Pet Food: Azmira

There was a question recently about why I think so highly of Azmira. All veterinarians believe that providing good basic nutrition does more to improve pets’ health than any action pet guardians make. There are hundreds of pet foods, but many can be eliminated as good for pets’ health based on:

ingredients,
history of problems, and
company ethics.

1. Here is a list of harmful or unhealthy ingredients that some companies put in pet foods because they are cheap:

chemicals (BHT, BHA, ethoxyquin),
hormone-fed beef, lamb, or poultry,
farmed fish,
fillers,
animal fat,
dyes,
sugars,
citric acid, and
gimmicky ingredients.

2. Company problems that eliminate them as reputable sources of pet food include marketing foods with:

corn that is not tested for aflatoxin
excessive amounts of Vitamin D
mold that forms in storage
packaging that does not preserve nutrients, especially the antioxidants.

The first 3 problems have been in the national news recently for killing pets. Unfortunately, more often than aflatoxin, vitamin imbalance and mold kill pets outright, they just make pets sick and the food is not suspected as the cause of poor health.

3. Company ethics that eliminate them as a reputable sources of pet food include using:

a list of ingredients that is manipulated to place meat higher on the list than it would normally fall. Companies using this tactic buy an ingredient in many forms then list each form separately. Thus, rice becomes white rice, rice middlings, brown rice, rice bran …. When each ingredient is weighed separately, it will weigh less than meat and will be listed below meat on the ingredients list. This places meat first but pets are not actually receiving much meat.
advertising that suggests a useful concentration of an ingredient, such as glucosamine, when the ingredient is in a token amount.

Azmira is a company with stellar ingredients, great ethics, and no history of problems. In addition, their foods are formulated by a naturopathic physician with a PhD in nutrition. Azmira foods have been selected every year for the past 5 years by Whole Dog Journal as among the best. (The Journal has only tested foods for 5 years.) Azmira is also a company that is pleasure to do business with.

An equally important reason for recommending Azmira, is that in food test trials pets chose to eat Azmira foods before the choose to eat other foods. You can’t get better than that.