the Honest Kitchen DEHYDRATED LIMITED INGREDIENT DOG FOOD

With an average score of 6.5, The Honest Kitchen’s Dehydrated Limited Ingredient line is considered a moderate risk food and one of the company’s highest scoring dehydrated foods. This food has a moderate amount of carbohydrate, averaging about 38% carbohydrate. Low carbohydrate foods are preferable since large amounts of starch or carbohydrate can increase insulin levels 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 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 fish oil. While it’s preferable to add a source of EPA and DHA, it’s preferable to name the species of fish instead of using a generic fish oil. The company also doesn’t state on the label 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 higher than the average Honest Kitchen dehydrated food. This is because of the limited ingredients, which tends to keep known high pesticide out of the top 5 ingredients. However, the Limited Ingredient Chicken recipe loses safety points for non organic spinach in the top 5 ingredients, while the Limited Ingredient Beef and the Limited Ingredient Fish both contain chickpeas in the top 5. Both peas and chickpeas are crops that are routinely spray dried with glyphosate (Roundup) unless they’re organic.  

The ingredient safety score is fairly low since all of the foods in the Whole Food Clusters line contain high pesticide foods in the top 5 ingredients. This is typically potatoes, oats, peas and lentils (high pesticide).  The food contains natural flavor, which is a low quality ingredient that’s often animal digest or MSG, which are low quality ingredients with limited safety studies. 

Finally, the food doesn’t display the omega6:omega-3 ratio on the label, which is unfortunate since AAFCO allows a very inflammatory limit of 30:1. 

Some of the foods also contain coconut oil, which may cause gut inflammation and unwanted gut bacteria changes.