What do you need to know when you're looking for a quality food for your pets ?

We'll try to guide you through some of the various tricks that some of the major manufacturers employ to make you buy their products.

• By law a food can be named something if it contains a minimum of 4% of that product. When you buy a food labelled 'Chicken & Rice', it may only contain 4% Chicken and Rice. So what is the other 96% ? Probably a cheap Bulking Agent like Wheat which is highly indegestible.
• Ingredients are found on the ingredients label in order of highest content. Look out for vague ingredients and added salts and sugars.
• Manufacturers add salts and sugars to their dog foods to make the pets eat it, not because they require it nutritionally. Dogs are like children who get hooked on foods loaded with salts and sugars but, like children, it is not good for them. Trophy rely on premium ingredients to ensure your pets will love the taste. 
• Is the ingredients label clear and easy to read ? Now compare it to the Trophy ingredients listings which are clear and concise.
• Bulking Agents (Cereals & Vegetable By Products) are used to fill up the remainder of the food. Whist they are required for dietary fibre and as a source of carbohydrates most manufacturers use excessive Bulking Agents because they are relatively cheap.
• Not all Bulking Agents are equal. For example Rice and Maize are more digestible and therefore nutritionally better then cheap Wheat which is harder to digest and is also the root cause of many cases of dietary intolerance. Remember also that the less food that is digested, the more mess to clean up at the other end. You will see that Trophy Pet foods contain higher meat and rice contents than our competitors, therefore there is far less waste.
• Manufacturers list vague or poor quality ingredients under the terms 'Meat & Animal Derivatives' or 'Cereals'. This allows manufacturers to use the cheapest ingredients available so the food you buy one week may not have the same ingredients as the same product next week.
• Don't trust a brand name or fancy packaging when choosing your pets food. Just because a well known brand has spent millions on packaging and TV advertising doesn't mean the food is any good. Trophy rely on their quality products to sell themselves, not fancy gimmicks. Check your packaging and see the Product Comparison below.

Product Comparisons

These are the ingredients of a dog food product made by a well known brand. RRP for this product is £23.99 for 15Kg. Note the use of cereals, derivatives, sugars, artificial flavourings etc.

Ingredients : Cereals, Meat and Animal Derivatives (minimum 4%beef and minimum 4% fresh meat in the soft moist kernel), Vegetable Protein Extracts, Derivatives of vegetable origin (1.1% charcoal in the dark brown kernel), Oils and fats, Various sugars, Minerals, Yeasts, Vegetables (minimum 4% vegetables in the green kernel). Contains EC permitted colourants, antioxidants and preservative.

Now compare that against one of our Lifestyle Foods, Trophy Chicken & Rice which has an RRP of £22.50. Cheaper than the well known brand.

Ingredients : Chicken Meat (>30%), Wheat, Wheatfeed, Rice (>12%), Chicken Oil,Dried Brewers Yeast, Vitamins & Minerals, EC permitted antioxidants. No artificial flavourings or colourings.

We hope you can see that our product stands out in terms of quality ingredients and the simplicity and clarity of the ingredients label.

Now take a a look at a Premium Brand of dog food. The following product is sold for an RRP of £39.99

Ingredients : Rice (26%), Lamb meat meal (26%), ground whole barley (26%), lamb fat, whole linseed, lamb gravy, sugar beet pulp, alfalfa, natural seaweed, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, D,L - methionine, lysine hydrochloride, threonine, zinc methionate.

and compare it with Trophy Premium Maintenance, RRP of £38.50.

Ingredients : Supreme Basmati Rice (>32%), Lamb Meat (>29%), Ground Wholegrain Yellow Maize, Chicken Oil, Beet Pulp, Sunfower Oil, Seaweed, Salmon Oil, Vitamins & Minerals, Glucosamine & Chondroitin, Fructo-oligosacchardies (FOS), Antioxidants added : Tocopherol Rich extracts of natural origin (Vitamin E).

Again, see the difference in the ingredients. Trophy Premium Maintenance is cheaper, contains a higher meat content, comes with the added benefits of Glucosamine and Chondroitin and does not have any salt added. Note, for example,  how we are very specific about the type of rice we use, a high quality product, whereas the other brand is vague about the rice source it uses.