Holistic Pet Food, Good But A Bit Ricey By Bosoxy on Sep 30, 2007 - Updated Oct 15, 2011

In my quest for the perfect pet food for my allergy prone dog, I was recommended to try Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul. This is a holistic blend of food without any artificial flavors, colors or preservatives. It also doesn't have any by-products or corn.

While the formula is a bit ricey, with rice showing up in the ingredient list twice in the top 8 ingredients, it's whole fresh ingredients and lack of my dogs main trigger, corn, which is also a problem for many dogs, was a huge plus. I also liked that the blend includes salmon and flaxseed, both good for his coat and skin. It also contains other great anti-oxidant ingredients such as apples, tomatoes and blueberries. It almost sounds good enough for me to try! ALMOST!

The top few ingredients, are as follows:

Chicken, turkey, chicken meal, cracked pearled barley, white rice, oatmeal, whole grain, brown rice, millet, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), potatoes, duck, salmon, egg product, flaxseed, natural chicken flavor, fish meal, kelp, carrots, peas, apples, tomatoes, blueberries, etc.

Although my dog did better on Chicken Soup than he did on his previous dog food, he still licked his paws quite a bit (a sign of inflammation due to an allergic reaction) so I decided to move to a completely grain free formula in an attempt to escape all of his allergy triggers.

All in all I think that Chicken Soup has a good list of ingredients, for a dog food. I do know a couple of other people who feed it to their pets, who do very well on it.

While I believe that it is a better food than most, I do not think that I would recommend it outright as of a concern that I have regarding their manufacturing process. During the pet food wheat gluten crisis several cans of pet food were recalled for containing the wheat gluten. While this was a widespread issue, these cans did NOT list wheat gluten as an ingredient. The fact that the products were mislabeled made me feel very uncomfortable. Right or wrong, this incident, as well as past incidents with other brands that had been resolved, has left me feeling that I am not able to trust the practices of the Diamond Food company (the manufacturer).