freshfetch™ Real Meals for Dogs

Easily exceeds AAFCO standards

AAFCO uses a modified technique for calculating the metabolizable energy (ME) in most dog foods. They must do this because most dog foods aren't highly digestible. Real Meals for Dogs™ ME are calculated using the same techniques that apply for human food. And, these meals meet or exceed even the more demanding National Research Council's nutrition guidelines.

Suitable for your table

We prepare the same quality of food for these meals as you would expect to be served at your own table.

The Nutrition of raw, meets the safety of home style.

We cook meats & fish to temperatures that leave amino acid profiles virtually identical to that of the same protein when raw, while greatly reducing the possibility of food-borne pathogens.

USDA Inspected

All of our ingredients are USDA inspected and passed. Meats are Prime, or Choice. Poultry and eggs are Grade A, and vegetables are graded "for Fresh Market."

Zero Processing

Except for gentle cooking we don't process our foods at all. We pack every meal in transparent, environmentally conscious packaging, so you can see exactly what you're feeding before you buy.

Complete Nutrition

You won't have to add any supplemental vitamins or minerals to your dog's food when you feed Real Meals for Dogs. They're included. And, they're from the best natural vitamin and mineral sources we can find.

FDA-Nutrition Labels

No other pet food manufacturer provides FDA nutrition labels like the ones you see on your own food. Why? FDA labeling requires accurate disclosure. It's hard to hide just what and how much is in your food. That's why we use them. We want you to know.

No Preservatives

And we mean none.

No Artificial Anything

We even reject "organic" foods when we test them and find trace chemicals in them.

Recognizable Ingredients

You'll recognize, and be able to pronounce, every ingredient.

Why freshfetch™?

It's hard to tell which food for your dog is best. Every new entry into the group of new frozen foods for dogs all claim to be the best options for feeding your dog. There's raw frozen, cooked frozen, frozen patties, frozen chubs...

Then, there's freshfetch Real Meals for Dogs.™

1. Your eyes don't lie. Yes, it's whole, real food like you might eat.

What does color tell us about food? Colors in foods signal the presence of potent micronutrients. Over-processing changes the color of foods, because it changes food properties. Here is just some of the color code working in freshfetch meals:
Red (Meats)	Iron, Zinc, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, Protein, B-Vitamins, Selenium, Vitamin-D
Orange & Yellow	Cancer & heart disease fighting antioxidants, beta carotene, Vitamin-A, Vitamin-C, colon cancer fighting folate
Green	Lutein, phytonutrients, colon cancer fighting folate
Blue	Flavonoids, a cancer fighting rich antioxidant and free radical scavenger.

2. Why most of our foods aren't ground; and why grind?

As a rule, we don't grind our food. Oh, there are exceptions to this rule, such as our popular freshfetch Bites which start with USDA Grade A ground Turkey meat.

Some people suggest that grinding food helps aid digestibility as a assistant to chewing. But dog's aren't generally chewers of their food. For the most part, dogs evolved into gulpers of their food, with teeth designed for shredding and mouths that evolved differently than humans. Their gastric tracts are equipped to digest foods swallowed in gulps. Dogs even lack the digestive mouth-based salivary enzymes that start human digestion in the mouth.

Grinding food, then placing it all together in a package causes the enzymes present to begin to interact with each other, because they've been released from their cellular containers by the grinder. When enzymes react in the package, instead of your dog, it may be that your dog doesn't get the benefit of the digestion process produced by evolution, controlling the digestion of each protein, saccharide, or fatty acid chain.

And, there's another reason why most "premium" dog foods are ground. Though their ingredients come from the "human grade" food chain, they're graded "for processing" (or lower) by the USDA. These ingredients generally fail the tests of quality that are required for USDA Prime, Choice, Select, and even Standard meats. The poultry and fish fails quality tests for Grade A or Grade B, and is usually not sellable at retail. So, these ingredients are ground beyond recognition and mixed with other ingredients.

