Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Honest Kitchen - Human Grade Food Made for Dogs

I have heard a lot of good things about The Honest Kitchen. The Honest Kitchen makes dog and cat food that are human grade, meaning you could eat them if you wanted. They make their food from dehydrated whole food ingredients that you just add water to. The ingredients are all very fresh and of the highest quality. All of their foods are made to meet AAFCO nutrition standards.

All of those things sounded very appealing to me. The Honest Kitchen sent me and Shiner a few sample boxes over their products to test out. We received their "Zeal" and "Love" dog foods. They also sent me a box of "Grace" for cats, which I regretfully can't review since I don't own a cat at the moment.


We tried The Honest Kitchen's Love dog food formula first. Love is a grain-free diet for dogs. The main protein and first ingredient in this food is dehydrated hormone-free beef. The list of ingredients on the box is pretty simple and straightforward. Some other ingredients in Love include sweet potatoes, dandelion greens, cranberries, and pumpkin just to name a few.

I'm a fan of grain free foods because Shiner is a very allergic dog. I usually feed her food with novel proteins like lamb. Also, dogs don't really require a lot of grains in their diet anyhow since they can cause gas and other digestive upset.

Zeal from The Honest Kitchen on top of Shiner's kibble.
Then Shiner went ahead and tried the Zeal dog food from The Honest Kitchen. After looking over all of the dog foods on their website, this one was my favorite. Zeal is a grain-free and gluten-free dog food made with white fish as the main protein. Line-caught haddock and wild whiting to be exact.

The reason I was so excited to test out Zeal was because I have always wanted to try a dog food made with a fish protein and this one sounds perfect for Shiner's allergies. Unfortunately, the sample boxes I received were not enough to do a very thorough review. In order to see a difference in her overall health I would need to feed her this diet for approximately 6-8 weeks. The samples I received were a good taste test though.

I put the food from The Honest Kitchen on top of Shiner's regular dog food and mixed the two together. She loved both types of food! Of course, she loves just about anything if it's food. I thought that adding this tasty treat on top of her normal diet would cause her to inhale the food faster than she normally does, but I was mistaken there. Adding the food from The Honest Kitchen actually made her eat it slower. She licked at it first, and then some of it would get stuck in her bowl and she would scoot her bowl around trying to get it all out for a long time. So, big plus there as it helped with her food scarfing. Here's a video of her enjoying some Love for the first time.


If you're considering preparing your dog's own food, this is a great alternative in my opinion. It's really simple to prepare and the quality of the food is superb. Here's a little walk-through of how easy it was to get the food ready for Shiner to eat.

First, I measured out the food into a bowl. Here's what it looks like in its dry form. The Love formula doesn't really smell like anything. The Zeal however was pretty fishy smelling!

Next, I added the amount of water specified on the label. It seems easy enough to adjust the amount of water to your preference for a thicker or thinner consistency.

You have to let the food sit for 5 minutes after you mix it with water so that it can re-hydrate and thicken up a little bit. I put it on top of Shiner's normal kibble and then served.

Image from TheHonestKitchen.com
The one thing I don't think I can manage when it comes to The Honest Kitchen dog food is the price. A 10 lb. box of Zeal makes about 40 pounds of dog food and costs $107.99. A 10 lb. box of Love makes the same amount of food and costs $96.99. That's about how much I spend on groceries once a week to feed my entire family of 4.

The food I buy Shiner now costs $25 for a 20 lb. bag. This food lasts her about 2-3 weeks. So I spend about $50 a month on dog food for her. If I were to switch over to feeding her Zeal from The Honest Kitchen and purchase a 10 lb. box, I figured that would end up costing me about $100 more per month to feed.

The price may sound extreme, but I don't think it's really all that bad for the product that is being offered. I just don't think it fits in with my family's budget. I'm sure the health benefits of feeding The Honest Kitchen dog food are tremendous though.

If you've been considering preparing your dog's own meals but are not sure if you have the time, I think The Honest Kitchen is a great way to go. This way you are getting all the nutrients your dog needs and don't need to buy any extra supplements. Sometimes I worry when people prepare their dog's own meals that the dog is missing out on important nutrients that are found in commercially made dog foods. Feeding The Honest Kitchen dog food would eliminate that problem. Also, I'm not really a fan of raw diets and wouldn't feed one to my own dog, but that's just a personal preference.

If you're interested in a raw diet or cooking meat for your dog, The Honest Kitchen also offers a food called "Preference" which is a protein free base for homemade dog foods. Basically, all you need to do is add your own protein which makes it pretty simple in my opinion. It's also grain-free. A 7 lb. box of Preference costs $54.99.

Shiner gives The Honest Kitchen products she tasted two paws up! I would also recommend this food to others. Although the price is a little scary at first, it's probably worth it in the end. If you're interested in switching your dog to a super high quality pet food or want to prepare their meals, you may want to check out The Honest Kitchen. You can visit their website here for more information.

