Hello & help with dried complete food & acrylamide

Hello,

This is my first time posting so apologies if this has been dealt with already.

I would greatly appreciate some help with what to feed my girls.  I have 2 Bearded Collies of 6 years & 8 months.  They are currently being fed half dried & wet food. The puppy has More complete dried food and Symply puppy wet food. My older dog has More dried & various wet foods mainly Canagan, Natures Menu, Naturo.  I was unaware of acrylamide until I read some articles last week and I am now worried as it seems difficult to work out how much would be present in the food as the cooking method is not on the packaging.  I want to feed the best to my girls so I wanted to know if I would be better to feed only wet food and no dry.  I am also considering changing the dried element to cold pressed.

I would be grateful for any advise as I am now confused as to what would be best to give them for the future.  They are both healthy on what they eat now and their stools are fine so I have no other issues apart from the acrylamide.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Hello and welcome to the forum Rosey1001,
This has been a major consideration for me when trying to decide what to feed. I am not sure if you read this article  here As well as the temperatures used to prepare the food, another potential issue seems to be the amount and type of fillers with  starchy carbohydrates being a problem.
If you are unsure about how the food you are currently using is prepared, then you could try contacting the manufactures for more information.

Personally I like to mix things up a bit. I mostly feed a raw complete but I also feed wet cooked on occasion or whatever we are having for tea if it is suitable. If I feed dry, I do tend to go for cold pressed but I will give a little baked food as treats.

I am lucky that my dog doesn't seem to have a sensitive stomach and tolerates most foods well. Others may find that mixing things up too much may cause problems.

Whatever you decide there will be pros and cons. I hope you can find a solution which suits you and your girls.

Hi Tinyplanets,

Thanks very much for your reply and advice.  I did start my puppy on raw food as the breeder was feeding that to her so maybe I will have to go back to it.    My older dog was not so keen but maybe we will have another go.   I think I will start by changing the dry food to the cold pressed with the current wet food and have a think about going back to raw.    Luckily they seem to be ok with different foods so I can vary their meals rather than sticking to one food.    I  just didn't realise that the processed food could be so bad especially as they seem healthy at the moment and I am glad that I came across the article on here.

Thanks again for your advice.

Acrylamide in dog food concerns me too. I tried cold pressed food and it was alright but after some time of using it I found that for a few reasons it just wasn't quite right for my dogs. I also tried raw more than once but that wasn't right for them either. I don't have much freezer space and with three dogs it was getting rather expensive.

Now I have all of them on a grain free kibble and yes, the acrylamide is still in the back of my mind but they are all settled and doing well.  They are much better on this particular food so I will stick with it and live for the moment because we don't know what the future will bring. Dogs have a great many potential risks to life  e.g. road traffic accidents, ingestion of poisons/ foreign bodies and lots more besides so I would imagine that acrylamide might be well down the list of risk factors.

However, as you are worried about it I think that if you want to avoid acrylamide altogether you will have to go raw. The only other thing to do would be to look at the lightly steamed products such as those that Natures Menu produce. Not sure if they have acrylamide in them so it would be best to ask them.

Hi Dottie,

Thanks for your reply.  I am the same raw is a bit inconvenient and my older dog didn't really like it.  I will try the cold pressed and see how we get on.    If that doesn't suit them I will cut out the dry food and just feed grain free wet.     Out of interest I will contact the makers of More and ask them what they have to say about the process of making their food.      I hope that I am worrying for nothing but as you can’t see it you don’t know how much they might be getting. 

Thanks again for the advice if I get a reply from More I will post it here.

It's a shame your older dog does not take to raw because it would be a solution to your concerns about acrylamide. Have you looked into the freeze and air dried products? There aren't many - the only ones that spring to mind right now are ZiwiPeak and Pure.  I have thought about them myself but the recipes/analysis would not work for my dogs.  Having three, I need to find a product that is suitable for all of them.

