The Honest Kitchen - pet food with a passion

The Honest Kitchen’s foods are made using a technique called dehydration. This is a slow, gentle method of very minimally processing the food, which removes the moisture from our raw ingredients. Dehydration takes several hours, and uses warm air to ‘blow away’ the moisture (mostly at temperatures below 104 degrees, except for our meats and eggs, which are dehydrated at over 120 degrees in order to kill any pathogens that may be present, and make the food completely safe even for an immune compromised pet).

Dehydration is much gentler than canning or extrusion, which generally involve very high heat and pressure, and are used to manufacture most types of pet food including most kibbled diets. Canning and extrusion involve such high temperatures, that many of the natural nutrients in the raw ingredients are actually destroyed, meaning the manufacturer must replace them with dozens of artificial vitamins and minerals, in order to make the finished product meet the AAFCO nutrient profiles. Take a look at the list if ingredients on regular pet food and compare the contents of the vitamin-mineral premix (usually composed of the ingredients that are rather difficult to read or pronounce!) and compare them with a raw or dehydrated food. You’ll notice that minimally processed diets contain very few added vitamins and minerals, because so much of the natural nutrition in the raw ingredients has survived the gentler, more minimal production process.

In addition, did you know that some types of extrusion are thought to involve so much heat and high pressure that the amino acid structure of the proteins is actually altered? One theory is that this is a root cause of food allergies. Many pets who seem to be allergic to one ingredient or another (let’s say, lamb) can actually tolerate real fresh lamb perfectly well, and it’s only the rendered lamb in kibble that causes a reaction, because it has been so overly-processed that the body no longer even recognizes it as lamb, and an allergic response such as itching and hot spots takes place as a result.

The other very important thing about our production, is that it takes place in a human food facility, that makes many of the same foods you probably eat yourself! The Honest Kitchen is, to our knowledge, still the only pet food manufacturer in the United States to actually have a Statement of No Objection from the Federal FDA, to use the term ‘Human Grade’ on our product labels. Many pet foods may claim to use human grade or ‘table grade’ ingredients, but it’s a good idea to check if they actually have approval form the FDA to say this!

How is it that only we are legally allowed to use the term ‘Human Grade’ on our labels? Unlike most conventional pet foods, which are produced in a pet food rendering plant, our production takes place right alongside, and on the same equipment as, products like breakfast cereals, bakery mixes and milkshake powders – within a human food production plant. Of course, the equipment is cleaned after every single production run, regardless of what was last made! Our production is 100% US based and under FDA inspection, so the entire process actually takes place under the same standards in place for human food products. Nothing at all is different between what the plant makes for you to eat, and what it produces for our pets.