Heavy Metals In Your Dog's Food?
They are in prenatal vitamins too...
Today we are sharing our thoughts about a recent news story about heavy metals in dog food. We discuss how contamination gets into food, which diets are concerning, and most importantly what you can do about it.
Contamination is everywhere
An article made headlines earlier this month. Popular dog foods contain 3 to 13 times more heavy metals than human food, including lead, mercury, arsenic, cadmium. CNN picked it up, and people were shocked. We weren’t.
Contamination isn’t a dog food problem. It’s a food problem. Most people don’t realize that contaminants are everywhere. As a regular reader you probably know heavy metals (and microplastics) exist in soil, water, and air. They get into plants and the animals that eat those plants. They’re in us and our pups.
You might be thinking, “human products are obviously better regulated than dog food”. Not exactly. One study found that 83% of prenatal vitamins (vitamins for pregnant women!) contained detectable levels of lead. Some of them also contained arsenic and thallium. There are currently zero federal limits on heavy metals in prenatal vitamins in the United States. California just passed the first state law requiring testing, and it doesn’t even take effect until 2027.
The bar is so low. If we can’t even keep contaminants out of supplements for some of our most vulnerable people, imagine what’s going on in feed-grade dog food.
Kibble is the worst, but “fresh” food isn’t off the hook
The Clean Label Project study found that dry kibble had the highest levels of heavy metals and contaminants. This is not exactly a surprise. Kibble is heavily processed, uses feed-grade ingredients, and further concentrates whatever is in those ingredients through high heat and pressure.
But here’s what a lot of people missed: freeze-dried and air-dried foods also had high contaminant levels. These are the products marketed as the “clean” alternative. The premium option. Some people pay hundreds of dollars a month for these options because of clever marketing.
The common denominator: synthetics
Even the “clean” or “fresh” dog foods rely on synthetic vitamins and inorganic mineral supplements to meet AAFCO requirements. These are the same types of additives that show up in the prenatal vitamin studies. Every additive is another ingredient from another supply chain with its own contamination risk. Most of these synthetic materials are made in China. More ingredients equals more processing, and a higher chance for stuff you don’t want ending up in the bowl.
Whole foods are better
No food is completely free of contaminants. An apple has trace amounts of whatever was in the soil it grew in, oysters contain some cadmium, and chicken thighs carry whatever the bird was exposed to. That’s just life on earth. But whole foods have a major advantage: fewer processing steps, fewer additives, and fewer chances for contamination to pile up.
When you cook a meal from scratch for your pup, you’re working with a handful of ingredients that you picked out yourself. A Pup Pot Meal has between 7-10 real food ingredients. Compare that to kibble with 40 ingredients, most synthetic, sourced from who knows where. “Fresh” food brands that lure you in with the promise of being “made with whole foods” still rely on synthetics to help balance the food. The use them because they’re cheaper, precise, but add greater risk of contamination.
What can you do?
Cook for your dog when you can. Whole foods from your grocery store that you cook yourself will give you the least processed, naturally nutritious meals.
If you buy commercial dog food or multivitamins, ask questions. Does the brand use synthetics? Do they test for heavy metals? Will they tell you where their ingredients are sourced from?
Don’t fall for the marketing. “Fresh” and “made with whole foods” are commonly misleading marketing terms
Rotate your ingredients. Variety means you’re not concentrating contaminants from a single source over and over again.
Contamination is everywhere and a lot of it is out of our control. The best we can do is reduce exposure by cooking at home and eating whole foods when we can!
All the best,
Joelle & R.A.