Customer Reviews

Hill's Science Diet Adult Light Large Breed Dry Dog Food - 35-Pound Bag

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My vet recommended this for my Bernese Mountain Dog and it helps keep his weight down and his joints healthy. I tried switching once to a dogfood that claimed to be healthier, but he started vomiting, which he had never done before, so I switched him back and he has been fine ever since. (I did switch him slowly over a two week timeframe; it is not recommended to suddenly switch dogfoods on your pet because it can upset their tummies.)

I had a terrible experience with this food. I had fed my large Golden Retriever Science Diet adult food for most of his life, then when he was around 6 years old, gradually transitioned him to this light kind because he was getting overweight. He was nuts while eating it! I used to feed him 3-4 cups of his old food...I was feeding him 4-5, to eventually even 6 cups, of this kind and he was constantly seeming hungry, stealing our human food aggressively, acting just agitated throughout the day, and constantly at his food bowl asking for something. He wolfed the food down, but not the way he does with fresh chicken or something he loves...in a really voracious, agitated way, like he was starved.

I started learning how to read the ingredients label and I couldn't believe what I was feeding him. I was a loyal Science Diet customer because of the vet recommendations, blah blah. Now I walk past the whole Science Diet aisle and don't trust the vet recommendations. My new, more independent vet said Science Diet funds the vet schools quite heavily and so they are constantly being "taught" how good it is by Science Diet reps. The high price you pay is for their advertising and donations to the schools, not for quality dog food.

I learned that dogs have short digestive tracts meant for digesting meat. They are not made to eat tons of grain! Read the ingredients again: Corn meal, soybean mill run, chicken by-product meal , peanut hulls, corn gluten meal, soybean meal, etc. I didn't know this before researching more, but most of this is just absolute junk- leftover products from processing human foods, products with basically no nutrients and just take up space. Freebies for Science Diet probably because they have little value anywhere else. This list also includes just about ALL the problem foods dogs get allergies to- corn, gluten, soybeans. Soybean mill run, peanut hulls, corn gluten meal, and soybean meal are basically junk dogs should not eat. They cannot digest it! So, my dog was constantly hungry and not getting the nutrients he needed.

I cannot believe I trusted Science Diet for so many years paying a premium price for this stuff! I am still mad about it! Now I skip all the fluffy, absolutely unregulated stuff companies write on the front of the bag and go right to the ingredients list.

Anyway, I feed my dog Merrick now. I definitely WOULD NOT do this light stuff from Science Diet. Check out the dog food adviser website for pretty useful rankings on dog food...science diet was 1/5 or 2/5 stars for quality, I don't remember. They said something like "cheap stuff for a premium price."