Dog food is an industry that dazzles us with choices: Cooked versus raw,
frozen versus canned, kibble with or without corn, soy, wheat, sugar, and salt – what’s best for your dog? Many people take a trial and error approach, but sometimes an instinct takes over the process, and we think, why can’t my dog eat the way I (should) eat? That’s the question that drove the makers of Evermore Pet Food to create their antibiotic and hormone-free beef and chicken dinners for their dogs, and ours.
Evermore Dog Food Company Cooks Up Innovation
Hanna Mandelbaum and her business partner Alison Wiener spent a month earlier this year eating their dog food – a great way to market your product when you have no budget. Bloggers and local papers wrote it up, the broader press got wind of it and when Jeanne Moos of CNN, the NY Times and the Today Show come knocking, you know your marketing plan has started to pay off!
Evermore dog food is a leader in this fairly new segment of frozen-fresh product and is a happy surprise for home cooks (like me), and people who want to feed their dogs nutrition that is food based, not largely chemically enhanced. The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) sets the standards of nutrition for animal feeds. Pet foods that are highly processed and cooked at high heat do not meet nutritional standards, and so nutrition is derived from added synthetic vitamins rather than from the food.
Evermore cooks their dog food “gently”, maintaining much of the ingredients original nutrients. Here’s the breakdown: Protein, meat & eggs = 55% [this just in– proteins have been increased to 60%]; vegetables & fruit = 36%; oats & barley = 4%; oils = 2%; herbs & botanicals = 2%; supplements = 1%. The cattle and chicken are humanely raised, the wide variety of fruits and vegetables are bought locally and in season, their packaging and shipping is environmentally friendly. Evermore never includes: meat meals, cheap by-products, salt, sugar or fillers and possible allergens such as corn, wheat, soy, and potatoes.
Dog Food Taste Test
I spoke with Hanna last year and because the weather was brutally hot, the food, in a pint-sized round plastic container at that time, did not stay frozen. I was happy to hear from Hanna this year and thrilled with the new frozen and vacuum-sealed packaging inside a box. The food arrived frozen, and even the environmentally friendly non-toxic gel packs in the box were mostly frozen.
The directions for feeding are clear. Each package contains 2 cups, suggested feeding is between 2 and 3% of weight and a list of body weights to daily portions is on the packaging. For example, a 10lb dog gets 1/2 cup a day, a 50lb dog gets 2 cups. Once a bag is thawed, it keeps for 5 days in the refrigerator, sealed.
Ingredients are impressive. The antibiotic and hormone-free beef (from Niman Ranch no less – they were one of the first purveyors at Whole Foods when they first opened in Chicago) dinner leads with beef, beef hearts, beef livers, yams, eggs, carrots, parsnips, applies, kale, dandelion greens, blueberries, organic oats, organic barley, safflower oil, parsley, organic kelp, organic pumpkin seeds, alfalfa, calcium citrate, salmon oil, mixed trocopherols as preservatives, zinc amino acids chelate.
My dog Tashi decided he liked Evermore better than his home cooked food…he actually went back to the dish *after* he finished licking it and the edges of the bowl clean and sniffed around his placemat to see if he missed anything! He did this for both the chicken and the beef. I am happy to report there were zero, um, gastric issues, and everything else came out fine;)
Evermore Pet Food has a cat food product coming out soon (if it’s not already) according to a report from Pet Food Industry, and don’t miss the highly informative Evermore website. For instance, did you know that it would take 10 cans of certain premium dog foods to provide the nutrition available in one 24oz package of Evermore to meet the daily needs of a 75lb dog? That kind of comparison, even after my more than 15 years home cooking for my dogs, still surprises me.
Oh – here’s the link to the Jeanne Moos video on Evermore – you shouldn’t miss it=)
(Photo credit: Evermore’s Alison, Connor, Hanna)
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