Sort Of Like Wonder Bread
Written: Jun 01 '01 (Updated Jun 02 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Priced right, lots of vitamins, smells good.
Cons: The large cans don't come in senior or light varieties.
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend Alpo. I gave it 5 stars because there is nothing about it my dog doesn't like.
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| jo.com's Full Review: Alpo Prime Cuts Canned Dog Food |
Since this is a real review I can’t tell you how cute and funny my Popcorn is when she walks around the house for hours with her cow’s ear (That’s a dog treat) trying to find a place in which to hide it. She attempts the closet, our shoes, our gym bags, behind the door, under pillows and under plastic bags. Her attempts are to no avail. No place satisfies her and she ends up taking it away and continuing on her journey. It is the cutest and funniest thing to watch her attempt to hide her things.
In any case, that’s about as much as I dare tell you because I have a review to do. I’ll make a can of Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy as exciting as I possibly can!
A bit about why I buy a the Wonder Bread of dog foods:
If you have been following my reviews at all you will know that I had a finicky Cocker Spaniel, Buffy, who died on March 10 and I have an 11-year old West Highland White Terrier, Popcorn. Until the last year of Buffy’s life we fed both dogs a variety of dog foods but in all honesty went for the less expensive brands. Alpo is one of those. I have purchased dog food because it was for seniors or may have had less salt. In my experience, none of that matters. But that is just my experience. When Buffy got very sick and the doctor didn’t think she would live much longer I started cooking her low fat hamburg and rice. When she wouldn’t eat the rice, I started giving her anything she wanted especially high salt food because it was so tasty. She outlived everyone’s expectations.
I am not a veterinarian, obviously, but I have been told by others that giving human food to dogs isn’t a good idea. My childhood pet, Mimi, never had dog food – not one day of her life – and lived to be 16 ½ years old. I tend to go with what is the least expensive and still seems nutritious for my dog. Some may say expensive is good; some may say human food is bad. These are just my experiences. This is one area where I won’t buy generic brands, though. It is probably irrational and if I really looked at the label I would find the ingredients to be the same. That is the reason for my title: I see Alpo as the staple dog food. It isn’t a designer name or organic (Sprouted Wheat Bread) but it does the trick (Although I am not sure Wonder Bread does, but that’s another story!)
I am now buying the largest can, which is 22-ounces. Popcorn gets one can a day divided into 3 times with some dry food. She weighs about 21 pounds and for her size according to the label she should be eating 1 ½ cans. I give her a bit less because of the dry food and because she has quite a few treats during the day and because she is overweight! Alpo at this point does not make light, senior (or puppy) in the large cans. She needed to lose weight so we just fed her smaller quantities and that worked.
Alpo is made by Friskies and is recommended for dogs and puppies. I currently have about 30 large cans in my cabinet because it was on sale. The usual price is 99 cents. I found it on sale at Star Market for 79 cents. My husband goes to a discount pet store where it is usually 95 cents but was on sale for 75 cents. So between the two of use, we stocked up.
I am reviewing Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy, although my dog has had both the Prime Cuts and the original Choppy and Chunky Canned Food.
I will give you some examples of the variety of flavors Alpo makes. I believe they may have the best choice I have come across: chunky beef; chicken and rice; gourmet dinner, and turkey and bacon. The newer cans, which are the Prime Cuts, say that Alpo is 100% nutritionally complete with natural chicory to improve bacteria levels. The label even shows a graph of bacterial levels and the improvement over time starting with before one week to within 4 weeks.
They claim to be the only ones to use naturally dried Whole Chicory Root and I do believe them. I trust Alpo, crazy as it sounds. It is just one of those types of brands. I had no idea about the Chicory Root, though, until I did this review. It sounds good but I haven’t seen any research so I will just take their word for it.
What is in Alpo? Each flavor contains a different main ingredient (meat by-products, turkey, chicken, beef) so I will just use chunky beef as an example. It contains water, meat by-products, chicken, beef, soy flour, poultry by-products, whole chicory root, sodium, mineral supplements (and there is a whole host of them: zinc, potassium, copper, and manganese), salt, guar gum, natural flavor, caramel color, vitamins (choline, vitamin e, a b12, D3) supplements (niacin, calcium, riboflavin, folic acid and biotin), and iron.
I am convinced after examining these ingredients that Alpo is chock full of vitamins. What the quantity of vitamins is, the label doesn’t say. However, Alpo states, “Animal feeding tests substantiate that Friskies Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy provides complete and balanced nutrition for the growth and maintenance of dogs.” They also recommend using Alpo dry dog food if you give your dog some of both. We don’t because quite awhile ago an online .com for pets had a 2 for 1 sale and we bought both Iams cans and dry food and still have the dry food and a few cans of the Iams left. We have had no problems mixing the two brands.
They welcome comments and questions and give a 1-800 number, allude to getting your money back if not totally satisfied and ask you to recycle the steel can.
How does it taste? No I did not do a taste test. A smell test is as far as I’ll go. I think the Prime Cuts smells better than the chopped flavors. The chunks are soft pieces and I stick a pill in a chunk (Popcorn is on an arthritis medication.) and she doesn’t know the difference. More on the taste in my final note below.
The cans have easy to read expiration dates on the lids so look for that.
In summary, I highly recommend Alpo. It may not be the “in” product or the food of choice for some who think their dog should only be eating the most expensive dog food from a pet store and that is up to you. For us, Alpo works.
Final note: As I was finishing this review a couple of weeks ago, Popcorn must to our surprise seemed to be picking up her nose at her food. I think she was just bored with it much like we would get bored with soup every day no matter how many flavors we could consume. So I bought another brand of dog food, Cycle, which she had a long time ago and liked. But not this time. It was clear that she didn’t enjoy it as much as she did the Alpo so I finished off the Cycle and she is now back to her favorite canned food.
This write-off is in honor of "bluehawq's" first. She has decided to call it "My Silly Pet". Though we may not all have silly pets, we may know someone who does. Below is a list of participants, please be sure to check all these fine people out. And always remember to spay or neuter your pet! Thanks, Audrey, for coordinating this.
Other reviews to read:
bluehawq | surferdude7 | nikjdog | catladyfromnpt
AngelaBar | CJsMommy | jro26 | Whitty
viper1963 | KittyOKC | Third_Man | thom413
debbie26 | Cartman_2K | GinaHill | AinsleyJo
marytara | susiewho | caleo | fostrmom2mny
disartain | djsplendid | mom2girlz | sarahlynn
nwinston | frazzledspice | pmills1210 | Ali78
ggrimes1221 | HazelWebster | char.mike
altaloma | Presleysmama
nanct | micheich | sherrywilliam
bpotter1 | Sephiroth2000 | Macresarf1
PalmerLD | Patch3boys | manky
Recommended:
Yes
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