# Meals vs. Whole



## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

I've been seeing a lot of debate between whole named protein sources like "chicken" and meal named protein sources like "chicken meal."

Here's what I've found on "meals"

http://searchwarp.com/swa5545.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_meal
http://cats.about.com/od/catfoodglossary/g/chickenmeal.htm
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071104225902AAvt5Rt

Not to mention everyone's favorite website evaluating everyone's favorite food:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/showproduct.php?product=1604&cat=all

Which immediately denounces the use of a whole protein source and condones the use of a "meal" one. 

I would love everyone's opinions on the matter.


----------



## BoxerMommie (Jun 26, 2008)

The whole source is uncooked, so once it's cooked and most of the water goes away it weighs less therefore moves further down the ingredient list (as ingredients are listed based on weight) so it's deceiving in a way. In meal form it's already been cooked, the water is already gone, so the weight will not change and that truly is the first ingredient. However, if you have chicken meal, brown rice, and white rice, if you combine both of those rice sources, it more than likely becomes heavier than the chicken meal and rice would be your first ingredient anyway, so it just depends on what follows that meal source and how many times it is broken up on what the first ingredient truly is. I wouldn't say a whole meat source as the first ingredient is bad, it's better if it's followed with a meal source, but just so long as the person isn't buying the food solely on the fact that "chicken" is the first ingredient and understands it's probably more like the 3rd or 4th ingredient.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

BoxerMommie said:


> The whole source is uncooked, so once it's cooked and most of the water goes away it weighs less therefore moves further down the ingredient list (as ingredients are listed based on weight) so it's deceiving in a way.


The whole process of making dog food is deceiving. What people are fooled about in named meat meals or unnamed meat meals is what is used to begin with. Chicken meal is not created from whole chickens. Chicken meal is made from the carcass of a chicken AFTER all the human usuablle parts of that carcass have been removed. It is what is left after deboning machines have done their work. Heads, feet, and entrails have been removed to make chicken by-product meal.

Except for chicken by-product meal, chicken meal is the cheapest part of the chicken. Think for a minute about all the boneless chicken sold. Think about the chicken parts like drumsticks, quarters, wings, breast, etc. What is left from the process of manufacturing those things? The chicken frame and a lot of other bones along with some skin and fat.

The heads, feet, and entrails are put in a seperate vat and treated the same way and is called chicken by-product meal.

It his these parts that are ground up then cooked. It is not cooked to remove bacteria. Bacteria is killed during the extrusion process. It is cooked to melt the fat off. During the cooking process, fat rises to the top of the vat and is skimmed off later to be used as "chicken fat" which is another ingredient in most dog foods. The rest of the carcass is little more than bones and connective tissue with a little meat left that couldn't be effeciently removed in the de-boning process. This is what is called chicken meal.

Meat meal is measured in dry weight for one simple reason. It is mostly bone and bone just doesn't hold water. Does anyone seriously think that they take perfectly good whole chickens that could be sold for human consumption, go the the expense of dehydrating it for the sole purpose of being able to call it chicken meal and selling it for less money to the dog food companies?

The dog food companies don't really lie about what chicken meal is, they just conveniently leave out the part about all the human usuable meat has been removed from the carcass before it is made into meal.


----------



## Guest (Jul 21, 2008)

I think it's 6 of one half dozen of another. As someone said, if it's whole chicken it has a lot of water. If it's chicken meal the water is gone.

In a good food the chicken meal has no by products. It will be labled by products if it is.

I don't worry about either way. If the food is a good quality either is fine.


----------



## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

It just amuses me when people think that Iams is such a great food because the first ingredient is chicken. Second is corn meal, third is usually sorghum, and the fourth is chicken by-product meal. Then I have to explain to them how the whole chicken vs. chicken meal thing works and they get confused or upset that they've been duped by their beloved dog food company. Or my favorite is reading the ingredients on Iams and Eukanuba. They're the exact same with maybe one or two ingredients switched around further down on the list. Yet one costs about twice as much as the other.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

zentrainer said:


> I think it's 6 of one half dozen of another. As someone said, if it's whole chicken it has a lot of water. If it's chicken meal the water is gone.


AND, so is the meat!!!!



> In a good food the chicken meal has no by products. It will be labled by products if it is.


You are right but it has no, or very little, meat. It is the ground up carcass of the chicken AFTER all the human usuable meat and bones and after by products have been removed and after the fat has been boiled off. It is basically a ground up chicken frame which is moslty bone and connective tissue. What meat is on there is the meat that the deboning machines couldn't get off.



> I don't worry about either way. If the food is a good quality either is fine.


If you think bone is as good quality as meat, you are right. There is almost no meat in chicken meal.


