Purina Alpo Ad Campaign: Corn for the Real Meat Lover in the Family
March 1, 2009
Purina Alpo dog food has a new campaign running that gets to the “meat of the problem” with the line, “Quick, get that dog some Alpo!”
OK, if the choice is between no food at all and Alpo, the Prime Cuts with Gravy wins that challenge every time. The only point in favor of Alpo’s dog food is the price. . .however, considering what you’re getting, is there any price that can make this food a bargain?
Note that they go to some effort to make the product visually appealing to the human consumer, when visual appeal is the last thing a dog considers when eating. They eat the inedible, remember? Their tag line is that their Prime Cuts Meaty Shapes are “for the real meat lover in the family.” But Alpo must have a loose definition of the “real meat lover” because the top ingredient isn’t even close to meat, it’s ground yellow corn.
Why? Corn is cheap. Corn is also largely indigestible by dogs. This makes their stools larger with no nutritional benefit. So that’s actually the top ingredient in Alpo that you’re picking up in your yard and on all your walks.
Next up is beef and bone meal. This is a byproduct unfit for human consumption that is an inexpensive, low quality ingredient used to boost the protein percentage in the food. According to its definition by the Association of American Feed Control Officials, beef and bone meal is “the rendered product from beef tissues, including bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, hide, horn, trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents, except in such amount as may unavoidably occur in good processing practices.”
Then there’s soybean meal. This is one of the lowest quality proteins available to dog food makers. Some people make the case that most allergy problems in today’s dogs stem from the unnatural amounts of corn and soybean in their diet.
Beef tallow is fat, processed from suet. If you rendered it from a pig, it would be lard.
Animal digest is a concentrated soup which can be made from the “unspecified parts of unspecified animals.” This includes the so-called 4-D animals (dead, diseased, disabled or dying prior to slaughter), goats, pigs, horses, rats, dogs and cats euthanized at animal shelters, roadkill, restaurant and supermarket refuse. There is no control for quality or any check for possible contamination.
This is how barbiturates like pentobarbital (delivered by an intravenous or intracardiac injection) and used to euthanize pets can get back into the dog population, via their food. How much of this contamination do you need to rise to the level of harm? I don’t have the answer to that.
Though it’s helpful to remember that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy — a fatal, neurodegenerative disease that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord — is passed on by feeding infected, ground up dead cows to living cows. (BSE is commonly known as Mad Cow Disease and Soylent Green is PEOPLE!) Cows are herbivores, not carnivores or cannibals so it’s strange on more than one level.
But including the carcasses of poisoned dogs back in their food supply (even a little bit) can’t be a good thing, can it?
The next most prevalent ingredient is salt. So beef and bone meal and animal digest are as close as this product gets to real meat. You couldn’t do worse if you were buying your meat from a NYC street vendor offering “Roasted Substance on a Stick.”
Here’s the full list of ingredients in Alpo Prime Cuts Meaty Shapes Dog Food (below). They are listed according to weight from most to least (it’s usually enough to look at the top three to six ingredients to get a good sense of the quality of the food). Note that Alpo has to add back in vitamins and supplements that are lost even from their substandard filler due to processing.
Interestingly enough, this list is NOT from the Alpo.com web site. Remember that they’re selling food, right? I searched for but could not find any list of ingredients for any of their products on their web site. They don’t want to boast about what you’re actually buying in their dog food. And they have absolutely no reason to boast.
- Ground Yellow Corn
- Beef And Bone Meal
- Soybean Meal
- Beef Tallow Preserved With BHA
- Animal Digest
- Salt
- Choline Chloride
- Zinc Sulfate
- Vitamin E Supplement
- Ferrous Sulfate
- Added Color (Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 2)
- Manganese Sulfate
- Niacin
- Vitamin A Supplement
- Calcium Carbonate
- Brewers Dried Yeast
- Copper Sulfate
- Calcium Pantothenate
- Natural Flavor
- Pyridoxine Hydrochloride
- Vitamin B12 Supplement
- Thiamine Mononitrate
- Vitamin D3 Supplement
- Riboflavin Supplement
- Calcium Iodate
- Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (Source Of Vitamin K Activity)
- Folic Acid
- Biotin
- Sodium Selenite
Bottom line, the safest and healthiest thing you can feed your dogs is a home-cooked diet. Add supplements and vitamins if you need them. Yes, it takes more time and planning, but you’ll find a routine that works once you make the switch. Switching to a home-cooked diet can even be cheaper, provided that you are already overpaying for “premium” brands that charge $50 for a 25lb bag of food and not feeding cheap filth like Alpo.
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Thank you for posting this! I just saw the Alpo ad on Hulu and I was totally disgusted. Alpo (and anything that product Purina brand makes for that matter) IS NOT FOOD!!!! Notice that the website associated with the ad has nowhere to give feedback, no doubt because they know they are full of it.
Every time I go to the pet store or the grocery store and see people stocking up on this stuff, I’m struck by how short our attention spans are. Just over a year ago most companies had one or more brands of dog food that were affected by a massive recall, but people are still lining up in droves to buy the miserable swill these companies call food.
I’m so sick of the pet food industry pushing this image of their food as being a magic mix of ingredients that is the only safe thing for animals to eat. People look at me like I’m from another planet when I tell them that I make my own dog food at home, but seriously – think about it. Commercial dog food didn’t become popular until after WWII, so what did dogs eat before that? That’s right, real food!! What are the ingredients that all of these scamming food companies put on their bags and advertising? Real food!!
They don’t tell you their food is really an over processed garbage mix of protein fillers and throw away parts from the meat industry. Even the so called “premium” and “organic” brands that charge a fortune are still garbage, and most of them are even made in the same processing plants as the cheap foods they sell at the grocery store.
Tell me any brand marketed as premium or organic and I guarantee you I can find either (1) some connection to the plants and suppliers that were processing recalled food or (2) some ingredient that really doesn’t need to be in there.
There is no way on Earth that anyone could convince me a bag full of dried, over processed, diseased spare parts are better for animals than the real ingredients that these companies claim they are using.
Bottom line, the safest and healthiest thing you can feed your dogs is a home-cooked diet. Add supplements and vitamins if you need them. Yes, it takes more time and planning, but you’ll find a routine that works once you make the switch. Switching to a home-cooked diet can even be cheaper, provided that you are already overpaying for “premium” brands that charge $50 for a 25lb bag of food and not feeding cheap filth like Alpo.