Don’t be fooled by the first ingredient.
If you've ever flipped over a bag of kibble and felt reassured by “Chicken” being the first ingredient—this one’s for you.
Most kibble ingredient lists are designed to mislead you, and it all comes down to how ingredients are weighed and listed.
📏 Wet Weight vs. Dry Weight: What’s the Difference?
🐔 Wet Weight
This is the weight of an ingredient before it's cooked or processed. It includes all the water content—which is a lot when it comes to fresh meat.
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Example: Fresh chicken is ~70% water.
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Once it’s processed into kibble? Most of that moisture is gone.
So, even if “Chicken” is listed first, after it's cooked, it's no longer the main ingredient by weight.
🌾 Dry Weight
This is what remains after cooking or dehydration—the actual nutrient-dense material.
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Dry ingredients like corn, peas, lentils, or rice contain very little water.
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That means they weigh more after processing, and make up more of the actual kibble than it appears on the label.
🎯 Why Does This Matter?
The ingredient list is ordered by pre-cooked weight.
So brands will often list:
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1️⃣ “Chicken” first (wet weight)
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2️⃣ Followed by dry ingredients: corn, rice, peas, lentils...
But after cooking, the chicken drops way down, and the carbs rise to the top—making the kibble mostly filler.
🔍 What Is Ingredient Splitting?
Brands will also split carbs to push meat higher on the list.
Example:
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Chicken
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Peas
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Pea protein
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Lentils
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Chickpeas
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Sweet potato
Looks protein-rich?
It’s not. The total carbs outweigh the chicken—but they’re split up to hide that.
🧪 What You Think You're Buying vs. What You Actually Get
What you see:
“Real Chicken as the First Ingredient!”
What you’re really feeding:
Mostly dried legumes, starchy fillers, and synthetic vitamins—because after cooking, chicken is no longer the main component.
🐾 What Matters More Than the Label?
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💡 Ingredient transparency
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📊 Dry matter protein and fat content
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🔍 Understanding what ingredients look like post-processing
✅ A Better Alternative
Raw or gently air-dried/freeze-dried diets list ingredients based on their real, nutritional content—not just the weight before cooking.
They also:
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Don’t require carb fillers
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Don’t use synthetic vitamin packs
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Reflect true meat content, not marketing fluff
🐶 The Bottom Line
Don’t trust the front of the bag—or even the first ingredient.
✔️ Always ask: Is that “chicken” listed by wet weight or dry weight?
✔️ Are there multiple carb sources split across the list?
✔️ Is the protein % actually coming from meat—or from peas and lentils?
At Informed Pet Food, We Believe in Full Transparency:
✅ No ingredient splitting
✅ No synthetic fillers
✅ Just real, species-appropriate food
✅ What you see is what you feed—every time.