Dog in the Desert: Iams Shakeables Review- Or Anti-Review

I have noticed that a lot of bloggers have been reviewing IAMS Shakeables these past few days. Well I don't ever accept ANYTHING from the major pet food companies, so I am not reviewing them for Iams. In fact I wasn't going to review them at all. But then I was reading all over blogville about how "amazing" "tasty" and "fun" they are and I decided I needed to throw my hat in the ring on this one. I went to the store and purchased a can of the treats (they were less than $3 so it didn't break the bank) and now I am going to review them. My basic review is this-

They are fattening, cheap, contain very little meat and I would never in a million years buy them for my dogs. Iams is contributing to pet obesity with the size of these treats and with poor labeling practices, but at least they are not full of sugar like other treats on the market. You could buy worse, but why buy crap at all?

Before I get into manufacturing practices that I find suspect lets take a go at the ingredients. The first one is Wheat Flour followed by Glycerin. That's right- the two ingredients that make up the primary composition of the treat is wheat flower and glycerin. I don't have anything particularly against wheat, but it is a grain, and a lot of dogs are sensitive to grains. Also I can't imagine that any dogs particularly love the taste of these two, cheap as shit ingredients. Next on the ingredients list is lamb. To that I say bravo! Lamb is a named protein source, and a lot of dogs like it. But it is also the reason I bought the lamb flavor. You see a lot of people whose dogs have allergy problems buy lamb as a way to avoid chicken and other common allergens. But you see the thing here is that the next ingredient on the list is... wait for it... POULTRY fat. Not chicken, duck or turkey fat, but poultry fat. That means it can be any kind of poultry fat at all. So if your dog is allergic to chicken, these treats would be a bad idea, even though the word chicken does not appear anywhere on the label. On top of that poultry fat is a by-product of the rendering process so who knows what really is in it. I see people right now saying- "but I trust Iams to make sure their product is safe and they wouldn't put iffy poultry fat in treats."

Well a little research on my part finds that Iams Shakeables were actually already recalled once this year. By recalled I mean that Iams silently pulled them from store shelves without even notifying consumers. Here is their iffy "press release" that can only be found if you know the product was recalled and google as such- http://www.iams.com/en_us/data_root/_pdf/Shakeables.pdf

Here is a blog post about the whole situation. I agree with their assessment that P&G was hoping no one would notice they were withdrawing the product. Thanks for putting dogs first P&G! http://www.seattledogspot.com/blog/dog-blog/post/iams-recalls-shakeables-turkey-and-lamb-dog-treats

Still trust Iams?

Maybe you do. Lets forgive them for a minute the "poultry fat." It is just there after all to make the treat taste good, because glycerin and wheat flour with a little drop of lamb actually tastes like cardboard, so you need the fat for flavor. Lets move on to a few little tidbits form the Iams website FAQ-

" Are all ingredients in Iams Shakeables from USA?

The majority of our ingredients come from the United States; there are some ingredients that are sourced from other countries."

What countries you may ask? This FAQ might give you a clue.

"Why do you purchase ingredients from China for Iams Shakeables?

The realities of global trade means that some countries or regions specialize in certain ingredients, which can limit the buying options. We do not source meat- or vegetable-based proteins from China"

Good luck finding it in the FAQ though- they are about as easy to navigate as a corn maize. I did learn some more information from them though. Such as the fact that one shakeable treat is about 10 calories. That is one thing I must thank Iams about- I was planning on trying to calculate that somehow and they saved me a lot of math.

There too comes the other problem with Iams Shakeables. 10 calories is a lot for a dog treat. I do use a lot of training treats, and I my dogs are not obese, but these are just HUGE. I see so many of the dogs reviewing them online struggling with obesity. There is simply no reason to give your dog a 10 (useless, empty) calorie treat like this. Pictured below you will see the Iams Shakeable with equal calorie amounts of other treats I had laying around. You will notice that one shakeable is actually more calories than a snack pack of fruitables (flower shaped treats). The high values zukes treats I use are more calorie dense than the Shakeables, but you will see that they are small, encouraging people to actually feed less of them (those are the z's on the right). The zukes treats easily tear in half, giving me 8 treats for every one of the Iams ones. I tried tearing the Iams treats into 8 pieces and it didn't go great. All I got was a crumbly mess and a broken nail. Plus the Zukes are full of good stuff like chicken as the first ingredient and fish oil. Dogs don't eat a lot of calories in a day, do you really want to waste 10 of them on wheat flour and glycerin? Overall I just can't get behind these Iams treats, they don't even say on the can how many calories are in a treat! The Kcals are there but it takes a math major to translate that into something real. If Iams really was putting dogs health as their first responsibility they would list the calorie content per treat on the can. It's not like they didn't know it, cause it is listed in the back of a difficult to navigate FAQ section on their website.

Also notice there was no taste test here? Of course the dogs loved them (I broke one up for all three dogs) but the dogs love a lot of stuff, it does not mean it is good for them. The rest of the can is going where it belongs- in the trash.

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P.S- From the Iams FAQ "Are Iams Shakeables Made in the USA?" says "Yes, the Shakeables are manufactures and packaged in the USA. All of our products distributed in the United States are manufactured in the United States."