When your pup is your world, you want to give them the best you can. 

But with so many shiny packets in pet shops and veterinary hospitals — some twice the supermarket price — it’s tough to know what to opt for. 

Premium kibble is marketed as top-tier dog food that gives your pup quality nutrition, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. When there’s no strict regulation or mandatory industry standard on what’s considered premium, any pet food can add this label (along with a hefty price tag). 

So, how is premium kibble any different, and does it really have extra health benefits? 

What makes kibble ‘premium’?

Premium kibble often claims to be formulated to include more vitamins, minerals, balanced fats, carbohydrates, and protein. 

Some consider premium to be a better nutritional choice for dogs, as it may:

• Contain fewer meat meals and more meat

• Be grain-free, hypoallergenic, contain superfoods, and exotic proteins

• Include prebiotics, antioxidants, and more omega-3

• Have a more balanced omega 6 to omega 3 ratio than what is industry-acceptable to help control inflammation

• Be tested on laboratory beagles, often studies to compare it to standard kibble

Given the industry is self-regulated, there’s no real way to guarantee these claims are true — we can only take them at face value.

What are the "selling points" of premium kibble?

Fixed formulation: some premium kibbles have a fixed formulation, meaning that their meat meal comes from the same source each time. Don’t get meat meal confused with real meat — it’s the rendered product of animal muscle meat and often includes parts like blood, hair, and stomach contents. 

Human-grade: some premium kibbles use human-grade ingredients, which may be safer for your dog than meat meal. 

Grain-free: grain-free can be appealing to dogs with intolerances, but simply being grain-free isn’t enough to ensure your pup’s food is healthy — many grain-free foods substitute grains with other ‘non-grain’ ingredients like legumes and beet pulp, which offer little to no health benefits. These ‘non-grain’ additions are high in glycaemic index, and may contain antinutrients (which affect your dog’s ability to absorb nutrients). 

Hypoallergenic: many premium foods are described as hypoallergenic — they may not contain common animal protein allergens, but many formulations include plant-based allergens (like wheat and soy). These types of hypoallergenic diets may not resolve your dog’s sensitivity. Try looking at the specific ingredients instead to make sure that they’re all something your dog can eat. Premium kibble may also be free from artificial preservatives and other technical additives which may trigger food reactions.

Exotic proteins: exotic proteins, like duck and goat, can be useful if your dog is sensitive to other proteins.

Superfoods: superfoods have amazing benefits. They provide polyphenols (plant nutrients) to support the gut microbiome and healthy vision, but the amounts added to kibble are usually very low — often less than salt. Kibble’s high-temperature cooking process is also likely to decrease the bioactivity of these superfood ingredients, which can limit nutrient retention. 

Premium kibble may have some benefits compared to regular kibble — but these advantages are marginal, compared to the downsides of this food type. If you’re looking for the healthiest diet for your dog, read on. 

Need more help to understand the confusing world of dog food ingredients? Check out our glossary of common label terminology.

How is premium kibble made?

It doesn't matter if kibble is marketed and labelled as premium, it still goes through the same processing method as any standard dried food.

This involves cooking at a high heat, before being dried and then reheated. This high heat and processing makes the ingredients lose much of their natural nutritional value. Individual nutrients are added in their place, often from synthetic and poorly bioavailable sources. 

How does real, fresh food (like Lyka) compare to premium kibble?

There’s no secret — we’re passionate about fresh, gently cooked dog nutrition. If we won’t eat it, we won’t serve it!

Choosing the best diet for your dog can be overwhelming, but weighing up the facts can help guide your decision in a way that suits your dog’s needs.

What does science say?

There is plenty of very interesting research available that points towards a fresh food diet being best for our pups when compared to kibble.

• Easier to digest: a breakthrough study showed that human-grade fresh food was easier for our dogs to digest than kibble.

• Supports gut health: the same study also showed that dogs who ate fresh food had more diverse microbiomes. You may have heard about the microbiome in human health — increased diversity generally leads to better health in dogs, as long as bacteria is beneficial rather than harmful. Multiple studies have found that lower diversity is associated with various diseases like inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and psoriatic arthritis.

• Helps with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD): according to recent studies, puppies eating ultra-processed food had a higher lifetime risk of IBD.

• Higher presence of health-jeopardising bacteria in kibble-fed dogs: some studies show that the Megamonus and Catenibacterium bacteria families, associated with aggression and weight gain, had a higher presence in dogs mainly fed kibble.

• Difficulty digesting high-carb kibble: dogs make glucose from protein and wild dogs have eaten 3% carbohydrate diets for millennia. There are no studies on dogs that support the safety of feeding 50% carbohydrate diets. Dogs have evolved some digestive enzymes to deal better with carbohydrates, but this does not mean that they are thriving on a high-carbohydrate kibble diet.

What does our common sense tell us?

Nutrition is constantly evolving.

Modern dog nutrition knowledge is so much deeper compared to when premium kibble came to market a couple of decades ago. There’s still so much uncharted territory, especially looking at essential nutrients for dog health. 

Premium kibble has been touted as the perfect, convenient diet for all our dog’s nutritional needs, but it has flaws. Lots of nutrients get lost in the high-temperature cooking process, which means over-reliance on added nutrients — known to be problematic for humans and the same may well be true for dogs. 

According to a survey conducted by the UK Kennel Club, life expectancy has decreased for our precious pets. 

Although premium kibble passes all the regulatory body tests and contains many vitamins and minerals, it just can’t compare to the nutrient complexity of a varied fresh food diet. 

A rainbow of varied fresh foods, fed in a complete and balanced manner, can result in very happy, healthy pets. Imagine: how would you feel if you only ate ultra-processed food for the next decade? 

Based on my clinical experience and interpretation of the research, a dog's diet should be made up of at least 45% high quality protein. For pets to thrive and not just survive, it needs to include a nutritionally complete and balanced ratio of vegetables, healthy oils, some fruit, and vegetables and superfoods like spirulina. 

Our fresh takeaway

At Lyka, we follow the most up-to-date animal and human nutrition information and use these insights when formulating nutrient-packed fresh food for healthy pups all over Australia. This means we:

• Include 100% human-grade protein sourced as ethically and sustainably as possible.

• Create our recipes in Aussie-based kitchens with controlled production processes.

• Design vet-formulated meals in collaboration with board-certified veterinary nutritionists and Animal Nutrition Expert, James Prendergast.

• Use a gently cooked method that promotes easier digestion and nutrient absorption.

Processed food isn’t great for pups. Yours deserves the absolute best, and with Australia’s pet food industry largely self-regulated, we’ve set our own standards of excellence. 

At Lyka, a human-grade diet is the future of dog food. I’m pleased to see so many Australian dog parents embracing whole foods thanks to Lyka’s human-grade recipes. 

Each day in my clinic, I see the life-changing results that a fresh food diet can have for our pets. Is your pup ready to start eating fresh?