Label Review #2: Sundays for Dogs Dog Food

Host Jennifer: Well, welcome back to another episode and I'm here with Dan as always. Hey Dan. Hi, Jennifer. How are you? I'm doing good. Hey, so we're on our second label review and I'm super excited. I love doing these by the way.

Don't know if you do, but I love that. I do. I love doing it too. I think it's great. I think it's like, it's something that I wish somebody would do for other products that I buy. You know what I mean? Like there's plenty of things that I, I would love if somebody who's like spends their life in this stuff could tell me like how my deodorant compares against like some other Brands, put it to the test.

Host Dan: Exactly. But I'll tell you what, here's the thing. We blew an opportunity with this episode. And we, we, you know, we filmed this stuff long in advance. We plan out what we're going to shoot long in advance. So we knew what product we were doing for this episode a long time ago. But if we hadn't what I should be doing since I'm being filmed right now, as I sit in Oslo, Norway, um, I should have bought a bag of food from the Norway, from a store in Oslo. And we could have talked about the difference in the label, like the, basically the regulatory side of it. Like, what does, what do you have to put on the bag in terms of telling people what ingredients and what nutrition and all that stuff is in there. And so we missed a trick there, but we're just Going to, there's still time. Okay. That's a good point. That's a good point. We'll, uh, we'll put it for the, maybe a future episode. I think that's a great idea for today's episode. At least we're sticking with an American brain, not a, you know, European, but we're doing Sundays and I, for those that are watching and we'll walk through everything that I'll be sharing visually, um, we're doing, Sunday's the chicken recipe. So I did buy, I went on their website and I did buy a small bag. I think they call it a box actually. So a small box of their chicken recipes. So it's a cute little packaging. Um, I do have to shout out their marketing real quick, even comes with like a Sunday's newspaper, like, oh my gosh. So creative, such, such a great branding opportunity that they're kind of, you know, versioning their, their food ends. So here's kind of the basic layout that ships in a box, and then it has a box of the food and then it has the bag in there. So what I noticed, sorry for the crinkling SMR opportunity here. Um, but it does come in a bag. It's just like this little clear bag. So it's like, what it looks like to me is like, what's cereal, like a box of cereal comes in, It almost looks like cinnamon toast crunch slash beef jerky. So it's different, right? So this is a very different we'll kind of get into, um, you know, the ingredients still make it a certain type of food, but they they're trying to get away from kind of this kibble analogy, trying to go for like a different texture, different type of dog food. Um, but anyway, so Let me, let me just jump in because I can see you. And I think some people, if there's somebody just listening, what you're showing us is like, there's a rectangular box. That's like the same size as like a box of cereal. And then you open up and how much does that box? It was $75. Yeah. So this was $75 and this was for let's make sure my camera's focusing. So it was for 36 ounces, 1.02 kilograms. So not, not a lot of food and yeah. Yeah. That's so that's what I was going to say is you can really see it. If you're on the video episode here, it's like inside the cardboard rectangle box, when you open that up, there's a sealed plastic bag and that contains the actual food product. And it looks like maybe like a fifth of the bag. Like if they just sold this in the bag without the box, you'd be like, oh, come up. You know what I mean? Like there's the fact that the box is big, is like, oh, okay, there's a lot of food in here, but when you hold up that bag again, like, it's just like, there's not, you haven't have you taken anything out of that? I haven't taken anything out of it. This was partially opened just before this episode. Yeah. It's very jarring. My best guess is about an eighth of that bag as kibble in it. And so like for a frame of reference one it's 1.02 kilograms, he said, Yeah, 1.02. Okay. So that's what the product looks like. So 1.02 kilograms is less than 10% of how much is in our lightweight tutor. Natural. We sell two sizes and we sell a 24 pound bag and a 4.2 pound bag. And so 24 pounds works out to 11 point something kilograms. Right. So you're talking about less than 10% as much food as is in our bag. Um, so not a lot in there and they don't make like, you know, like you said, you, when you get into the specific like label claims and the like branding and stuff, you can talk about the kibble, but it's like, yeah, they're definitely trying to be like, we're very different from kibble. Look at how we it. Yeah. Look, look at the shape. All of like it. Yeah. It definitely stands out as a different experience. This is not, this does not feel like a standard kibble in terms of branding and terms of the shape in terms of everything. But yes, in terms of the actual like weight and the price I paid for it, it, yeah, it is. It's just jarring, like, oh, okay. Hopefully get my money's worth. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. We'll kind of slide through a couple of like yeah. Offshoots of that. But so, so things that stood out to me in terms of like, what's on the box, what are they calling out? And I would say very effectively in terms of the copy that they're using. Um, the branding is very simple, but it's very, um, you know, even in the, like this little paper it's like, are our pets are now, they sleep in our, they don't sleep outside anymore. They're like they have more Instagram followers than us. So it's just, it feels very modern, very light. And, but they are doing some claims on their packaging. So let's talk about it. Uh, one on the front and throughout their website, they do use this term called air dried, which we'll get into what that specifically means, but they're trying to position themselves differently than what they're calling a hot extrusion for kibble. So I'll let Dan, because Dan is an expert on that, so I'll let him walk through. So I'll just kind of hit up a couple more things that stood out to me on the back of