----------



## Guest (Jul 21, 2008)

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this.

If the dog food is human grade it is human grade. It is not what is left over after all the human usable parts are taken up.

Technically I use fish meal in the raw I feed. I grind it up in the blender. That's what meal is. 
So my dog is getting fish meal that is USDA inspected, fit for Human Consumption.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

zentrainer said:


> Perhaps we can agree to disagree on this.


This is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of fact.



> If the dog food is human grade it is human grade.


There is no dog food ingredient that's human grade. There are food that are claimed to be human grade but that doesn't make it so. If chicken meal is human grade then you could buy it in the grocery store. You can't. You could order it in a restaurant. Chicken meal is not human grade food. It is exactly what I said it is. If you see a dog food that claims to be human grade but has some kind of meal in it, you know it can't be.

It is economically unfeasable for a chicken plant to go to the trouble to grind up and dehydrate whole chickens so they can sell it as 10% of its value as chicken meal.



> It is not what is left over after all the human usable parts are taken up.


What do you think they do with the parts that are left over after the human usable parts are removed? Throw them away? No way. They grind them up and sell them to dog food companies as chicken meal.



> Technically I use fish meal in the raw I feed. I grind it up in the blender. That's what meal is.


You are right, but that is not what the fish meal is in dog food. You know all those fish fillets you can buy in the grocery store or in resaturants? Fish meal is the ground up remains of those fish. Again, mostly bone.



> So my dog is getting fish meal that is USDA inspected, fit for Human Consumption.


Your dog is but the dogs who eat kibble with fish meal as an ingredient aren't. They are getting ground up bones and fins with a very little meat still attached.

Most all the ingredients in kibble is the refuse from human food processing plants. They are not human grade. The carcass they came from was once human grade but by the time they get to the kibble factory they are no longer human grade.


----------



## Guest (Jul 21, 2008)

This is a definition of agreeing to disagree that I am not familiar with.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

zentrainer said:


> This is a definition of agreeing to disagree that I am not familiar with.


You can disagree with opinions but you can't disagree with facts. Whether one or more people disagree with a fact doesn't alter it. You can disagree with the fact the world is round but it is still round. You can disagree with whether something is pretty or not or whether it tastes good or not but you can't disagree with the world being a globe.


----------



## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

Rawfeddogs, will you please give us a sources that supports these facts? I think that would help us all out greatly, so thank you in advance!


----------



## Guest (Jul 22, 2008)

*Facts*

Here is a fact to disagree or agree with:

"Pluto is a planet."

Chicken meal is not available in grocery stores or restaurants because what the hell would you do with it? How would you cook it? It would have to be in a crab cake like form is all I can think of.

There is no demand from humans for "meal". That doesn't mean it's not fit for human consumption.


***Which is so funny for me to be arguing. As a Vegan I really don't think any meat is fit for human consumption! LOL! For for my dogs and cats, it is.***


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

rannmiller said:


> Rawfeddogs, will you please give us a sources that supports these facts? I think that would help us all out greatly, so thank you in advance!


I have spent the last 3 hours looking for the AAFCO definition of "meals" in kibble. I guess they have taken it off their web page. I used to have it bookmarked but just can't find that. As I remember the definition of chicken meal begins with "The rendered product....". Those are the defining words. "Rendered product" means the useful stuff has been removed. I'll keep looking another day. Perhaps I can eventually find it.

Of course there is not going to be any admission by any kibble company of what is really in their ingredients. They don't want you to know what chicken meal is. They want you to think all the ingredients in the bag are those wholesome meats, fruits, veggies and grains on the on the outside of the bag.

I don't think anyone doubts that dog foods are made from the refuse from human food processing plants. Every ingredient is. Whole chickens aren't refuse, they are money making product. 

"_Doing The Math
Now when I go to the grocer or health food store and find these types of ingredients in raw, unprocessed, fresh packaged form, I don't see hardly anything for $1 a pound, let alone 50 cents. Some of the organic meats are more than $15 a pound! Something's afoul. But people are just not putting two and two together. How could a producer buy such expensive ingredients (as they are leading the public to believe they do) transport them to their "human grade" factory, grind, mix, extrude, retort, freeze, package, ship, advertise and pay salespeople and hefty margins to distributors, brokers and retailers and then sell them at retail for less than the cost of the bare starting materials? They can't. So obviously manufactured pet foods making such claims are misleading (to put it gently). They may have organic filet mignon and caviar in the food but it would have to be an inconsequential sprinkle at best. Consumers must do the math and get realistic in their expectations._"
_http://www.wysong.net/health/hl_969.shtml_

BTW: Thats a good page, you should go read the entire page.


