In 2002, Lucy, the co-founder of The Honest Kitchen was making pureed food for her dog Mosi in her kitchen, the food was great, Mosi was loving it but boy was it messy. Lucy began thinking about how to make the same quality food with whole, colorful and healthy ingredients, but also be easy to prepare. Dehydration came to mind, making a compact, shelf stable product. Soon Lucy had samples from raw ingredient suppliers from all over the country coming into her home, soon thereafter the prototype recipe for Verve was created. Lucy began the search for a human food manufacturer that would agree to make this new, gourmet food for pets and it eventually paid off. Lucy had signed affidavits from every ingredient supplier ensuring that every product that entered their plant was human edible.
Fast forward 12 years and The Honest Kitchen is winning awards from the 2014 Family Choice Awards and recently renewed their formal Statement of No Objection with the Federal Food & Drug Association (FDA) to use the term “human grade” on all of their pet food labels. I am sure you have seen some of my other articles about our Shetland Sheepdog pictured above posing by her Honest Kitchen products. Nala spends her days in the backyard chasing bunnies, birds, kids, frisbees and whatever else comes along and she really works hard. She is like a pro athlete, in shape, gets lots of exercise and along with all of that she eats food that is good for her and nourishes her body.
This is our first go around with any kind of dehydrated dog food we are trying The Honest Chicken Force with Free Range Chicken, so I was a little surprised at what I saw in the bag, but with the list of ingredients, Nala was going to be trying this food no matter what I thought. Speaking of the list of ingredients, the list starts with Chicken, organic flaxseed, potatoes, celery, sweet potatoes, apples, organic alfalfa, organic kelp, honey, pumpkin, green beans, cabbage, bananas, papayas, basil, garlic. Does everything in that list look familiar to you. I have most of these ingredients in my kitchen right now. The instructions for re-hydrating the food is on the back of the box, just find your size dog and their weight, measure out the amount of dehydrated food and add the specified amount of water, stir it well and let it sit for 5 minutes and what you end up with will look similar to what is pictured below.
Now you may be thinking eewwww, but wait, those chunks you see in there are chicken, the green color is from the celery, alfalfa, green beans and cabbage. The true test is with all this good stuff being said about it, will she eat it or turn her nose up at it like my 10 year old when I put green beans, cabbage and celery in front of her? The answer to this question is, she loves it! Now most dogs like treats, Nala gets excited about those, tail wags, sits in front of me waiting patiently etc, with this food she acts like it is the best treat in the world. She sees me grab the box from the pantry and her food bowl and she begins whining. Nala only whines about the UPS and FedEx man, she does not normally whine over food, but for The Honest Kitchen Food she sure does. You know the 5 minutes I mentioned earlier that you have to wait for the food to re-hydrate? Well Nala thinks this is the worst torture ever. She follows me around the house everywhere I go whimpering, telling me I forgot to put her food bowl back on the floor.
The Honest Kitchen also has a wide variety of treats for your dog or cat. They sent us the Nuzzles Duck & Cherry Recipe and like the food, Nala was a fan, but I still think the force with free range chicken is the only treat she will ever need according to her. The ingredients list for the Nuzzles treats is simply Barley flour, duck, molasses, water, eggs, coconut oil, cherries and parmesan cheese, nothing you can’t pronounce unless you have a problem with Molasses or Parmesan Cheese. These treats are only 2.3 calories per Nuzzle and contain 12.5% protein and 4% fat.
If you want to feed your pet the best food you can get your hands on, food that you yourself would be able to eat, I highly recommend The Honest Kitchen. All of The Honest Kitchen products can be purchased through their website or find a retailer near you here and also show them some love on facebook, twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram & Google+. Stay tuned because coming up this weekend I will be starting a giveawya so you will have your chance to enter to win a 2 lb. bag of The Honest Kitchen pet food.
Angela A Simmons says
thaks for the review my furr babies eat just as good as we do sometimes I make their food from scratch using all organic grains and veggie