Ingredients That Can Harm Your Dog in Treats and Food

Some dogs are extremely food-motivated. Others are like vacuums that can bark. It's super important to make sure our pups aren't getting into anything that can hurt them, but do you know everything on that list?

Sure, you know the big ones. Chocolate, yeah. Xylitol, a new one, but awareness is growing. Some of the fruits out there, like plums and grapes, have toxic bits in their seeds. All of that is reasonable to know. I even have a whole guide on fruits to keep away from your doggos.

The truth is, though, there's a much larger list than you might realize. Worse, some of those ingredients are common, not just in food, but even in dog treats.

So, what ingredients should you watch for and make sure to keep away from your pooch?

Ingredients to Avoid: Preservatives

This one is tricky.

Preservatives are a great invention, generally speaking. It's a lot better to have food last a reasonable amount of time, rather than spoiling rapidly and ending up full of nasty bacteria, growing dangerous mold, or otherwise going bad.

On the other hand, a lot of preservatives are firmly pretty bad, especially for dogs. Worse, the amounts of preservatives used in dog foods and dog treats aren't as regulated as the amounts in human foods.

It can be really hard to avoid all preservatives; though, when you can, give it a try. The worst ones to avoid include:

• BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole)

• BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene)

• Ethoxyquin

• Nitrates

• Nitrites

• Propyl Gallate

• Propylene Glycol

• THBQ

• Carrageenan

• Monosodium Glutamate

• Sodium Hexametaphosphate

• Sodium metabisulphite

These ingredients are mostly known to cause cancer in laboratory animals, and can cause a variety of other issues, including Heinz Body Anemia and more. Unsavory stuff!

Unfortunately, they're also kind of everywhere and are hard to avoid if you're not going out of your way to get organic or single-ingredient treats. I still recommend trying if you can, though; even cutting back on those preservatives will be a net benefit.

Ingredients to Avoid: Added Sugars

Added sugars and sweeteners are often added to all sorts of foods. For human foods, it's usually to make them more addictive (to target the sweet tooth most of us have from time to time). For dog foods and treats? Well, it's hard to say. Dogs don't really go for the sweet stuff the same way we do, so it comes off as unnecessary.

Unfortunately again, a lot of dog treats especially have corn syrup and food dyes, which can be added sweetness for no good reason. They're basically a big hit to the glycemic index and caloric intake, with no benefits. Even basic sugar and fructose (another name for sugar) are also added for no reason.

I also already mentioned it above, and you probably already know it, but xylitol is worth special mention. Something like corn syrup is bad but not toxic, while xylitol is definitely toxic. Most of the time, you won't find xylitol in pet foods, but now and then it crops up, and it's also present in sugar-free foods and even some peanut butters. Always read those labels, friends!

Ingredients to Avoid: Fillers

"Filler" ingredients are ingredients that aren't readily digestible by dogs and provide no real useful nutritional value. They exist to bulk up foods and treats, so it looks like you're getting more than you actually are.

At best, these cut down on how much food your dog is eating. At worst, it can cause digestive upset, diarrhea, and bloat, and can even trigger food allergies.

Most fillers are going to be innocuous or even healthy ingredients if they were in people food. You're looking at things like soybean meal, corn bran, corn starch, rice bran, cereal byproducts, oat hulls, peanut hulls, and even wheat gluten.

These generally aren't going to be immediately harmful, but they do just kind of suck and make food less healthy for your pup. It's cheaper for companies to fill out foods with these fillers instead of just making them out of nutritional ingredients, which is why they do it. Sure, those foods are cheaper, but not cheap enough to be worth the trade-off for our canine companions.

I do want to call out wheat gluten specifically here. Most dogs are actually gluten-intolerant, though not quite to the same extent as celiac individuals are. Wheat gluten in their foods can cause their digestive systems to become inflamed, which hinders nutrient absorption and can lead to longer-term health issues. It's probably the worst of the fillers for that reason.

Ingredients to Avoid: Animal Byproducts and Meat Meal

Yes, dogs are meat-eaters. Anyone trying to feed their dogs a vegan diet, no matter how well-meaning, is doing the wrong thing.

But that doesn't mean all animal parts are the same. Sure, our pups are probably perfectly happy burying their faces in roadkill and chewing bones to bits, but that doesn't make it good for them. They can pick up diseases and parasites from those kinds of sources, and shards of bone or other bits can lodge in the digestive system or perforate organs, all of which are miserable for your pup and for you.

Animal byproducts are a category of ingredients that come from processed animals, but aren't used in other ways. The polite name is a way to get it by you when you're just reading ingredients, when you don't know what they are.

Those byproducts are often leftover bits that aren't normally fit for consumption. Things like hooves of cattle, the beaks and feathers of chickens, and even the remnants of offal and other less edible bits from the insides of food animals. They range from mostly neutral to kind of bad, all the way to indigestible filler.

