Stella & Chewy's Stella’s Stews DOG FOOD Review

With a score of 7.5/10, these foods are considered low risk. There are 6 recipes that average 52% protein and 19% carbohydrate as calculated on a dry matter basis. These are cooked foods packaged in boxes. 

This is a higher level of carbohydrate than we like to see in a cooked dog food. This is a limited ingredient dog food, and it doesn’t contain corn, wheat, soy, peas or lentils but it does have potato and tapioca starch that contribute to the higher carb level. Dogs have no nutritional requirement for carbohydrates. Excessive carbohydrates are an indicator of low quality foods as they keep costs down. Large amounts of starch can increase insulin levels, cause obesity and negatively impact gut balance.

Like all of Stella & Chewy’s lines, there are added vitamins and minerals. This often indicates a lower quality food that’s lacking naturally occurring nutrients from whole food sources. One recipe contains sunflower oil which is a highly processed and  inflammatory oil. Seed oils are an inexpensive alternative to higher quality animal fats and oils. 

The ingredient safety score is lower in this cooked food because moderate processing causes some loss of nutrients from cooking. 

Stella & Chewy’s uses mainly organic fruits and vegetables. Organic ingredients are non-GMO and have much lower pesticide/herbicide risk than conventionally grown crops so no ingredient safety points are lost. However, a point is lost for one GMO ingredient in all the recipes, and that’s potato starch, which is not organic. 

The company uses unsubstantiated marketing terms are used on labels such as cage-free or humanely-raised. Without third-party certification, they are purely marketing terms that have no legal meaning under pet food regulatory standards. But in fact, all chickens raised in the US are cage free as per USDA standards.

Unlike the other lines, the Stella’s Stews does not use sodium selenite, but instead has selenium yeast, which is the preferred form of selenium due to potential toxicity of sodium selenite. 

The label does not provide the omega-6:omega-3 ratio, which is a concern since AAFCO allows a very inflammatory ratio of 30:1.