Honest Kitchen vs. Spot Farms: The Battle of the Dehydrated Foods

Honest Kitchen was the original dehydrated dog food, but Spot Farms has now entered the market with a competing product. How do they compare? Is one obviously better than the other? Just how similar are their products anyway? Having recently tried Spot Farms dehydrated dog food, I thought I would share some observations.

The Contenders

Honest Kitchen dog food advertises human grade ingredients prepared in a kitchen that also makes
human food. Their ever-growing selection of dehydrated dog foods include both grain-free and grain-inclusive options. Honest Kitchen heavily advertises their food as being GMO-free, which is great if you don't like GMOs, and mildly distasteful if you understand science. Each Honest Kitchen recipe seems to have a nearly endless list of ingredients, which is great for a varied and healthy diet, and not so great for dogs with multiple food allergies.

Spot Farms also offers grain-free and grain-inclusive options, however they just got off the ground and don't have nearly as much variety in their product line. Overall their foods are simpler, with fewer ingredients. Their foods are also made with human-grade ingredients, but are not advertised as being prepared in human food kitchens. That said, the parent company is actually a human food company. As Perdue Foods, produces chicken, turkey, and pork, it seems unlikely they will expand to include different proteins in the future.

The Foods

Honest Kitchen food has always seemed a little...planty to me. When I mix it up, it turns into a watery green mixture that smells like vegetables. I've fed a lot of my daycare dogs different Honest Kitchen foods, and they all seem pretty green and watery. It never looks like rehydrated meat, and if I didn't already know it was in there I wouldn't suspect it was made out of meat.

I was expecting a similar experience when I mixed up a batch of Spot Farms Grain-Free Pork dog food. To my surprise, it soaked up the water and immediately resembled canned dog food. Both foods call for a 2 to 3 ratio of food to water, but the Spot Farms absorbs it much faster and I can add twice as much without the food seeming watery. In fact, it's a bit of a challenge to get all the food stirred in because it absorbs liquid so quickly.

Though both foods contain about 470 calories per dry cup, the recommended portions are a bit different. Honest Kitchen recommends feeding 31-50 lb dogs between 1 and 4 cups per day, depending on their activity level. Spot Farms recommends 2-2.75 cups per day for dogs in the same weight range. The way Spot Farms food bulks up, even 1 dry cup makes a big bowl of food. Honest Kitchen doesn't expand the same way.

The Dogs

Brisbane eats both Honest Kitchen and Spot Farms foods with equal enthusiasm, because Brisbane eats everything. However, he did vomit one Spot Farms meal. He usually has a cast iron stomach, even during chemotherapy. I'm pretty sure I just fed him way too much food, when I cut him down to half a dry cup at a time he does fine. Sisci also eats both foods with equal enthusiasm. 

Ru the chihuahua hates Honest Kitchen. He won't touch it. He will eat the Spot Farms food though. He's not super crazy about it like he is about Fresh Pet, but he'll eat it. I've heard from at least one person who said their dogs refused to eat the Spot Farms food. Honest Kitchen offers a satisfaction guarantee, meaning you can return it to the store where you bought it for a refund. Spot Farms does not currently have this guarantee, however it is currently being sold primarily through big box pet stores like Petco and Petmart. These are notorious for their generous return policies, so it is likely that they will accept returns on Spot Farms food.

As an added note, Spot Farms grain free dog food seems like it would make a good dry ingredient for homemade pill pockets.

Food Friday: Honest Kitchen Instant Goat's Milk Plus Probiotics

Honest Kitchen's Instant Goat's Milk Plus Probiotics is a great way to get all the microbial goodness of yogurt without refrigeration. This was another fabulous product for Brisbane when he was recovering from surgery and on massive doses of antibiotics. Those wreck havoc on the gut flora, and probiotics are a great way to help get things back to normal. My vet usually recommends yogurt with live cultures for a few weeks after antibiotics, but this was less than convenient when I was taking Briz to work with me and feeding him lunch.

The Company

I'm a big fan of Honest Kitchen, even more since they expanded their product line to include allergy-friendly egg-free poultry-free foods. I'm not crazy about their stance on GMOs though, I'm a big fan of better crop yields through science so I am anti-anti-GMO. Yay genetically modified organisms!

Honest Kitchen is both super honest and super responsible, which is why they had a recall for salmonella in 2013. None of their products tested positive for it, however a batch of their human-grade parsley was recalled by the supplier so they recalled everything it went into out of an abundance of caution. They could have decided their food was ok after testing it, they could have waited to see if any dogs got sick with a link to their food, they could have put their image first, but they didn't.

The company has added some new products recently, including their Propper Toppers for adding a special treat to meals. Unfortunately these are made from either chicken or turkey so Brisbane can't have them and therefore I am too annoyed to buy them for my non-allergic dogs. They also make a dry digestive supplement called Perfect Form that sounds like it works a lot like pumpkin only way more expensive. They also recently added an instant beef bone broth which proves they've been stealing my ideas.

