What is “Meal” and When is it a Good Ingredient in Pet Foods?

Pet guardians are increasingly conscious of the quality of ingredients that go into what they are feeding their dog or cat. But as they read the labels and search the internet, the topic of “meat meal” is still very confusing to many people. This appears on dry pet food labels as “chicken meal,” “beef meal,” “lamb meal,” or whatever the protein source used to create it. There is a great deal of misinformation out there about “meat meal” and it can be very difficult for pet food shoppers to sort through.

“Meal” is defined by pet food regulators at AAFCO (Association of American Feed Control Officials) as “an ingredient which has been ground or otherwise reduced to particle size” (2008 AAFCO Official Publication, p. 246). “Meal” is just a dried form of the protein source used to create it. This is why meals have higher protein by weight than fresh meats…the water has been removed.

When evaluating pet foods, what is more important to determining the quality of a given product is the quality of the ingredients that went into creating the “meal.” Nature’s Logic meals are just dried versions of the high- quality protein sources that go into our foods: Clean muscle meat, which can contain the skin and bone, with no internal organs, feathers, feet, heads, etc. The meats and poultry we use come straight from the human processing plants.

Even though our meats, poultry, fruits, and vegetables come from human-edible processing sources, we cannot say it is good for human consumption after these ingredients have been put together in a pet food manufacturing facility. No pet food can do that legally.

So when a dog or cat is eating a Nature’s Logic food with “meal” in the ingredients, they are getting the same or better protein sources as any food with chicken, beef, lamb, etc. It all depends upon the quality of the protein that is used to begin with, and Nature’s Logic uses very high-quality proteins. For more information about Nature’s Logic 100% natural pet foods, please visit http://www.natureslogic.com/.