The Benefits of Freeze-Dried Dog Food
For pet parents who want to feed their dogs a raw diet but worry about finding, handling, and preparing fresh raw meat themselves, freeze-dried food can be a fast and simple alternative. And unlike plain raw meat, “all of the commercially available [freeze-dried] formulas are going to be complete and balanced for all life stages,” Roberts says—as long as you make sure they’ve been formulated to meet the standards established by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO).
Pet parents also like that it’s easy to find high-quality, organic ingredients—including grass-fed meats—in freeze-dried dog foods. Processing and additives are usually minimal, too, and even picky eaters tend to like the formulas.
“For people who like the idea of feeding whole foods but don’t want to cook or make their own, it’s a good option,” Roberts says. She notes that freeze-dried foods may be especially helpful for people who travel with their pets, since the drying process condenses fresh food down into a much smaller, lighter, and shelf-stable form. It also frees up valuable freezer and fridge space, since it lives in pantry-friendly packages.
The Pros And Cons Of Freeze-Dried Dog Food
There are two big advantages to freeze-dried raw : it’s raw … and it keeps well. What else is good about it?
Freeze-dried food is usually good for at least a year … and some keep up to 5. Look for the sell-by date on the package. But once you open it and let the air in, you’ll need to use it within a month, in most cases. Some manufacturers recommend refrigerating it after you open the package. (2)
The longer shelf life that doesn’t need a freezer makes it as convenient as kibble. Just scoop and serve. Not only that, but if you travel with your dog, it’s a whole lot easier to bring along a bag of freeze-dried raw. Much simpler than trying to fit a big cooler in the car to keep frozen food from spoiling on the road.
And freeze-dried is great for camping or back-packing with your dog, because it’s so light. Buy your dog a backpack and let her carry her own food! It’s also easy to buy freeze-dried food online. It’s light and cheap to ship. For most frozen raw foods, you’ll need to go to a store … or pay a lot for shipping!
There are several reasons freeze-dried raw offers better nutrition than other packaged foods (except for frozen raw).
As mentioned earlier, the nutrients are mostly intact after freeze-drying. Freeze-dried meats retain their proteins, amino acids and other nutrients.
Important things like enzymes, fats and probiotics also retain their quality. That’s useful, because some freeze-dried foods included added fats or probiotics. There wouldn’t be much point in paying for those if they didn’t survive the freeze-drying process.
One nutrient that does get depleted by freeze-drying is vitamin C. But that shouldn’t be something you worry about too much. Dogs make their own vitamin C … so they usually don’t need to get it in their food. Dogs produce less vitamin C when they’re stressed, sick or malnourished. Signs of vitamin C deficiency can be bleeding gums, diarrhea, loose teeth or joint pain. So if you want to give your dog extra vitamin C sometimes, don’t give ascorbic acid. It’s synthetic and not well absorbed. It’s better to give a food-based supplement or add some vitamin C rich foods like berries, red peppers, broccoli or spinach.
Bone is really important to your dog as a source of calcium and other minerals. The better freeze-dried dog foods include bone in their foods. Lower quality foods will use synthetic minerals instead.
Freeze-dried foods don’t need starch. In fact, some prey model freeze-dried foods only have muscle meat, organ meat, bone … plus an omega-3 oil like herring.
But … you have to watch out. There are plenty of freeze-dried foods that add starchy ingredients anyway. These are often the lower cost formulas. You’ll want to avoid foods with starches that your dog doesn’t need! (That’s one of the big reasons you avoid kibble, right?)
Freeze-drying doesn’t “denature” food like cooking does. You can’t “unfry” an egg and you can’t “uncook” your dog’s food. Any kind of cooking denatures the protein. Freeze-dried is a “live” food, just like frozen raw. Freeze-drying doesn’t kill bacteria (good or bad) or enzymes … so it’s not a dead food like kibble.
This is much better for your dog. But it does mean you need to practice basic hygiene … like wiping down surfaces and washing your hands.
Again, remember that this is a big difference between freeze-dried and dehydrated or air-dried foods. Those foods are processed with heat, and that is usually a “kill step” for pathogens. But, speaking of pathogens … how can you be confident that freeze-dried foods are safe for your dog?
Just like feeding frozen raw foods … choose a food with high quality, carefully sourced ingredients. Then you shouldn’t have to worry about harmful bacteria in your dog’s freeze-dried food.
Dogs tolerate bacteria much better than humans. Their digestive tracts are acidic, so most bacteria that make people sick don’t affect dogs at all (3). Think of the stuff your dog snatches and swallows on walks. Or in the wild, eating whatever long-dead animals they find.
However, many manufacturers still take the added step of using high pressure pasteurization (HPP) for both frozen and freeze-dried foods.
Often they’ve been forced to do so … because the Food Safety Modernization Act has a zero-tolerance policy for bacteria in pet foods (compared to 7% salmonella allowed in grocery store chicken). But it means the FDA and some state Departments of Agriculture have been coming down hard on raw foods. This has forced many into costly and usually unnecessary recalls. So most have adopted HPP.
HPP is a “kill step” that eliminates pathogens by putting extreme pressure on the food. But it doesn’t cook it, and research shows it only results in slight nutrient loss (4). Other companies use a “test and hold’ approach. This means they don’t release each batch of foods for sale until they’ve been safety-tested.
Dehydrated Or Air Dried Dog Foods
The biggest difference is that when you buy freeze-dried food, it’s still raw. That’s not really true of dehydrated or air-dried foods. Freeze drying may sound the same as air drying, drum drying or dehydrating. But they’re different. (1)
The non freeze-drying technologies are similar ways of removing moisture from food … but they all use heat. The manufacturers claim the food isn’t technically cooked, because they use low temperatures. But it does get slightly cooked. So the structure of the food changes … and there is more nutrient loss.
Most companies are very careful not to tell you what temperatures they use. They want you to think their products are raw … or almost. But you can assume they use temperatures between 1400 and 180OF. So that means dehydrated or air dried food is not raw. In fact, you can slow roast a slab of pork ribs at 180o … and they will come out cooked.
One selling point of heat-dried foods is that they have fewer pathogens than raw or freeze-dried foods. One air-dried food company states that they use temperatures the FDA and USDA consider a “kill step.”
Well …. that’s a bit confusing. But you can’t have it both ways. If the food is heated enough to be a kill step, it’s not raw!
So what else is good about freeze-dried?
PROS AND CONS OF FREEZE DRIED DOG FOOD I RAW DOG FOOD I ROTATIONAL MONO FEEDING
In January, we wrote Why I Don’t Feed My Havanese An All Raw Diet, and we promised a follow-up article reviewing the foods we DO use. So now, we’re finally back to discuss our experience with freeze dried raw food for small dogs. Without further delay, here’s a run-down of the why and what we feed our two Havanese, Phoebe and Scout.