So, we hand cut our ingredients, leaving largely intact pieces of each one so that the contents are released in the dog -- not the package.

Also, years ago, before the days when hamburger was a household word, butchers ground meats for several reasons. One of those reasons was that it allowed them to make use of the trimmings from their daily sales of prime meat cuts. These trimmings (which were often largely fat) went into a save pail, and could be ground along with lean meat to make a mixture of meat with a fat content that was difficult to determine by looking at it.

Things have changed in the world of foods in many western countries. Now, labeling laws for ground meats require disclosure of fat content. But, some of the same reasons for grinding dog foods are still around. When foods become discolored, past their safe selling date, or are otherwise compromised, it's easy to mask a substandard food by grinding it up with other foods.

3. We use fresh-to-market Whole Foods not Restaurant Remnants or Trimmings.

You'll see companies using the terms "restaurant grade" or similar terms. Then, you'll find their food selling for a fraction of the cost of freshfetch. So, to begin to explain why, we'll start by doing something very different. We'll tell you that we make about $1.75 in profit for each meal that we sell.

Food costs for the fresh-to-market ingredients we use are the majority of the cost for every freshfetch meal. Then we add labor, packaging and other overhead (to pay for kitchen, rent, electricity, etc.)

We buy smart and produce efficiently. But, we don't compromise on quality. So, when you see another company suggesting that they're able to buy the same quality ingredients we use: fresh-to-market meats, produce and fruits, and sell at a fraction of our cost, something's wrong with that story.

Most likely, some of these companies rely on your assumption of what restaurant grade means. Their ingredients may be restaurant grade but be well past their peak and actually be restaurant remnants, or restaurant trimmings. Rejected remnants and trimmings from restaurant suppliers are cheap, but substandard substitutes for fresh-to-market food. That's why the food is then processed into a shape resembling nothing found in nature, and ends up colorless and unrecognizable as what they say it is supposed to be. If you don't recognize it as what they say it is you're probably not getting exactly what they want you to think you're getting.

We use only USDA Grade A products. We don't use remnants, trimmings, or rejects. And, we don't process it beyond recognition, so you'll recognize the ingredients in our food - easily.

4. Potent Whole Foods help protect against Cancer, Heart Disease and other health conditions.

We often get questions about vegetables and fruits in dog's diets. Coming from a good perspective about the various canine diets, like Dr. Billinghurst's Bones and Raw Food, we clearly understand the case for meat diets, and the arguments for raw. Increasingly, though, we're forced to accept that modern dogs aren't wolves living in the wild, hundreds or thousand of years ago. Domestic dogs today are exposed to a barrage of environmental factors and other influences that may increase their risk for chronic illnesses, including cancers, liver disease, allergies and others. Phytonutrients -- found only in plants -- are some of the best sources of cancer protection, heart disease protection and fighters of chronic disease for dogs and humans, too. Once a dog contracts a disease -- like cancer -- it may then be too late to include some of these incredible sources, because they contain carbohydrates which may provide fuel to the disease. We think it best to include these great sources in the diet daily, to give every dog a great chance of never contracting a deadly disease.

We can't make promises that our food will keep your dog from contracting cancer, heart disease or some neurological disorder, like seizures. There is a multitude of factors to consider, and your veterinarian is your best resource for discussions about your dog's overall health and any specific condition he or she may have.

But we can tell you that we've seen dogs fighting conditions like seizures make remarkable progress in living more normal lives after starting to eat whole, potent foods. In fact, we've researched some of the reasons why whole foods that include potent sources of Omega-3 and Omega-6 essential fatty acids, antioxidants, free radical scavengers and phytonutrients are believed to help some of the worst health conditions our pets develop.

As we say, sometimes it's not what's in the food that's the problem. It's what isn't. So, if the food you're feeding your dog is colorless, processed and formed and lifeless, or worse yet contains artifical colors or chemicals, freshfetch can offer a taste of whole, unprocessed, fresh-to-market foods that can change your dog's life -- and yours!