Analysis of HBH food

[JediMasterThrash]

Ingredients: Shrimp meal, white wheat, red wheat, coconut flakes, barley, rye, oats, sunflower, salt, fish meal, wheat flower, krill meal, pea powder, dehydrated alfalfa meal, spirulina powder, wheat germ, soy flour, squid meal, brine shrimp, zucchini powder, beet powder, carrot powder, spinach powder, fish oil, calcium carbonate, gelatinized starch, brewers dried yeast, soy lecithin, fish roe, wheat gluten, glucono-delta-lactone, garlic powder, natural mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract, l-ascorbyl-2-polyphosophate (source of vitamin c), vitamin a acetate, choline chloride, a-tocopheryl acetate (soruce of vitamin e), niacin, d-calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, thiamine mononitrate, biotin, pyridoxine hcl, folic acide, d-activated animal sterol (source of vitamin d3), vitamin b12 supplement, zinc proteinate, copper proteinate, magnesium proteinate, iron proteinate, citric acid. It seems to have a reasonable amount of seafood and whole grains, as opposed to ash and brewers rice of a lot of other commercial foods are composed of. I obtained a bottle along with some adoptees. I have been giving some to my crabs, and my crabs seem to love it. They wait by the dish for dinner and readily devour it all, the same as they do for fresh food and for Crab Island food. In contrast, now that my crabs have had the taste of good food, they won't even touch the "bad" commercial foods. One other thing to note, is that old crab island powder tends to clump up and become thick and hard at the bottom of the bowl. But the HBG food is more flakey rather than powder, and it doesn't have that issue. It stays in flake form after a couple days in the tank.MeatMin. Crude Protein 15% Min. Crude Fat 10% Max. Crude Fiber 7% Max. Moisture 12% HBH contains some actual meat (shrimp meal, fish meal, krill meal, squid meal, brine shrimp, fish oil). Though the total 15% isn't too high.MealThe use of "meals" is a debatable subject.The following is from Willow:quote:In doing MUCH research into dog and cat foods, I have found that lots of people don't like to see "meal" in the ingredient lists.....BUT, all dried ingredients can be called "meal". If it says just "chicken" (for instance), it's really chicken meal, because chicken needs to be dried before being used in pet food. And if it just says "chicken", that actually means the food has LESS chicken than if it said "chicken meal", because the chicken was weighed before being dried......I know I'm not good at explaining. Anyway, there's nothing wrong with shrimp meal or krill meal or chicken meal or whatever. I'm sure you eat cornMEAL and oatMEAL all the time. That just means it's dried and ground up. Now, you don't want to see "by-product meal" or "meat and bone meal"....those are the bad ingredients. And most of the "giant words" are just vitamins....vitamins always have huge fancy scientific names. It is often said that any "fish meal" may contain EQ in it, but I also have some information on that I'll post later.GarlicGarlic is also a questionable ingredient.Garlic powder is in the middle of the list, it's probably a pretty small quanitity. Considering that humans can eat tons of garlic and I haven't heard of any having their blood cells burst, I'd have to assume that any reasonable quanitity wouldn't cause any harmful effects of that sort. Garlic is an insecticide. However, that doesn't necessarily mean trace amounts are bad. As we know, many things can be beneficial in small quantities and harmful in large quantities. It looks like it requires an entire garlic bulb per two cups of water to be effective against tiny plant insects. Also, it's immediate, and not cummulative. All citrus fruits also contain an insecticide element (Limonene, probably why citrus used to be on the no-no-list, but even now it's on the EH safe list). However, I don't think anyone's experienced a crab dying from eating an orange lately. Of all the insects usually referenced, mites are probably the closest to crabs in the genetic tree, but they still don't have the exact same anatomy, and if it takes a 1:2 concentration to kill something the size of a pinhead, I'm not immediately worried about .001 milligrams in some food. I wouldn't feed it to them raw of course though.PreservativesOlder versions of HBG used to contain Ethoxyquin and artificial colors, but about 5 years ago they completely changed ingredients so it no longer contains those. This is why you'll see lots of older info with a strong warning against HBG.Usually the first dozen ingredients define the protein/fat/fiber content. The next dozen ingredients are trace ingredients that a beneficial or provide some essential nutrient. The next couple of dozen are vitamin and mineral compounds that define the vitamin/mineral content. And the last few are usually the preservatives and dyes. The last ingredient in the HBH I have is citric acid, and this is the preservative. Citric acid can be used as a preservative as an alternative to ethoxyquin. So the fact that it's listed suggests they haven't used an unlisted artificial preservative. If the bottle you have lists ethoxyquin and not citric acid, that that probably means that this new bottle has switched to using citric acid instead of ethoxyquin. MineralsThose middle couple dozen ingredients that provide the minerals are the ones that sometimes use unsafe compounds (like copper sulfate) to get the essential minerals (copper) from. In the case of HBH, it uses copper proteinate instead of copper sulfate as the source of essential copper (again, one of those things that's essential in minute quantities, but harmful in large quantities. Note that it's the 4th from the last ingredient, implying very low quantity).Salt"Salt" is listed as an ingredient, and we often clamor about how bad salt is, but true raw salt by itself is not necessarily bad. What is not necessarily safe are some of anti-caking agents (such as calcium silicate) they add to table salt to give it the coarse texture and prevent it from getting clumpy. The salt that is added to food as an ingredient is simply pure salt and is safe. Especially since none of the anti-caking agents are listed as ingredients. You'll also notice that potassium iodide and glucose are not listed. Those would be other ingredients that would indicate table-salt was used. The lack of these and the lack of anti-caking agents shows table salt wasn't used (though for what it's worth, potassium iodide is probably beneficial for crabs. Iodide helps in the molting process).

[finalfantasyxii]

"Bone meal" and "meat and bone meal" are not actually bad ingredients when speaking of pet food. Bone is a very good source of nutrients and calcium. Do we not give our crabs chicken bones? A dog or cat would love to crunch up a whole chicken - bones and all - but cooked whole bones are not safe. Ground up in pet food they are quite nutritious. I know you were just posting a quote from somebody else but I just thought I'd say my piece. ;D