How to read a treat label

Everything on a pet food label is regulated, which people take to mean everything on it is straightforward. It is not. The rules leave a lot of room, and the room gets used.

Order means weight, before cooking

Ingredients are listed heaviest first — but weighed as they went in, water and all. Fresh chicken is about three-quarters water, so 'chicken' can sit proudly at the top of a list and contribute far less to the finished piece than the dry ingredient listed below it.

Ingredient splitting

If you list one ingredient it has to carry its full weight and rank accordingly. If you split it into three near-identical entries, each one weighs a third as much and drops down the list. Ground corn, corn gluten meal and corn bran are three lines. Together they might outweigh the meat sitting above them.

Read a list for what appears repeatedly, not just what appears first.

The words that are doing work

'Meal' means rendered and dried — chicken meal is more concentrated protein than fresh chicken, not less, which is the opposite of what most people assume.

'By-product' sounds worse than it usually is. Organ meat is nutritionally excellent.

'Natural', 'premium' and 'gourmet' carry little to no regulatory weight on a treat. 'Human grade' does mean something specific, but only if every ingredient and the whole facility qualify.

'With chicken' can legally mean a small percentage. The proportion rules are real but generous.

The short-list test

The most useful thing you can do with a treat label takes five seconds: count the ingredients. Then ask what each one is doing there.

Anything present to make a treat softer, cheaper, brighter or longer-lived is there for the manufacturer's benefit rather than your dog's. The shorter the list, the more of it is actually the thing you meant to buy.

Our sage tin lists one word. You can finish reading it before you finish picking it up.