It doesn't add much to the discussion, but I forgot to say that my dogs have a fair bit less than the RDA and I always top up with home cooked chicken, lean meat or fish for the extra protein. I have given a topper of wet food in the past but prefer this method because I only want to increase the protein, not carbohydrate and fat. I also like to give them a treat of scrambled egg once or twice a week, again for the protein.  In the past weight control has been a problem but I am finding that it seems better now and that they are getting a reasonable quantity of food.  However, I'm not saying that this is the right method of feeding dogs because they all have different needs and of course the acrylamide is still a possible risk. 

I guess that it is a case of weighing up the pros and cons and finding a food that suits your dog and satisfies your concerns about acrylamide.   

Hello, I too have concerns about the acrylamide issue and it is one of the reasons I do not feed dry food. I like the food to have gone through the minimum of processing. I also feel variety is important. I feed mine raw, home cooked or tinned. Home cooking is not as difficult as you may think and there is plenty of advice and recipes about. I use a slow cooker. As for the difficulties with raw I would suggest you speak to the different companies. There are different recommendations on how to introduce it.  I've been dealing with Honeys recently and the are very helpful, as are Nutriment. Also prepared raw does vary. Honeys and Wolf Tucker is coarser, more like mince we buy, Nutriment and Natural Instinct much wetter. Ive only tried Natures Menu nuggets and they are not too wet.
I would also recommend you read all the information on this site and the advice papers. There are many dubious ingredients about. You might want to put the ingredients of More into the calculator to see how it scores. I notice it does have a couple of contentious ingredient in maize and digest.

Hi Dottie,

Thanks again for your help & advice.  I bought a box of Pure when my puppy was on raw in case I forgot to get some out of the freezer and they both liked that so I will get some more.  I have seen the Ziwipeak food in my local pet store so will have a look at that as well. 

I think the first thing is to cut out the dry food and find a solution with a mixture of good tinned food and introduce some raw a bit at a time.  Can you feed both together as I read somewhere  that you should only feed raw or processed or did that just mean dry food.

Thanks again I really appreciate your help.

HI DQ,

Thanks for your reply to my post and the advice.  I am definitely going to cut out the dry food and try to find something that they will both eat.  Good tinned and a mixture of raw hopefully.  My puppy was on Nutriment and I found that to be very good but not for the both of them.  I will have another go as that sounds like the solution for the acrylamide.  I may try home cooking and will Google for some recipies.

I did notice the maize & digest in the list on the More food so maybe it was not as good as I thought.

Thanks again for your help.

Have you looked at Natures Menu cans and pouches?  From their website:
"Our cans and pouches are gently steamed in their packaging to lock in goodness. Made with real human-grade meat and no artificial colours or flavourings." 
I don't know what is involved in their steaming process but these products tend to be low in carbohydrate anyway so could well be suitable for both your dogs.  I had my youngest on their Adult Pouches for some time and she loved them.  They contain a small amount of brown rice.   I found it a tad expensive to feed all three with these but they come out considerably cheaper when bought in bulk from Berriewoods.  However, it is not worth buying a large quantity until it is determined that the product suits the dog.  The new pouches are the Country Hunter range and they are grain free.  It may be worth your while investigating these products - their customer service staff will be able to give advice regarding acrylamide.

Hi Dottie,

I often buy their tins and pouches for my older dog and she loves them I will get one for puppy and see if it suits her too.  I have been out today and bought a box of their freeze dried complete meal to see what that is like they have just had some and seemed to like it.  I have just looked on their website and might give the frozen nuggets a go my older one may prefer that to the mince kind.

Thanks again it will be trial and error to see what suits them best I think.

I wish I'd have known about berriewoods sooner as it's so much cheaper than I've been paying. Thanks dottie

You are welcome.  It's free delivery with a spend over a certain amount.  I've also used GWJ Titmuss in the past and they too have competitive prices.