How do you go about picking your dog food? Most people don't know how to read the ingredients list nor do they understand what they really mean.

I started my research on dog food shortly after my six year old Beagle started having seizures. What I found out was both amazing and scary, so I immediately started a crusade to educate pet owners around the world.

I promise you I'm not going to give you a sale pitch for some high priced fancy dog food. I will explain to you how to learn how to look at the ingredients in your dog food and understand what they really are.

What if I told you that if you learn how to feed your dog properly, it could add up to 8.3 years to their lives? That's 8.3 more years of tail wagging, tongue liking unconditional love.

After many hours of research I finally found a resource that explained how to read the labels found on dog food. Believe it or not even thought the FDA regulates dog food labeling, it does not hold commercial dog food labeling to the same requirements as it does for people food.

The regulations for dog food labeling seemed to be written to help the industry hide certain ingredients they use to enhance flavor and prolong shelf life. Not to mention just plain deceive the pet owner by allowing the commercial pet food industry to play with words in their labeling.

For example a dog food named Chicken dog food would have around 70% chicken (of some sort) but if its named Chicken flavored dog food then it probably has 0% chicken of any kind in it.

If the name of the food contains the word "with" then by law that food only needs to contain around 3% of that ingredient. The words "Dinner" or "Nuggets" along with many more words all change the quality of the dog food.

The truth is the dog food industry has been allowed to deceive the pet owner into thinking they are purchasing quality ingredients, when the truth is we are purchasing ingredients not fit for human consumption.

The animal food industry is using the waste leftovers from human food production processing plants. This slop is deemed unfit for human consumption, but is sold as ingredients for pet foods.

The FDA's weak regulations let the commercial dog food companies use words on their labels to describe dog food ingredients that make it sound like their healthy. One example of this is the use of the words Dried Egg Products as an ingredient in your dog food. This sounds healthy enough and it is listed as a source of protein, but this ingredient is a leftover by-product that is marked unfit for human consumption.

The problem is there are hundreds of ingredients listed on dog food labels that seem to mean one thing when in reality they mean something completely different.

Once I found out what was really in most commercially made dog food, I switched my dogs to a homemade diet. This does take some work and I understand that not everyone can do this, and that is why it's so important that you learn how to read and understand a dog food label.