The Food

When I opened my can of Instant Goat's Milk, I was rather surprised to find it contained a plastic bag. A half-full plastic bag. I know these things are sold by weight not volume, but this was seriously like buying one of those big boxes of candy at the movie theater and opening it to find like five Skittles.

I love kids!

This stuff mixes up like any powdered milk, with tons of stirring and some lumps no mattered what you do. The dogs like it ok, and the probiotics worked as well as any probiotics do, which is to say Brisbane's tummy issues showed a regression to the mean (normal poo) that may or may not have happened in the absence of the probiotics. 

The Verdict

This is way more convenient to carry around than yogurt, and great when you only need to add probiotics now and then because it's non-perishable. It's also super expensive, at $20 for a can that's maybe 1/4-1/3 full. The can makes 12 cups, I'm pretty sure I could buy 12 cups of goat's milk for less than that. Or maybe I could just milk some goats.

Food Friday: Honest Kitchen Kindly Base Mix

After giving up on Honest Kitchen foods for a while due to Brisbane's poultry/egg/barley/sweet potato allergies, they've hooked us again with their allergy-friendly Kindly base mix that has been perfect for his recovery. This is a dehydrated food that needs water and meat added to make it complete meal. It is chicken-free, duck-free, turkey-free, egg-free, corn-free, barley-free, and sweet potato-free. The major ingredients are carrots, flaxseed, parsnips, peas, celery, coconut, pumpkin, and chard.

The Company

Honest Kitchen is a pretty neat company, they are generous with free samples and do a fantastic job of keeping it positive when sharing information. They are allowed to market their food as "human grade" because they make it in a people food facility using people food ingredients. They did have a recall due to possible salmonella contamination in 2013, but not because anyone got sick or even because a product tested positive. One of their suppliers had some parsley intended for human consumption that tested positive for salmonella, and some of that parsley made it into the Honest Kitchen food so they recalled everything just in case.

I appreciate that Honest Kitchen sells their products on their own merit, rather than demonizing the competition. They're not howling about how "Other pet food is literally killing your pet!!!" (I'm looking at you, Wysong.) There are no pages on their site devoted to the evils of kibble or canned food. They do mention the reality of the pet food industry and what ingredients are allowed into the supply chain, but these are brief notes with a wistful tone. "We wish every company could do this because it's so darned cool!" Again, the focus is on Honest Kitchen and why they are awesome. Thanks for not telling me I'm killing my dogs!

The Food

Coming from a rabid evangelistic raw feeder background, the idea of mixing something with meat has always felt a bit weird. Like, why don't I just skip the rest and just feed them meat? My first venture into the homemade cooked food world was with Dinner Pawsible, a book of recipes consisting of several cups of rice and veggies with just a little bit of meat mixed in. It felt very wrong.

Honest Kitchen's Kindly base mix comes with mixing instructions for two different energy requirements. The one for highly active dogs uses almost twice as much meat as it does Kindly mix. The one for average activity levels uses equal amounts of meat and mix. This ratio feels much more comfortable. When Brisbane was recovering from surgery, I fed him the highly active ratio. Now that his stitches are out and his weight is back to normal, I've switched to the average ratio. Both include plenty of water, I've been using bone broth instead. 

I think my favorite thing about this product is the range of choices it allows. The meat added can be cooked or raw. I've been using cooked meat because it is more digestible and was easier for Briz to eat with a mouth full of stitches. Any meat will do, so I've been buying whatever is cheapest at the store and cooking it up. Brisbane has had manager's special discounted porterhouse steak, crockpot pulled pork, and even roasted goat in his Kindly meals. I'm not a huge fan of feeding my dog the exact same thing every meal, and that's usually what happens when I buy one kind of food and feed it exclusively. With a freezer full of pre-cooked, pre-measured portions, Briz can have a different meal every time.

The Verdict

There are not a lot of options out there for a dog with a bunch of allergies that needs to eat really soft foods for a few weeks. Wet food gets pretty ridiculously expensive, and Brisbane is particularly fond of anything that cost $6 a can. During recovery he was also a bit picky, and generally refused to eat the same thing two meals in a row. Feeding him Kindly with inexpensive cooked meat has been a significantly less expensive way to provide high-quality soft food. I haven't done the math to figure out how much money I'm saving (because 2.5 cans per day at $3-6 per can hurts to think about) but it's a lot. Honest Kitchen base mixes are way less expensive than their complete formulas, too! As an added bonus, I get to cook for my dog!

Honest Kitchen has also added a new allergy-friendly complete recipe that Brisbane can have. It's the most expensive product they offer. I'll probably end up buying that too one of these days.

Treat Tuesday: Honest Kitchen Beams

At the suggestion of one of my awesome readers, I got Brisbane some Beams fish treats from Honest Kitchen. They are absolutely disgusting. Brisbane loves them.