----------



## RawFedDogs (Jun 16, 2008)

zentrainer said:


> Chicken meal is not available in grocery stores or restaurants because what the hell would you do with it? How would you cook it? It would have to be in a crab cake like form is all I can think of.


Well, if it was made of what you think it is, it could be cooked the same way any ground meat is cooked. Ground turkey is a pretty popular meat. This would be similar. AND it would be very cheap. There is great demand for cheap meat in today's world. However it's not what you say it is and it's not human grade so all this is just fantasy.


----------



## CanineZoo (Jul 22, 2008)

Not sure if this helps, but I found two links. First lists the ingredients, though it's not from the AAFCO's site, but claims that's where they got their list:

http://www.braypets.com/FRR/aafcodef.htm

And the second IS from the AAFCO and explains, a bit further down, about what some of their ingredients are and the regulations in place when they are added to dog food:

http://www.aafco.org/Portals/0/Public/Q-AND-A-REGARDING-PETFOODREGS.PDF

The more I read, the closer I become to going home-cooked and/or RAW feeding.


----------



## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

RawFedDogs said:


> Well, if it was made of what you think it is, it could be cooked the same way any ground meat is cooked. Ground turkey is a pretty popular meat. This would be similar. AND it would be very cheap. There is great demand for cheap meat in today's world. However it's not what you say it is and it's not human grade so all this is just fantasy.


But ground turkey still has moisture and fat in it, and "meals" are suppose to have that removed. I guess it could be a "just add water" sort of product, but who wants to make a burger out of that?


----------



## domari (Jun 17, 2008)

zentrainer said:


> Here is a fact to disagree or agree with:
> 
> "Pluto is a planet."
> 
> ...


What's the difference in this and what we do with the chicken carcass when we put it in a pot of water to make chicken stock? Boil a carcass until it's falling apart, pick what's left off the bones, add some veggies, rice, and call it dinner. 

I'm sure there is a lot of ways for humans to eat chicken meal. Use it for soups, stews, chicken meatloaf, chicken patties, as a thickener, whatever. I'm sure a lot of processed human food contains chicken, beef, pork, etc meal. Maybe that's what's on the Walmart all meat pizza. Read the ingredients some day... it contains "meat product". Ok, so what is the "meat product" made of and what kind of animal meat is it?

Any of you eat Slim Jims? Check the labels... beef, mechanically separated chicken, flavorings, dextrose, paprika, hydrolyzed corn gluten, soy and wheat gluten proteins, sodium nitrite, lactic acid starter culture. So what kind of chicken is mechanically separated and how? People eat this crap every day, but dogs can't?

The next time any of you are in Walmart, go check out what chorizo sausage is made of. Pork cheeks, salivary glands, lymph nodes, spleen. How healthy that must be for humans. 

I don't know how many of you live in the south, but when I lived down there I had neighbors who used every single part of the animal for their own dinner. My neighbor made what she called "pork pot" Being a life long Jersey girl I had no clue what that was. Being a vegetarian I was not about to find out either. It smelled really good cooking on the stove, but when she showed me the bits of pigs ears and tails in it, I wanted to gag. I didn't look close enough to see what other assorted pig parts were floating around in the pot, I'd seen enough. They use everything from the pig except it's squeal!

They also ate chitlins, which I thought was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my life. They soaked in the kitchen sink and washed out, cooked and eaten. Would this be considered "animal by products"?? 

Why is it that this stuff isn't supposed to be in commercial pet food, but the raw feeders include all the body parts in the dogs diet?

Human grade, bah, humans eat as much garbage and dogs do, if not more.


----------



## domari (Jun 17, 2008)

rannmiller said:


> But ground turkey still has moisture and fat in it, and "meals" are suppose to have that removed. I guess it could be a "just add water" sort of product, but who wants to make a burger out of that?


Same people who eat at Taco Bell.


----------



## domari (Jun 17, 2008)

Here's a website I found interesting, explains the labeling of some human food products. Now if this is perfectly good stuff for people to eat, why can't it be in pet food?

http://www.pk.org/pottedmeat.html

_"Meat by-products 
Not necessarily related to potted-meat, one often wonders about the definition of meat by-products. The Flint River Ranch summarizes the definition as: 
by-products are parts of the animal not fit for human consumption. 
and elaborates: 
Meat By-Products - the non rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially defatted low-temperature fatty tissue and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hooves." _


----------



## rannmiller (Jun 27, 2008)

domari said:


> Same people who eat at Taco Bell.


Hey now, I love that place! Of course since I'm a vegetarian it saves me from having to eat the icky meat there, so that helps.


----------

