Better than "Balanced"
Here’s the deal. Thanks to a regulatory quirk, we can’t officially call our diet “complete and balanced.” To use that phrase, pet food regulations mandate meeting certain levels of vitamins and minerals that often times are attained by adding synthetic sources.
“But most of the regulations are based on studies with dry kibble,”
says Dr. Richard Patton, who has consulted in the industry for 30 years.
“For example, the level of zinc they recommend is two to four times the amount known to be required by any other creature ever studied.”
It may make sense to add back nutrients when they’ve been processed out of pet food. But Shine is fresh. It contains all these vitamins and minerals naturally—a more effective way to deliver them to the body to begin with. If we added the copper and zinc requirements to Shine, we feel it would be too much. So we’ve chosen not to, which means we have to label our food as:
“intended for supplemental or intermittent feeding only.”
We hope that will change with new guidelines for fresh food. Bottom line?
“If you want a longer, healthier life for your pet,” says Dr. Patton, “our products are balanced, complete nutrition, even if we’re not allowed to say it that way.”