These things are just dried Icelandic catfish skins. Those are marine fish, unlike the catfish that inhabit American lakes and rivers. Honest Kitchen advertises these as an alternative to chicken jerky or bully sticks. They don't last Briz nearly as long as a thick bully stick, but they last way longer than any kind of jerky treat we've tried. This is definitely an allergy-friendly dog chew.

Good For: Dogs with food allergies. Occupying Brisbane for about 10-15 minutes. Making my husband ask "Where is that horrible smell coming from?"

Not Good For: Lasting as long as a thicker chew. Being discreet and nonoffensive. Looking pretty.

How Much We Like Them: This is the only thing Brisbane has ever attempted to swallow whole. For about 60 seconds I wasn't entirely certain he could breathe and was considering whether I should pry it out of his throat or perform the doggy Heimlich maneuver. He's still lovingly licking the floor where he chewed it (after horking it back up) several minutes later.

Treat Tuesday: Honest Kitchen Quickies

Honest Kitchen Quickies are stinky little heart-shaped treats that come in a cute little tube. They are intended to be quick and easy training treats, and are just the right size for regular-sized dogs. They are made from nothing but dried haddock fish, with just 1.1 calories per treat.

Good For: High value training treats. Hiding in food puzzles. Getting attention by rattling the can. Hiding the tube in my pocket.

Not Good For: Dogs that don't looooooove fish.

How Much We Like Them: Not enough to use them for training unless I feel like having my hands, my treat bag, and my dogs smell like fish. Everything smells like fish. So much fish. Fish.

Have you tried any Honest Kitchen treats yet?

Food Friday: Honest Kitchen Love

Honest Kitchen makes dehydrated dog food that is prepared by adding warm water and soaking for a few minutes. Their products include a line of base mixes that can be added to raw meat, a line of whole-grain complete foods, and a line of grain-free foods. Each comes in a cardboard box lined with a plastic bag.

Honest Kitchen food is pretty awesome, there are a lot of benefits to dehydrated diets. Increased water consumption is one of those benefits, each serving of properly-prepared Honest Kitchen food contains more than half water. Ru is currently having some urinary tract issues and I've been trying to talk him into eating Honest Kitchen food as a way of getting more fluids into him. Ru is so far unimpressed, he would still rather eat art supplies and wine corks.

The point of dehydrated food is that it is less processed than kibble. It hasn't been stewed, baked, and extruded into little pellets. Sometimes I think this is a good thing, other times I'm pretty sure I would subsist on People Chow if it existed. The lack of processing mostly means that the food retains a decent amount of it's nutrients and doesn't need to have a giant list of vitamins and minerals added back in. Having personally read through the individual ingredient lists of nearly a thousand different dog foods in the process of assembling the Dog Food Wizard, I can testify that Honest Kitchen Love has an impressively short ingredient label.

This food comes in powder form.

Ingredients:
Beef, sweet potatoes, potatoes, organic flaxseed, organic coconut, parsley, chard, papaya, cranberries, pumpkin, honey, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate.

That's it.

Add water and soak for five minutes. Ta da! Homemade dog food!

Questionable Claims
Like most good dog food companies, Honest Kitchen is guilty of excessive use of the word "natural". Their website also heavily promotes the health benefits of their food while criticizing nonsense words like "fillers". I'm sure Honest Kitchen's food is world's better than most grocery store kibble, and I believe it to be one of the best foods out there, but I still don't think it's that much better than the top quality kibbles. I definitely wouldn't expect a dramatic difference between this and Orijen, for example.

Following the Trail
Honest Kitchen food uses human-grade ingredients, and is produced and packed in an FDA-approved human-grade facility. This means it would be safe for me to eat if I decided it looked good enough. (It doesn't.) The downside to this is of course that Honest Kitchen food is crazy expensive. Love, the only egg-free, poultry-free, grain-free choice on the menu, is a little over 500 calories per dry measured cup, making it actually a bit more nutritionally dense than most kibble. This basically means that I can feed a similar amount as I would kibble, for both Brisbane and Ru that's a quarter cup. There's about sixteen cups in a four-pound box, which would last me about a month for both dogs. At $40 for the 4-pound box, that's not actually terrible. That said, the only reason I can actually afford to feed this to my dogs is because Brisbane eats like a lapdog. If I fed the recommended amount for a less active 40-lb dog, I would be spending $80 or more a month on this food. Still, it's a lot cheaper than Stella & Chewy's.

The Good Stuff
It's all good stuff. Brisbane loves it and I could probably get away with freezing it in Kongs if I felt inclined. The Love variety in particular is awesome because it's just beef and veggies, with no eggs. Almost everything else has eggs, even the fish-based Zeal flavor.

If I can talk Ru into actually eating this stuff, we may be using it to help keep him more hydrated. The possibility of prescription urinary food is looming as we try to get his infection under control and make sure he doesn't have stones or crystals. I love that this is such a calorically dense food, for a wee tiny dog that tends to shiver off all his calories, it just might be what we need.