Is Ultra-Processed Dog Food Bad for Dogs? What Processing Really Tells You

Air-dried dog treats are processed. So is kibble. So is a chicken breast you cook at home.

That's why we don't judge dog food by whether somebody calls it “processed”. We judge what was done to it, why, and what the dog gets at the end.

We prefer ingredients that haven't been subjected to unnecessary harsh treatment. But we also want food that's safe and nutritious. Sometimes processing helps achieve that. Sometimes it can damage what was good about an ingredient in the first place.^[1]

The word on the packet doesn't settle which happened.

Some cooking makes food better

Heat doesn't just change how food looks. It can kill harmful microbes and make some nutrients easier to digest. Different cooking methods can also change what a dog's gut does with the food.^[1]

Here's a finding that surprised us. Researchers made corn-based dog foods using three methods: pelleting, baking and extrusion, the heat-and-pressure process commonly used to make kibble. They fed the foods to 12 dogs. The extruded version was the most digestible and produced the best stool scores of the three.^[2]

That doesn't make extrusion the champion of all dog food. It does knock out the idea that the gentlest-sounding method must produce the best result.

And some processing takes something away

Too much heat, heating for too long, or heating the same ingredients repeatedly can affect the protein a dog is able to use.

One example is lysine, an essential building block of protein. During heating, it can react with sugars. That browning reaction gives cooked food familiar flavours, but it can also leave some lysine less available to the dog. Researchers have measured this effect in commercial pet foods.^[3]

So yes, we're interested in how food is cooked. Temperature and time matter. We're not going to pretend that every process leaves ingredients untouched.

But “cooked at a high temperature” still isn't enough information for a verdict. How long, which ingredients, and what the finished food delivers all make a difference.

Doesn't human research warn us about ultra-processed food?

It does. Think of a typical ultra-processed human food: perhaps an American fizzy drink sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, or a snack made with industrial ingredients, flavourings and additives you wouldn't have in your kitchen. That's close to the widely used NOVA definition. It's about how food is put together, not simply whether somebody has cooked it.^[7]

Now imagine turning over a bag of dog food and seeing “meat and animal derivatives” or “derivatives of vegetable origin”. Of course people make the connection: what exactly is in here, and why won't the manufacturer name it? We ask the same question.

But those phrases are broad, permitted ingredient categories, not proof that something artificial, harmful or inferior has been put into the food. They let manufacturers vary their ingredients and can help keep costs down. What they don't do is tell you precisely what you're buying. That's why we won't use vague derivatives, regardless of whether the ingredients behind the description might be perfectly good.^[8]

So we want two answers from a dog-food maker: what's in it, and what's been done to it.

There's no accepted pet-food version of NOVA that lets us point to a bag of kibble and predict a dog's health from the processing category alone. Researchers have argued for better ways of studying processing specifically in pets.^[4]

And dog research is starting to give us useful clues. In a 2026 study, 23 dogs tried a mildly cooked commercial food and an extruded kibble food for two weeks each. Their blood-sugar responses, stool and gut bacteria differed, with several measures favouring the mildly cooked food.^[5]

We take that seriously. But two weeks on different commercial recipes doesn't prove that one processing method will keep dogs healthier or help them live longer. The foods differed in more than how they were cooked.^[5]

It's evidence worth following, not a reason to declare every kibble unhealthy.

Isn't gentler processing safer?

Not automatically. Drying something doesn't guarantee that harmful bacteria have been dealt with.

A UK study found Salmonella in some dried, non-heat-treated meat dog treats bought from a small selection of retailers.^[6] That study doesn't tell us anything about the safety of a particular B&B treat or every dried product. It does show why a manufacturer needs a process that actually controls the risks.

We want food treated with care. We also want it made safely. Those aren't competing aims.

The best argument for gentler cooking

If a manufacturer can make a food safely and give the dog everything it needs without putting the ingredients through an unnecessarily severe process, why wouldn't we favour that? We do.

The answer isn't to stop caring about processing. It's to stop treating the process name as proof of a better food.

A manufacturer saying “gently cooked” should be able to explain what that means. How hot? For how long? What does that approach achieve? If someone claims it protects nutrients or improves digestibility, what supports that specific claim?

It's the same challenge we'd put to a manufacturer proudly calling a food “ultra-processed”. Tell us what actually happened to the ingredients and what difference it made.

How we'd choose

For a dog's main food, first check that it is complete and suitable for the dog's life stage. For food and treats alike, check what's actually in the recipe. Then look at the processing method and any evidence offered for its benefits.^[1]

We favour clearly named ingredients and careful processing that preserves their value while making the finished food safe. That's a position we're happy to defend.

What we won't do is call something healthier merely because it says “air-dried”, “cold-pressed”, “gently cooked” or “extruded”.

Those words tell you something about how it was made. They don't tell you everything about what your dog is eating.