I don't know what it is about pet nutrition that brings out the conspiracy theorists

[conuly]

but boy howdy, does it ever.

I was curious as to what "ash" means on pet food bags, and googled it, and discovered that it means "mineral content", or, "if we burned this food down to ashes, this is what would be left over after the protein, carbs, and fat was burned off".

I don't know why they call this "ash" instead of "mineral content", and I don't know why human foods don't list the ash content on the packaging, but what I do know is that I should be somewhat less shocked than I was to see seven full years of comments to this article asserting that anybody believing it is a brainwashed sheep and that actually the pet food industry is a conspiracy to give pets cancer by feeding them cremains.

Comments

[ozma914]

Maybe it's just that EVERYTHING brings out conspiracy theorists, these days.

[conuly]

There's something about petfood, though. All you want is a nice recipe to make your own dog biscuits, and suddenly you're in the middle of a flamewar about whether or not carbs for dogs are a criminal conspiracy to give them arthritis.

[ozma914]

Yeah, I've been there. I leave it to my wife to figure things out--nothing goes in my dog's mouth without her checking it out first.

[conuly]

Here, nothing goes into the dog's mouth without them first going on a diligent root through the trash. Honestly, we try.

Edit: I am just pissy because somebody smells very bad now. We do feed them real food.

[ozma914]

I know how that goes--we have a locked door between the trash and Beowulf. And still, his breath...!

[movingfinger]

...

...

But,

...

Wow

[conuly]

Mmhm.

[moon_custafer]

People are protective of their pets— I’m guessing anything to do with children *also* brings out the conspiracy theorists.

That said… why do so many conspiracy theories ignore basic “cui bono” tests? Like, in what freaking way it is cheaper and easier to obtain cremated human remains to use as filler in pet food, compared with, idk, corn or corn by-products?

[conuly]

I think they meant pet cremains instead of human cremains, but still.

[rebeccmeister]

Huh, I hadn't realized they did that for pet food.

The reason they won't call it "mineral content" is because that's an imprecise translation. Because of the analysis method used, they can only label it "ash." It's used in a lot of analytical nutritional work but generally not for human-consumed foods because for humans we actually want to know how much calcium, magnesium, etc. are present and do more extensive (expensive) analyses to directly quantify the individual minerals. Very common to just report ash for livestock feed.

Silly conspiracy theorists.

[conuly]

Some pet animals may do better with a lower mineral content in their food overall, which is why they record ash on pet foods. (But not always consistently - I don't know what the regulations are here.)

The reason they won't call it "mineral content" is because that's an imprecise translation. Because of the analysis method used, they can only label it "ash.

Ah, so it's "more or less mineral content but not exactly"?

[rebeccmeister]

I could definitely see why it's important/useful to include on pet food labels in general.

And yes, that's it, precisely!

[silveradept]

That's certainly a thing to come across.

[conuly]

God, there is always such drama over pet food you have no idea.

[bitterlawngnome]

https://www.livestrong.com/article/449416-what-is-ash-in-food/ is a pretty good explanation

[conuly]

Thanks!