Alpo Dog Food
The Alpo brand of dog food was first founded in 1936, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. The man who founded Alpo was named Robert F. Hunsicker. In 1995, the Nestle Company took over the Alpo brand, which was followed by a merger between Nestle and Ralston Purina in 2001. Today, the Alpo brand of dog food is owned by the Nestle Purina Petcare Company. In 2007, some of Alpo's canned dog food formulas were recalled during the Menu Foods Pet Food Recall. This namely involved the "Prime Cuts & Gravy" canned dog food formulas, due to the gluten in these formulas being similar to that of other afflicted foods.
ALPO DOG FOOD REVIEW
Alpo brand dog food, due to its long brand-name history, is fairly well-known among many dog owners. Currently, Alpo is available in numerous different canned dog food formulas, as well as two dry dog food formulas. The canned formulas are available in a "ground" form, as imitation meat slices, and several other consistencies. Currently, the only two dry dog food formulas that are sold by Alpo are a Mixed Grill flavor, as well as a Beef flavor. These dry dog food formulas are available in four different bag sizes: a 15 lb bag, a 17.6 lb bag, a 40 lb bag and a larger 50 lb bag. Both of Alpo's dry dog food formulas contain corn in their first five ingredients.
Alpo Dog Food Formulas:
- Alpo Prime Cuts Savory Beef Flavor dry dog food formula is flavored with ingredients to imitate beef. The first five ingredients in this formula are ground corn, beef & bone meal, soybean meal, beef tallow (preserved with BHA, a preservative) and animal digest. Other ingredients include salt, choline chloride, ferrous sulfate, artificial color (blue 2, yellow 5, red 40), Vitamin E, maganese sulfate, calcium carbonate and copper sulfate. The Guaranteed Analysis of this formula contains 21% protein and 8% fat.
- Alpo Come 'N Get It Mixed Grill Dog Food is designed to imitate four different flavors: beef, chicken, liver and cheese. The first five ingredients in this dog food formula are ground corn, beef & bone meal, corn germ meal, soybean meal and animal fat preserved with BHA (a preservative). Other ingredients include chicken digest by-products, poultry by-products choline chloride, cheese meal, copper sulfate and sodium selenite. The Guaranteed Analysis of this formula contains 21% protein and 9% fat.
ALPO CONSUMER RATINGS
Customer reviews of Alpo brand dry dog food were mostly negative. Due to the recent discovery by some animal nutritional experts about corn, many dog owners stated that corn being the first ingredients was not favorable. In addition to this, one of Alpo's dry dog food formulas contains artificial colors, while both dry formulas contain the preservative BHA. This was also cited as a negative aspect. Some dog owners reported that their dogs had less energy when fed Alpo brand dog food. A small percentage of dog owners reported that their dogs seem to like the flavor of the food, and that it didn't seem to cause any lasting health problems.
5 Responses to “Alpo Dog Food”
As much as I dislike Alpo, they do NOT use euthanized dogs and cats in their dog food. Not only has that been illegal for years, the FDA has conducted routine, very sensitive tests that detect feline and canine DNA for all pet foods and not one has come up positive.
If you people were smart you would read up on ingredients and brands before you bash anyone on line. Are you aware you can research anything online and more than likely find ANYTHING that ANYONE wants to write. I can go make a huge bloc now about all three of you and everyone can see it. Think before you speak (or write) os a great phrase to go by in life.
1) horsemeat is not used, not for the past few decades, in any Purina products
2) by products (meat or any identified meat) are good sources of protein and other minerals and nutrients that your dogs need to survive
3) wild dogs (just the same as your little purse pooch) eat animals of all kinds, even sick animals decaying.. so the little that you complain about is actually nothing
4) your dog is going to get the runs or have foul smelling feces from wet food or any food that doesn’t contain meat as the first ingredient..
get over it!
ive never heard of alpo, until it started to arrive in the major stores like walmart n safeway…fed it to our 2nd yr and it was quite …not right.
its really hard not to notice that the stuff smells the same when its coming out of the other end.
just saying, its kinda weird.
Do you really wanna know?? Look at the ingredients next time you are at the pet-store- especially the ingrediant that says “meat” by-products.
Well, what the heck are “meat” by-products you ask? The president of AAFCO made a statement recently that euthanized, unclaimed horse, cat and dog constitute as an “ok” protein source. Therefore, to be frank, the reason the ingrediant is the non-specific “meat” is because all those animals get blended together and ground up to make that yummy sounding by-product. They would rather not label the ingredient as, “chicken liver, corn, wheat gluten, horse…” because that would upset most pet owners. So yes, your pooch is eating Fluffy, Garfield and Mr. Ed. in one sitting.
Alpo recently launched a book and campaign – “Real dogs eat meat.” I have never known Alpo to contain any source of good protein so I went to their website. Alpo has removed the ingredients from their website – what are they hiding?
Thank you for providing a breakdown of some of their foods.