The dogfood industry

You don't have to be on the internet for more than 5 minutes before you realise the dog food industry is mostly unregulated, and there is a lot of crap out there. Much of it is labelled as "natural", "healthy", "organic", etc. I recommend dogfoodanalysis.com for some thorough unbiased information. In general you want the first several ingredients to contain meat or meat meal. Stay away from meat "byproducts", and be aware that if a meat is not in meal form, then it will only represent about 20% of its true content after being dehydrated (as kibble must be). It would therefore fall down the list several places after processing. "Meal" is already in its dehydrated form.

Research, read and understand the ingredients on the bag (not the advertising), and know that the good foods are comparible in price to the "puppy chows". For reference we use "By Nature" puppy kibble mixed with a 1/4 can of Nutro canned for Angus. Nutro has a bit of a bad rep on the web, but it seems political to me and the canned ingredients check out fine.