All You Need to Know About Freeze Dried Dog Food

At a time when the FDA is investigating many commercial dog food brands for potentially causing fatal diseases, many dog owners are shifting to raw dog food.

But feeding raw food to your dog is no joke as it can go bad within a few hours. That's where Freeze dried dog foods come into play. In these raw diets, manufacturers carefully remove all the moisture which increases their shelf-life to more than a year.

In this article, we'll be going over all the benefits of freeze dried foods for dogs and will discuss whether they're worth the price.

The manufacturing process of this type of dog food is a bit complex, to say the least. The procedure used for removing water from freeze dried dog food is sublimation. Now, what is sublimation? It's a process in which solids are directly converted into vapors, thereby bypassing the liquid state.

Following are the steps taken for freeze drying dog food:

• Initially, the manufacturer places the dog food in a dryer where some of the moisture evaporates.
• Then, the temperature is reduced to freeze the water molecules.
• For removing the water content, manufacturers reduce the pressure and then slightly increase the temperature. With these two changes, water manages to evaporate directly from the solid-state and is then removed through a vacuum.

So, by the end of it, you'll have dry raw food for your dog which would contain all the nutritional benefits of a raw diet but with an extended shelf-life.

Well, you might be wondering whether freeze dried dog food is any good.

It sure is. In fact, freeze dried dog food is considered to be one of the most high-quality dog food types in the market. This is one of the reasons why this dog food is a tad bit expensive than commercial ones.

Here are the benefits of this diet.

1. Preservation of Nutrients

When dog food is cooked, it loses a lot of its nutritional value. That's because many nutrients disintegrate through heating.

Freeze dried dog food avoids all of that as in the drying process, the temperature is never increased to an extent that it may take a hit on the nutritional value of this food. As a result, most of the nutrients in the raw diet are preserved.

2. Longer Shelf-Life

The major problem with raw dog food is that it's incredibly hard to preserve it. If you work at a 9 to 5 job, it can be extremely taxing to ensure there's fresh raw food for dogs available every day.

That's where freeze dried dog food comes in. With almost all the moisture content removed, this dog food type can survive over a year on the shelf. Depending on your environmental conditions, the shelf-life could be even longer than that.

So, you can buy these foods in bulk and feed your dogs a diet that maintains the nutritional intake of raw food.

3. Balanced Diet

These foods make for a balanced intake for your dogs as they're essentially meat-based. A lot of high-end manufacturers use up to 90-95% meat in their freeze dried recipes.

In essence, you're feeding your dogs raw meat with some added nutrients to balance it out.

4. High-Quality Ingredients

Now, here's the kicker:

Freeze dried foods for dogs are one of the most high-quality dog diets in the market. Most of them are grain and gluten-free with no added colors and preservatives. A lot of them don't even use poultry meat and instead opt for farm-raised animals as meat sources.

However, before you buy one, make sure you dig deep into the manufacturing process and ingredients used in the dog food. Both of these can be easily found on the manufacturer's website. But if you don't seem to find this information, try calling customer service.

Dehydrated dog food is also a raw diet with its moisture content removed. So, how is it any different from a Freeze-dried diet?

You see, both these dog food types use different methods to remove moisture. In freeze dried foods for dogs, the water content is removed without excessive heating which helps to preserve the nutritional value of raw food. However, dehydrated dog food is produced by simply evaporating the water, meaning that lots of heat is used in this process. This way, much of the nutritional value is lost.

At the root, freeze dried dog food can be considered as raw food because it maintains its nutritional value. Sadly, the same can't be said for dehydrated foods for dogs.

Right, so it all boils down to this. Is freeze dried dog food worth the investment?

I'd say it definitely is. This dog food type allows you the freedom to feed raw meat to your dog without having to worry about spoilage. Yes, the price is certainly high. But if you consider the quality of ingredients and the extent to which manufacturers go to preserve this raw diet, there's not much more you could ask for.