Review: The Honest Kitchen- Dehydrated “Zeal” Dog Food

While Megan and I were at Blog Paws a few months ago, I came across this awesome dog food company called The Honest Kitchen. They had this nice booth set up with samples of all their food laying out and had packets of some of their different recipes for us bloggers to try out. Tilly seemed pretty impressed by the samples that she received so when there was an opportunity for me to get my paws on a free 4 lb. box of the stuff, I jumped at the opportunity.

So, here I am. I’m sitting here with this lovely box of their “Zeal” recipe. The box states that it has wild caught fish, sweet potatoes, parsley, pumpkin, cranberries and a bunch of other stuff that sounds pretty good.  One thing that I found interesting is that apparently The Honest Kitchen makes all their dog food at Human Grade! That means that if you really wanted to, you could eat it. I don’t recommend it, I’m sure there are better things for you to do than taste test your dog’s food. But if you really wanted to, you could without the fear of getting sick!  That is seriously amazing. I honestly believe that all dog food should be this way.

So… let’s try it out. King seems interested.

Open the box and voila… a box of green fishy smelling stuff.(In this case its a good thing that it smells fishy since fish is the main ingredient) 😉

King seemed to really like the smell. So much that he tried to eat the food right out of the bag before I could even un-dehydrate it!

This food takes a little more preparation than any dry food you would feed your dog. But significantly less preparation than a raw diet. I would say that prep wise, it’s a happy medium between the two. It’s just three steps, I can handle that!

1. Mix the food with warm water (you can literally see chunks of actual real food in there)

2. Stir and wait about 3 min. for the food to hydrate

3. “Serve with love”

(Quoted right of the box.  That’s cute.)

(here is the food right after I poured in the water, before I stirred)

Simple enough. Only problem is that my kids aren’t the most patient! I had to sit there and promise them that they could have their food soon while they stared at me for that agonizing three minutes with the bowl just sitting there on the counter.

(Where is our food!?)

Once I set that bowl on the ground it was a frenzy! Poor Tilly barely got her face near the bowl before king devoured most of it. I had to push him aside so she could try it out too.

“MOM! King is eating all the food… again.”

I think it’s safe to say the kids approve.

So it seems this Honest Kitchen knows how to do dog food right, but it can’t all be perfect right?

Pros:

NO preservatives, by-products, fillers, wheat, corn, soy or GMO Ingredients

Simple feeding process. Only 3 steps

Human Grade. FDA Inspected

Dog’s Love It

NO weird unrecognizable ingredients

Balanced Nutrition for your dog

Cons:

Some people may feel that 3 steps is too many for feeding time

It smells kind of funny

Messier than dry dog food (preparation and clean up)

Dogs get impatient waiting for their food to hydrate

Price

Price. It’s always price. Most pet owners don’t even look at what is in their dog food. They see the price and their sold.  15 bucks for a 50 lb. bag of food? Why would I buy anything else?  Well, maybe because that food is basically saw dust.  You are NOT getting saw dust with Honest Kitchen. But of course, that means that you won’t get the saw dust price either. It is actually pretty shocking when you look at their pricing online.  For the box that I received, the 4 lb. box of Zeal, it’s $54.99! I know that looks really scary, but lets break it down.

In the 4 lb. box it contains about 16 dry measured cups of food

If I was feeding Tilly (4 lbs.) off of this it would last us about 2 months

If I was feeding king(55 lbs. and growing) off of this it would last us about a week.

It seems unrealistic right now for us to spend that much money every week on King’s food, as much as I would like to.  Although, I do think that price is very doable for a small breed dog like Tilly. Also, they have a ton of different recipe choices to fit your needs, and some are cheaper than Zeal and others may be more expensive.

So all in all my opinion of The Honest Kitchen “Zeal” dehydrated dog food? I think it’s awesome! I love what the company stands for and I love that their food is human grade. King and Tilly really liked the taste and wanted more.  It provides essential and well-rounded nutrition for my dogs. The only thing that was a little disappointing was the price, but you get what you pay for. If you want really great nutrition for you dogs you better be willing to pay for it.  If I wasn’t living off of my grooming wages alone I would gladly spend the money for my dogs to eat Honest Kitchen food all the time.

If you are interested in Honest Kitchen keep your eyes out! I’m working on lining up a giveaway here in the near future! You can also visit www.thehonestkitchen.com