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Ingredient Splitting: This is a term that refers to the way pet food manufacturers can hide the true content of their foods. For example, if a food is comprised mostly of corn products, but the manufacturer wants the consumer to believe it is a mostly meat product, the manufacturer can divide the corn in his foods into small categories such as ground corn, and corn gluten meal. Now that the corn product is divided into two smaller ingredients, the manufacturer can list the meat source first, making it appear that the food is mainly meat, instead of mainly corn, as it really is.
Of the top four ingredients of Purina's O.N.E. Dog Formula -- chicken, ground yellow corn, ground wheat, and corn gluten meal -- two are corn-based products from the same source. When components of the same whole ingredient are listed separately (ground yellow corn and corn gluten meal) it appears that there is less corn than chicken, even when the whole ingredient may weigh more than the chicken.
Another Example...
Lamb Meal, Ground Rice, Rice Flour, Rice Bran, Poultry Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of natural Vitamin E), Rice Gluten, Dried Egg Product, Dried Beet Pulp
While Lamb Meal is the first ingredient listed, if we combined all four rice ingredients into just rice, then rice would probably weigh the most, which means this food is predominantly rice. Not what you thought is it?
Fragment or splitting ingredients as above is bad for two reasons.
1) It is deceptive
2) it takes away from the nutritional value of the food. Whole grains are always more nutritious when used whole.
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