the Honest Kitchen DEHYDRATED GOURMET GRAINS DOG FOOD

With an average score of 6.7, The Honest Kitchen’s Dehydrated Gourmet Grains line is considered a moderate risk food. This is also Honest Kitchen’s highest scoring dehydrated line. 

This food has a relatively moderate amount of carbohydrate, averaging about 34%. Foods that are rich in carbohydrate can increase insulin levels, increase the risk of obesity and cause unwanted changes to the gut microbiome.  

Like all Honest Kitchen foods, the ingredients are supplemented with more than 5 vitamins and minerals, which can indicate 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 added fish oil. While a source of EPA and DHA is a good addition, the species of fish should be named and not generic. The label also doesn’t state whether the fish is farmed or wild caught.    

The food is dehydrated, 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 moderately low. Despite organic ingredients, which are certainly lower risk, some non organic ingredients that are high pesticide crops make an appearance on the label. Unlike many other Honest Kitchen foods however,  the high pesticide foods stay out of the top 5 ingredients, making this one of the best scoring Honest Kitchen dehydrated foods.    

It’s also worth noting the Honest Kitchen’s Whole Grain Dehydrated foods don’t reveal the omega6:omega-3 ratio, which is unfortunate since AAFCO allows a very inflammatory limit of 30:1.