Meat meal, meanwhile, is potentially even worse. Meat meal is meat, like beef or chicken. But it's what's known as "4D" meat. 4D means it's meat from animals that are Dead, Diseased, Dying, or Disabled/Downed. In other words, animals that died on their own or from outside the control of livestock farms.

To put it less politely, it's from animals that might have been diseased with something like salmonella, E. coli, or other pathogens, or from parasites, or even roadkill. It doesn't matter, and it's barely tracked; it's all just processed into an indistinguishable meal that ends up used as a generic protein supplement for pet foods.

Now, is meat meal going to transfer pathogens, parasites, or other diseases to your pup? Probably not. The processing kills that kind of stuff, or at least is supposed to.

What happens, though, is that the ingredients added to the meal to denature pathogens are still there. There's also less regulation on what the animals had beforehand, so there could be residues from antibiotics, steroids, and even the medicines used to euthanize animals. It's all just kind of low-grade bad for your pooch.

Ingredients to Avoid: Excessive Sodium

Sodium in too high a quantity is bad for all of us, people and pets alike. Sodium is necessary in some amounts (it's an electrolyte and keeps our bodies functioning properly), but too much of it causes all manner of issues. Too much sodium can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, and even seizures. Beyond that, it can even cause dehydration, high blood pressure, kidney damage, and, in high excess, death.

Sodium crops up for a lot of reasons, but one of them is as a preservative, which is why several of the preservatives I listed up top are sodium-based. And, again, it can be hard to avoid. Fortunately, you don't (and shouldn't) avoid all sodium, just anything too high in it.

Tips and Questions on Food Ingredients to Avoid

Let's wrap things up with a few added tips and pointers that can help make buying food and treats for your pup a smoother experience. If you have other concerns, feel free to ask in the comments.

How can I evaluate the ingredients in the foods and treats I buy?

It really just comes down to reading the ingredient labels. Anything you don't recognize, look up. With the prevalence of smartphones, there's not much excuse to not know what you're getting, and you can even do research into brands before you leave to buy anything.

The key is to look up things you don't know. Now and then, a new ingredient will pop up, or a new name for an old ingredient will show up, hoping to trick people who aren't paying attention. Doing your due diligence is the least you can do.

What about ingredients that aren't listed?

Sometimes you'll hear a story about contaminated food or recalled treats, and you'll wonder. Is anything safe? Unfortunately, due to relatively lax regulations on pet foods compared to people foods, unscrupulous manufacturers can exploit foods for profit before they're caught.

There's no good way to check for yourself. If an ingredient isn't listed, the only way you'd discover it is if you had a lab to test the food, and I really doubt any of us have one of those sitting around.

My best advice is to pay attention to the FDA recall notices.

I don't trust the big brands. Am I stuck making my foods and treats by hand?

There are plenty of good brands out there. Premium, preservative-free foods are going to be more expensive, sure, but there are a growing number of brands making good foods without added ingredients. There are even some brands making one-ingredient foods, basically just meat processed into chip form and baked.

I will say, making foods and treats by hand can be a rewarding experience, but it's also a bit of a time investment, and maybe even a monetary investment to get all the tools you'll need. You usually don't have to be that distrusting of store-bought foods, though. There are always horror stories, but they're uncommon in the grand scheme of things.

What should I do if my dog has been eating foods with these ingredients?

Change foods and treats.

So, here's the deal: almost everything above is not immediately dangerous, with the exception of a few things like xylitol. You aren't going to need to rush your pup to the emergency vet just because you were idly reading the treat package and noticed it has corn syrup in it.

Instead, most of these ingredients do long-term harm. They increase the risk of cancer, reduce nutritional intake, or cause systemic inflammation and digestive upset. They won't be immediately deadly, and they might not even be traceable back to issues your dog has.

But when you feed your dog foods and treats that don't include these ingredients, your pup is likely to live a longer, healthier life.

I say "likely" because none of this is certain. A dog fed the healthiest, most perfect diet can still develop cancer years younger than other dogs. A dog fed on trash can live longer than you might imagine possible. Quirks of genetics, of environment, and lifestyle can all contribute.

Your job as a pet parent, all of our jobs, is to do the best we can to provide the best lives possible for our puppers. That means cutting back on the bad ingredients in foods and pushing for better recipes.

I will say, though, that if you notice your dog having immediate health issues, especially if they got into a food they shouldn't have, or ate way too much, then you may have more cause for concern. That's when a trip to the vet is more likely the reasonable option, in case they ate something poisonous or toxic.

When in doubt, you can also check with the ASPCA's poison control center. This is basically just like poison control for humans, except aimed at pets. They have a list of anything they know of that's poisonous, the symptoms to watch for, and even a 24-hour helpline you can call if you suspect a poisoning but don't want to risk an unnecessary trip to the emergency vet.

If you have any non-medically urgent questions after reading this article, be sure to let me know in the comments section, down below! I'm always more than happy to help however I can!