THE HARMFUL “EXPERTICE” OF CELEBRITY DOG FOOD

THE HARMFUL “EXPERTICE” OF CELEBRITY DOG FOOD
By: Matthew Gibb

As I watched the US Open Tennis Tournament this week, I was amazed at how commercial it all is. The players have so much financial interest in displaying the “brand” of companies seeking to profit from their influence. Even their team of supporters and coaches are covered in logos, words and images. As Novak Djokovic pumped his fist in celebration the alligators on his clothing seemed to cheer along. His box of supporters rose to their feet in vividly colored shirts, with more logos shouting to the world, ”if you only wore some Lacoste gear you could be a champion too”.

But is that how it works? If I wear the Nike shoes that Michael Jordan wore, I still can’t dunk or hit a three pointer in basketball. Wearing that Jack Niklaus shirt certainly didn’t get me into the Masters’ last year. If I drive a Lincoln, will I look as cool as Matthew McConaughey?. Celebrities make money, huge amounts of it, smiling, wearing and pitching products that our society gobbles up, without ever thinking whether any of it actually work, or worse. I mean, I know wearing a bright yellow Jack Nicolas shirt won’t help me sink the winning putt, but it won’t make me sick, will it?

The snake oil pitch of the celebrity endorsement has even reached into the food we feed our dogs. Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Miranda Lambert, and others are all leveraging their stardom and social media influence to sell dog food.

The problem is what they are proudly promoting, with “kitchen” level imagery, is really just feed grade bags of super-heated kibble. At least Miranda Lambert sells her animal “feed” at the Tractor Supply store, giving a slight nod to its ingredients.

Nearly all of these celebrity dog foods are not really food at all. Most are made from feed grain ingredients that often include moldy corn, byproducts from animals that died in ways other than slaughter, and a pile of other ingredients that are the furthest thing from human grade nutrition.

We all need to come to one truth, the celebrity dog food we find on the supermarket shelf is priced and made to promote the celebrity and to help the companies that write the big checks to these stars recoup those dollars. It is not made with your dog’s nutrition in mind, in fact, it doesn’t appear nutrition even makes the conversation. Nutrition and honesty in celebrity dog food is as absent as the integrity that pushes them to a naïve public. Miranda Lambert’s offered kibble is not “Farm Raised”, it’s a hardened, twice baked paste made of 41 different ingredients. Even the goalkeeper for the US Women’s Soccer Team has traded integrity for a paycheck by promoting Science Hill’s Weight Loss formula as a real solution for unfit dogs. I guess she didn’t know that 43% of the grain feed in the bag is starch, and it comes from a company constantly being government warned for failing to verify the quality of its ingredients. She would never make this mistake in her own diet, so why her dog, or ours?

The new age of social media influencers has filled our attention span beyond capacity, but we wouldn’t select items in our own diet just because a TV star is on the bag, would we? Find a food that’s right for your dog, is made from true human grade ingredients, and is from a company with a history of recognizable achievements in dog health. Whatever you do, keep reading the label.