Does dehydrated dog food need to be refrigerated? A Step-by-Step Guide

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.

How long can dehydrated dog food last?

Dehydrated dog food, dependent on the brand and product line, typically has a shelf life ranging from 12 months to 2 years. It is important to verify by brand how long their food can stay on your shelf and still be safe for your pup.

Is dehydrated or freeze dried dog food better?

Freeze drying preserves more of the nutritional content of the food than dehydrating, as proteins, vitamins, and minerals stay intact due to freezing before drying. The process of air-drying food, while similar to dehydration, produces an extremely nutrient-dense food with scoop-and-serve convenience.

Dehydrated Vs. Freeze-Dried Pet Food – Which Is Safer?