Is raw really that low in protein compared to dog foods? Because its not like you can look on a package of raw chicken and read 20% protein... its all in grams. If this is true, why are pet food companies spending so much money on putting so much meat in dog foods to increase the percent when really a wolf dosnt consume that much protein in the first place... this has really got me thinking now...
Where exactly did you read that raw meats usally contain that much protein, if you dont mind me asking?
Ok look at the package label of a chicken breast for example. Not much bone in that cut.
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/poultry-products/696/2 You can flip the size to 100g for easier math.
It will have the portion size in grams and the amount of protein in grams listed.
To find the percentage divide the grams of protein by the grams of product.
21g/100g=0.21 times that by 100 to get the percentage =21% on an as fed basis that is with the bone removed. Bone doesn't have a whole lot of protien but it does have some. The mass of the bone makes that portion size larger and that will make the protein level somewhat less. As it doesn't have as much protein then if the whole portion was meat. But it is close enough. Dark meat only has 17% if you look at the label
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/poultry-products/673/2
Water is still in there and normal animals are around 70% water. So to compare foods you need to put it in the same units of measure. As fed.
A bag of food lists the as fed %=32% for example compare that to the as fed for raw chicken which is 21% Now dry matter basis is a way of looking at a food with the water removed. The total amount of food will be smaller. Raw is 70% water and kibble 10%.
100-70=30 dry matter 0.21/.3 x 100= 70% protein on a dry matter basis for raw. 0.17/.30 x 100= 56% for dark meat
100-10=90% dry matter of kibble .32/.9 x 100 = 35% on a dry matter I did make a mistake in my first post, I said it was 28%. Opps
So if you look at it on a dry matter basis raw is a high protien diet. But no one would ever feed it that way. It is fed as fed. So is kibble. The dog food companies looked at Raw diets on thought natural diets are high in protein(true) and then took most of the water out of it(wrong not natural) and marketed as a natural diet. Since dehydrated meat is high in protein(note the example of 70% for chicken breast) the only way to have a mostly meat diet is settle for a higher % of protein. The public wants meat based diets.
But really, if I feed a 100grams of 32% kibble a day , I am feeding 32 grams of protein. If I fed 100 grams of raw chicken a day, I am feeding 21 grams to 17 grams of protein depending on which cut I use. You can figure it out for any meat just look at the label. Hope this helps.