Disclaimer: I was not compensated for this post. The Honest Kitchen sent me some of their products and I agreed to provide a fair and honest review of them. All opinions expressed here are my own.

27 comments:

  1. We like the sound of food that the peeps can even eat. Great idea and good company name. Have a terrific Thursday.
    Best wishes Molly

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  2. That does sound like great food but way out of our budget too. It does sound healthy and easy to do. Great review. Have a great day.

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  3. How great - one food for all of us ;o)Think that's a good way to avoid begging on the table ;o)

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    1. Hehe as long as you can get your humans to eat it Easy!

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  4. Woof! Woof! Heard many good thing about HK food. I co host a Tasty Tuesday blog hop. Please make sure to add this posr/url on this Tuesday's hop (2/12). Lots of Golden Woofs, Sugar

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    1. I of course have seen Tasty Tuesday! Thanks for the invitation to add this there.

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  5. I too wrote an article about Honest Kitchen and they were kind enough to contact me and that interaction made me curious to see if there is a way that I can make it more affordable. It is such a great product, but with three dogs, I don't think we can swing this food. I know better food means fewer vet visits, but wow!

    I think this is a fantastic review and you've made me so excited about doing some more research. Thank you!

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    1. Hey Kimberly - I did read your article about The Honest Kitchen and enjoyed another opinion. I am curious if the Preference plus your own meats would be a cheaper route to go. Good luck with your research!

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  6. We love our Honest Kitchen, both dogs get the grain free and it's been really good for them. Roxy lost the little bit of weight she needed to, and now feels like a million bucks.

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    1. Oh so that's what your girls eat :) I remember you said that you switched Roxy to a new food the other day. Glad they like it! They are some pretty lucky pups!

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  7. You're right, THK is definitely more expensive, particularly more so than kibble. Then again, it's one of those things where "you get what you pay for". The most convincing reason I've heard for spending the extra is the health of your pet (and avoidance of future vet bills).

    It's awesome food, isn't it?!

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    1. It is pretty awesome Kim! I agree with the you get what you pay for.

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  8. Jersey & Dexter loved the Zeal, I got a few samples and gave it a go, but a 10lb. box would last less than two weeks in my house. I can't justify spending almost $300 a month to feed 2 dogs. For personal reason, I don't feed HK anymore, either.

    I have made my own "Zeal". My local Asian foods market sells a 5 pound bag of frozen herring for a little less than $5. I cook the fish and add it to another veggie mix food. A 5lb. bag of fish will last me 2 days, so if I wanted to make only fish based food, it would cost me $75 for the month + $22 for the veggie mix food. Much cheaper than buying it premade!

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    1. The food you make for them sounds wonderful Karen! I can barely force myself to cook for my family every night of the week... so I'm not sure how cooking that much for the dog would go... I think it's different when dogs are your only kids - then I probably wouldn't mind!

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  9. How funny that we posted our HK reviews on the same day! Great minds and all that :)

    Mom agrees that the price is a little intimidating. She gives me foods like HK and Stella & Chewy's plus my regular kibble (which also expensive, but not quite so much). This way I still get some extra high quality stuff and she and dad can still eat too :)

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    1. How cool Remy - I agree, great minds :) I'm glad you aren't going to put your parents out on the streets with your dog food bills hehe.

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  10. Thats so cool!!! Food for dogs that humans can eat too!!! Mums gonna have to gets some of this!!
    Love Milo :)

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    1. Hey Milo - While the food is good enough for people to eat, I don't think that it would taste very good to them lol. Good luck though! Hope you can convince her to buy you some!

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  11. That was a great review! Now then, for some reason I am really hungry!

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  12. Shiner has the same culinary taste as me. If it's food, I love it. I also have to eat from a slow feeder bowl because I am also a scarfer.

    Love and,licks,
    Cupcake

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    1. Her fast eating has never really seemed harmful to her in my opinion. She's just a food hound!

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  13. haha OMG, I have to say, that looks disgusting! Glad Shiner loved it! Titan would probably bish slap me if I put that down in front of him. He'd be like "Where my steak & taters ma!?" hehe

    Very cool they sent you samples! Love product reviews! :)

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    1. LOL - oh Bren this made me laugh pretty hard. I can totally see Titan as a steak and taters boy!

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  14. Well this Honest Kitchen stuff is getting some great reviews! Cocco doesn't care that he's not a dog. We might have to check it out :-)

    Oink oink,
    Katie and Coccolino the mini pig

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  15. We are quite intrigued by this - we totally love the idea of feeding human grade food (and indeed we currently do with a competitor's brand, but we feel that cats especially can suddenly decide they don't like a particular brand, so we're big believers in rotating food so that there's no one single brand they are eating at any given time!)

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  16. Yum! Lucky pets of yours. Honest Kitchen sounds like an amazing brand :)

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