Understanding Pet Food Labels: What’s Really in the Bowl?

Dogs, cats, and the rubbish they’re being sold.

Pet food packaging loves a buzzword—natural, complete, balanced, premium. But turn the bag or tin around and you’ll often find a completely different story: vague meat sources, hidden sugars, cheap fillers, and ingredients you’d never knowingly feed your dog or cat.

Learning how to read a pet food label properly is one of the most important things you can do to improve your pet’s health. This blog breaks down what to look for, what to avoid, and how to spot when a brand is selling you marketing, not nutrition.

🥩 Low Meat Content, High Marketing Spin

Pet foods that say “with chicken” or “with beef” can legally include as little as 4% of that named meat. The rest? Usually made up of cheaper fillers, derivatives, and flavourings.

Watch out for:

• Meat and animal derivatives – a legally vague term. Could include heads, feet, feathers, or meat from any species. If it doesn’t name the animal, it’s best avoided.

• Poultry meal / meat meal – rendered, dehydrated protein powder. Could be high-quality or utter rubbish—labels don’t say.

• Hydrolysed proteins – chemically processed proteins used for flavour or to bump up the protein content.

You want to see named meats and organs high on the list: chicken breast, beef heart, lamb liver, etc.

🍬 Sugars in Pet Food? Sadly, Yes.

It’s shocking, but some pet foods and treats boldly list “various sugars” right on the label. Others hide sugar behind more subtle names like:

• Caramel – used to colour the food brown (for your eyes, not your pet’s)

• Molasses

• Glucose syrup

• Beet pulp – technically “fibre”, but it's just a sugary, processed filler

• Glycerine / Glycerin – a sugar alcohol that keeps treats moist and chewy. Totally unnecessary and can cause gut issues in some pets

Sugar offers no benefit to your dog or cat. It fuels inflammation, yeast issues, dental problems, and excess weight. If you spot it on the label, it’s a no.

🌾 Fillers, Cereals & Protein Substitutes

Many dog and cat foods are padded out with cereals and low-quality carbs. These are there to bulk up the food cheaply—not to benefit your pet.

Common offenders:

• Cereals – a vague, catch-all term. Could mean wheat, maize, barley… or a mix. You’ll never know.

• Wheat / maize / corn – difficult to digest, common allergens, and totally unnecessary.

• Vegetable protein extracts – used to make the protein percentage look good on paper, but it’s not the right kind of protein for carnivores.

• Beet pulp – left over from sugar beet processing. It’s basically ultra-processed fibre, not real nutrition.

• Soya / soy protein – cheap and heavily used in some foods, but not ideal for many pets.

🎨 Artificial Additives

Many commercial pet foods still contain artificial colours and preservatives—despite being marketed as “natural.”

Look out for:

• Artificial colourings – added for your benefit, not your pet’s. Dogs and cats don’t care what colour their food is.

• Artificial flavours – often used to make bland, low-meat foods more appealing.

• Synthetic preservatives – like BHA, BHT, and ethoxyquin. These are restricted or banned in some human foods, but still allowed in pet food.

Better brands use natural preservatives like rosemary extract or tocopherols (vitamin E).

💡 Quick Tip: Don’t Get Fooled by Fancy Terms

Just because something is cold pressed, air-dried, or gently cooked doesn’t automatically mean it’s high quality.

These are great feeding formats when done right—but some brands use the buzzwords to sound premium while still packing the food with low meat content, cereals, and hidden fillers.

The key is always the ingredients.
If meat isn’t first on the list—or if it’s full of vague terms like “cereals” or “animal derivatives”—then it’s not a quality food, no matter how posh the process sounds.

✅ What Should You Look For?

Good pet food doesn’t need to be complicated. Just look for:

• Named meats (e.g. turkey, duck, lamb) listed first

• Simple, recognisable ingredients

• No vague terms like "meat derivatives" or "cereals"

• No added sugars, colourings, or synthetic preservatives

• A short, transparent ingredient list you can actually understand

If it sounds like it was written by a lawyer—or a chemist—it’s probably not food your pet should be eating.

🚩 Red Flag Ingredient Checklist

Here’s your no-nonsense list of what to avoid:

❌ Meat and animal derivatives
❌ Cereals
❌ Various sugars / caramel / glucose syrup / molasses / glycerine
❌ Beet pulp
❌ Vegetable protein extracts
❌ Wheat / maize / corn / soy / rice fillers
❌ Artificial colours / flavours / preservatives (BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin)
❌ Hydrolysed proteins (unless advised by your vet for a medical need)

Final Word

The front of the bag is advertising. The back of the bag is the truth.

Once you know how to read a pet food label properly, you’ll never unsee how much rubbish is passed off as “premium” or “complete.” The more informed you are, the better choices you can make—and the healthier your dog or cat will be for it.

Their wellbeing starts in the bowl. Let’s make sure what goes in there actually supports it.