Why is processed, dry or canned food bad for dogs
21 September 2026
In this article: Why raw dog food helps your dog’s health, how it differs from processed and canned food and how it’s important to be able to trust the labels on the food you put into your dog’s bowl.
Many of us who have lived with dogs since childhood may not have been aware of the raw dog food diet and why it has become so popular.
We’ve grown up giving our dogs dry food or canned food, and when problems arose, adjusting as best we could. Most dogs would eat their food without problem, and if they didn’t, we’d try another brand of dry dog food.
Raw dog food was just something that butchers fed their animals, surely?
When our dogs will literally eat almost anything without complaint, how can we know if the food we give them is doing them good? Ever had to drag your dog away from dubious smelly/rotten things when on a walk? Us too.
The modern dog may not much resemble their ancestral wolf counterparts, having evolved to be able to eat a variety of things that are a far cry from what a wild canine would eat, or even be able to find. On the more human side of the food scale that dogs eat are cheese and vegetables; then we drift into the other side of the scale with some of the highly processed tinned and dry food that have been traditionally the main cuisine for our pups.
Yes, dry food and canned food are convenient, and often enjoyed by dogs (the same dogs that tried to eat that rotten thing on our walk earlier); this type of food can be far cry from what they need for health and longevity, and is sometimes really quite bad for them.
The animal food industry is a thriving sector that unfortunately is not regulated in the same way that the food industry for humans is. Animal and dog feeds are legally allowed to contain a scary list of “undesirable substances” (see the list on page 9 here Directive 2002/32/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council) so long as their quantity is not immediately lethal to the animals eating them, and poses no direct danger to humans.
Then there’s the concern about transparency – the UK Government’s directives on labelling of dog food say that general terms such as ‘meat and animal derivatives’, ‘cereals’, ‘vegetable protein extracts’ are acceptable. What that means in real terms is that dog food manufacturers are allowed to use rather vague and unhelpful terms so that customers don’t really know what they’re buying.
Total bioavailability, when talking about humans, means the proportion of an ingested nutrient that your digestive tract successfully absorbs, enters your bloodstream, and becomes actively usable by your body’s cells and tissues. A good example of a food that is totally bioavailable for humans is eggs. They are nutrient-dense, easy to digest and contain no anti-nutrients.
An example of a food that has low bioavailability for humans is spinach; though it’s high in calcium, the oxalates that bind to it make it an insoluble compound.
Buying food that is bioavailable for dogs is similar. Their natural go-to in the wild would always be raw animal protein. They thrive on the nutrients and are able to digest meat, fish and poultry easily. Your dog’s system is not able to effectively digest food such as grains and cereals. They can, and do, eat them; though because of lectins and acids, they find it much harder to be able to extract the necessary nutrients from them.
Obviously, there are different qualities of processed food available, and dogs can live on it relatively well for a long time; however, many of us have experienced the worry of dealing with pups with allergies, intolerances and skin conditions which can be traced back to the type and quality of their food. Helping your dogs to have the healthiest teeth, coat, energy levels, digestive systems, and, yes, even mental health means giving them the food they were originally designed to eat.
Dogs are built for raw – it’s really that simple. A fresh, unprocessed diet supports healthier digestion, shinier coats, cleaner teeth, and all-round better wellbeing. Our meals are made using only human-grade ingredients in our DEFRA-approved facility, so you can trust that what’s going into the bowl is the real deal.
At Barkford Raw Dog Food, we’re here to help if you have any questions or you’re unsure how to transition your dog to raw feeding.
We also have a number of helpful pages you might be interested in:
