the Honest Kitchen BUTCHER BLOCK PATE DOG FOOD

With an average score of 7.2, The Honest Kitchen’s Butcher Block Pate is their highest scoring line and their only low risk food line. This is mainly because the food is lower in carbohydrate. Larger amounts of starch or carbohydrate can increase insulin levels and cause unwanted changes to the gut microbiome. This food has a low amount of carbohydrate with the exception of the Beef, Cheddar & Farm Veggies food, which is calculated to contain 16% carbohydrate and the Turkey, Duck & Root Veggies, which weighs in at 18%. The remaining Pate foods are around 5% or less (on a dry matter basis).  

Like all Honest Kitchen foods, the ingredients are supplemented with more than 5 vitamins and minerals, which indicates lower quality or incomplete ingredients. Vitamin and mineral excesses, especially vitamin D and copper can often result from added vitamin premixes, so it’s preferable that most or all vitamins and minerals come from real foods.  

Some of the foods in this line also lose ingredient quality points for containing seed oils such as sunflower oil. Seed oils are highly processed and inflammatory so more natural oils are preferred. Sunflower is also grown with a very large amount of pesticides and is often dried with glyphosate (Roundup).  

The food is cooked, which is considered minimally processed compared to canned and kibble. Minimal or no processing is preferred since heating foods causes losses in some active enzymes, amino acids and phytonutrients. 

The food safety scores of this line are higher due to the absence of high pesticide foods in the top 5 ingredients. The exception is the Turkey, Duck and Root Veggies Pate, which contains both spinach and apples in the top 5. Both spinach and apples have made an appearance on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list for high pesticide use and apples are often genetically modified unless organic.  

The Honest Kitchen’s Butcher Block Pate contains salmon oil, which is preferable to generic fish oil as a source of EPA/DHA. However it doesn’t specify whether the salmon is farmed or wild caught. The food also doesn’t reveal the omega6:omega-3 ratio, which is unfortunate since AAFCO allows a very inflammatory limit of 30:1. 

Overall, if you’re faithful to The Honest Kitchen, then the Butcher Block Pate is their highest score food and does meet our low risk criteria.