicken feet, and gizzards.

Cultivating Canine Orthorexia

While the marketer in me loves the ingenuity of creating human-like food for dogs, the dog mom in me has some concerns. I get it - people often find the goopy wet food and crumby, brown pellets of kibble unappetizing to look at. They’re apparently even more unappetizing in taste. In a double-blind study 72% of participants ranked dog food last in a taste test of pâté, Spam, and several other pureed meat products. (Absolutely woof at the thought of eating dog food on a Carr’s Table Water Cracker.)

The downside to creating food that is highly visually appealing with a pleasantly light smell from a human perspective is that it may, in fact, not be appetizing at all for your dog. In a recent New York Times article, a dog owner had switched her dog from traditional dog food to The Farmer’s Dog, a human-grade food heavily advertised on social media, only to find that he was “unimpressed,” finding that after a few meals “he was like, ‘Oh, it’s this stuff again.’”

Another potential issue is ensuring your dog receives sufficient nutritional content. While it may make you happy to be keto or vegan, your dog doesn’t have a say in these decisions. As mentioned at the beginning of this issue, domesticated dogs evolved alongside their human companions. A typical, healthy dog does not need a grain-free diet, as they have the digestive tools necessary to break down carbs. They do need a significant quantity of protein and fat each day, as well as essential vitamins and minerals, which may be difficult to achieve with a vegetarian or vegan diet. Just like you wouldn’t make your dog do a juice cleanse with you, it might be best to leave them out of your forays into Paleo, Keto, and other fad diets.

_{(Note: Cat owners, you absolutely should not feed a cat a vegetarian diet - they are obligate carnivores and this diet could weaken or kill them.)}

In the end, the best strategy is likely a doggy version of the old Michael Pollen adage: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants animals. (Taste of the Wild, if you wanna use that one LMK.)

An Old-Timey Cartoon Dog Stealing Sausage Links

• When I buy my Architectural Digest home, this will be my first purchase.

• What, Your Dog Doesn’t Have Her Own Refrigerator?

• Bernie Sanders meme voice I am once again asking you to buy this ingenious device.

• If you have a lil rescue mutt, this is a very fun purchase. It’s pricey, so I recommend waiting for a sale or Prime Day (there’s another one coming up next week).

• I’m fascinated by the idea of a doggy air mattress crate.

As a thank you for reading to the end, send an email to [email protected] and include your mailing address. I’ll be sending out a little treat to everyone who writes in. 💌