Why does ingredient order matter?
Ingredients are listed by weight before processing - heaviest first. This tells you what the food is primarily made of, but there are important nuances that affect how to read it correctly.
Ingredient order is regulated - manufacturers must list ingredients by pre-processing weight, from highest to lowest. What's listed first makes up the largest proportion of the food by weight.
Reading the ingredient list correctly
The moisture trick
Fresh meat (e.g. "chicken") is listed by its raw weight, which is mostly water - around 70-75% moisture. After cooking, it shrinks dramatically. "Chicken meal" by contrast is already dehydrated and concentrated, meaning it actually delivers more protein per gram in the final product.
Seeing "chicken" as the first ingredient sounds great - and it can be. But after cooking, that chicken loses most of its weight. If the second and third ingredients are grains or starches, those may actually make up more of the final product than the chicken did.
"Chicken meal" as the first ingredient means the meat is already dehydrated and concentrated. It delivers more actual protein per gram in the finished food. Not as marketing-friendly, but often a better sign of protein density.
A common trick: splitting one ingredient into multiple forms to push it down the list. Example: "Chicken, Corn Flour, Corn Gluten, Corn Meal" - the three corn ingredients combined would outweigh the chicken, but listed separately they each appear smaller.
The scoring system accounts for ingredient position under Rules 4 and 7. Named whole meats or meals in the top three positions score better than those buried further down the list.
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