Royal Canin Breed Specific Canned Diet DOG FOOD Review

With a score of 3.3/10, Royal Canin Canned is a high risk dog food. We base this on the criteria of dogfoodreviews.com. There are 10 recipes with 36% average protein. There is 24% average carbohydrate as calculated. 

These recipes have a higher meat content than Royal Canin dry recipes. Carbohydrates are higher than expected in a canned dog food. There are fewer grains and starches. However, the balance of ingredients is similar to the dry lines.   

All canned foods list water as the first ingredient as opposed to a food. The weight of water makes it a cheaper, main ingredient. Several meat ingredients follow. There are no discernible whole food ingredients beyond that. Instead, recipes list 15-30 added vitamins, minerals and amino acids. This is excessive. They are added to nutritionally balance the food. Then they meet the AAFCO minimum requirements. Vitamins and minerals should come from whole food sources. They include a full spectrum of cofactors. This makes them safe and bioavailable. Five or more implies the food is of poor nutritional value. 

Royal Canin offers these Breed Specific Canned recipes. The guaranteed analysis seems to vary somewhat. The ingredients do not. 

After meat, ingredients include starches and grains. They also have waste products from the human food industry. These include dried beet pulp and powdered cellulose. Cellulose is an insoluble fiber made from wood pulp and is poorly fermented. They might identify them as sources of fiber. However fruits and vegetables are a better source of fiber. They also provide valuable phytonutrients instead of chemical additives. Fruits and vegetables are absent from all recipes. And so are their nutrients and fiber. 

The recipes also include inflammatory seed oil. It’s listed generically as vegetable oil. This questions the source and the quality. “Vegetable” oils include corn, canola and soy, among others. These are heavily processed with chemicals. They also have fish oil. Like “vegetable” oil, the source is not identified. It can be made by cheaper, rendered waste. 

On the ingredient safety side, these foods are highly-processed. The ingredients are heated several times. This can cause a significant loss of enzymes, vitamins, amino acids and phytonutrients. Processed foods are also linked to higher mortality rates in many species.

Recipes use ingredients known to contain higher pesticide/herbicide residues. Crops sprayed with Roundup contain more glyphosate than others. This is true even for GMO crops. Glyphosate is an antibiotic that can kill beneficial gut bacteria. It’s linked to cancer and other diseases. 

There are GMO crops in these recipes. There are few safety studies on GMO and Roundup Ready crops. They are lacking in nutrients compared to non-GMO foods. GMO crops also strip nutrients from soils. Crops require increased pesticide use. This affects bees and can lead to die-off. These recipes have artificial preservatives. There are limited toxicity studies and may be linked to cancer.  

The Breed Specific Canned foods contain carrageenan. It’s a highly processed derivative of seaweed used as a thickener. It may be linked to intestinal inflammation and other negative health effects.  

Recipes in this line contain natural flavor. It’s added to make processed food more palatable. Natural flavor is often either MSG or animal digest. Both are low quality ingredients with limited safety studies. Rice in recipes has potential arsenic contamination. This is from being grown in contaminated water. There are links to chronic health issues. 

These concerns don’t cost points but are worth noting. 

There is ingredient splitting in some recipes. That’s the practice of splitting ingredients into subcategories. This makes them appear lower on the list. This can also move more desirable protein ingredients higher. 

These recipes don’t specify whether fish products are from farmed or wild caught fish. Farmed fish is less nutritious than wild fish. It lacks a healthy balance of fatty acids. 

Royal Canin does not state the omega-6:omega-3 ratio in their foods. This is true of most foods. AAFCO allows a very inflammatory limit of 30:1. Diets rich in omega-6 fats can cause chronic inflammation and disease.