'Natural' is the softest claim on a dog food shelf. Industry guidance does exist for what it should mean - broadly, ingredients that have not been chemically altered - but in practice the word is applied to everything from genuinely simple recipes to foods whose ingredient lists read like a chemistry set with a leaf on the label. Treat it as an invitation to check, not a conclusion.
Natural dog food
75.9/100
average ODF Score
Top score 94/100 - Alpha Spirit Realfood Complete
2,209 foods
The check is quick. Turn the pack over: a food trading honestly on 'natural' will show named meats, recognisable whole ingredients and natural preservatives such as tocopherols (forms of vitamin E) rather than artificial colours - which, worth remembering, exist to appeal to the human doing the buying, since dogs do not care what colour their dinner is. An artificial-additive list under a 'natural' front label tells you plenty about a brand's confidence in your reading habits.
Because the claim is cheap to print, this category is wide and uneven, spanning superb foods and cynical ones. That is precisely what the ODF Score is for: every food below is rated /100 on what is actually in it, with the full working shown, so the label's poetry becomes irrelevant.
Industry guidance says natural ingredients should be minimally processed and free from chemical alteration - but enforcement is light and the word appears on a remarkable range of foods. Treat it as a claim to verify rather than a fact: the ingredients list will tell you within seconds whether 'natural' describes the recipe or just the typeface.
They are permitted and not proven harmful at approved levels - but they serve no purpose for the dog whatsoever. Dogs do not care whether kibble is russet or beige; colours exist to make the food look appealing to the human pouring it. A recipe spending money on cosmetics for you is telling you something about its priorities.
Mostly tocopherols (forms of vitamin E) and rosemary extract, used to stop fats oxidising. They typically give shorter shelf lives than artificial antioxidants such as BHA or BHT, which is the trade-off manufacturers weigh. If a pack says 'naturally preserved', the ingredients list should back it up - and it is genuinely worth checking.
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