the packaging. Um, so that is that they go onto the gentle air dried. And what they're saying is that's for maximum nutrition flavor and ease. And then they say we use only human grade ingredients. So that's like a number one bullet point that they use, not only on the packaging, but on their website made with 100% real human grade ingredients to all natural known synthetic additives and then three. And then they really kind of harp upon just like every other kibble is ready to eat, no prep, a fridge or cleanup required. So that, so to me, that's kind of calling out the more of like maybe some rough dog food or fresh food. Like they're kind of really kind of going back to, this is maximum nutrition, max, maximum flavor. Cause we're gentle air drying it, but it's still so easy. Like you just pull this open from your pantry, dump it in a bowl and your dog can eat it. So I think, uh, you know, it's really good. Let's kind of jump into what these claims are. And, and They just say that before, like, it's super, this is not me. I'm telling you what it says on the label, but I'll give you the context around like how this brand kind of came to be. So before there was Sundays and to a lesser degree before there was keto, natural is closer. Like I think we were founded before Sundays, but before there was either of us, there was a round of start-up pet food companies that all kind of came about at the same time. And they are like the farmer's dog, nom, nom now Ali, and all of them share a couple things in common. Number one is they only sold direct to consumers. You ha if you want the product, you go on their website, you buy it and ship it directly to you. Number two is that they're not dried pet food, they're fresh or raw. So you're talking about stuff that will spoil it is not shelf stable. Okay. And all these guys kind of sold under similar ish brands. The same kind of language got used a lot. And basically the core of the substantive thing that made it different was one. We're going to ship it directly to you. And, and two, it's going to be fresh or raw. Usually you've got to buy kibble the store because it's a huge pain in the neck. You can't like your pet food store. Um, if you just put Ollie on the shelf, it spoils, it has to be refrigerated. It has to be so like shipping direct to a consumer in this day and age of Amazon or whatever you can do that you can, you can put enough like coolant in individual boxes. You can get it out to people and get them fresh dog food. They got to put it in their fridge or freezer or whatever once they get it. But that was the main difference was like, we're not, we're going to ship it to you and it's going to be fresh or raw. And then they also kind of like, as a matter of course used a lot of the same, like buzzwords as each other, but kind of, you know, everybody tries to make it like our product is the end all be all. Like, there's a lot of like soft marketing claims. That don't really mean anything. But you, you, you described it really well. The health halo, you know, and these are like all natural. I mean, that one kind of means something, but like not much. And there are other, you know, kind of stuff that's like that same kind of language that everybody used kind of became synonymous with this breed of no pun intended of dog food startup. They all kind of were the same thing. And then once they kind of had some degree of success Sundays, and there's another brand that's called spot and tango. And it's basically similar story. They came up somewhat later, spawn tango was another existed as a different company at first, but they rebranded as spot in tangle. And Sundays basically said, we're going to do the direct to consumer thing. We're going to do the same health halo and the same language, but we're going to cook it. It's going to be shelf stable. And we're going to try to have it both ways basically. Like we're going to try to charge prices and make claim and make use language that's consistent with like the raw diets of farmer's dog and Ali and whatever. And we're going to ship it directly to people and we're going to brand it similarly. So these other products color and, and feel, and did nice newspaper in there and whatever. But at the end of the day, we're going to be selling them a shelf, stable product, the kind of thing you could put in a cereal box, put it on the shelf and it stays there just fine. It doesn't spoil like these broad diets do. And, um, they're testing whether that's a thing, whether you can basically have it both ways, you can convince people that, well, we are, it is a dry shelf, stable product, but we may, it's our own special kind of that. So it's worth the cause we'll get into the pricing and like, holy cow, it is like, knock you over the head serious. Like it's a ton of money. Um, so yeah. Yeah. That's the background that's like kind of like, seems to me where, where that that's like, how the trends evolved in the industry and where this fits within that you Yeah. To me, they're selling definitely. It's almost like, yeah. It's like health halo on one hand, but it's like a lifestyle. Like don't want your dogs to have lightly air dried food and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just a different type of cooking, but it's Maine and it's elevated to the pillar of health. Like it's it, you know, we damage lots of clean ingredients while doing so. And you know, you don't want your dog to, well, that's been cooked to like this temperature and we'll get into the very like math and science behind that, because I think it's much less damaging than most people think it's not, you know, the traditional kibble, isn't blasted at 800 degrees and they use a lot of which we'll show their website in a second for those that are watching on video. But they use like this old style fan is kind of the symbol of it's just so like air dried and it's junk. And so yeah, it kind of sells into that price point of, oh, well, if you're doing all this work and you're doing a different cooking process, maybe I am willing to pay a little bit different, you know, a higher price for that. But anyway, I think we should start with air-dry and I think that's the, Yeah, I mean, it feels like, so there are like three things that substantively make this product different from a kibble, a garden variety, call it blue Buffalo type of cable. What's different is importantly is not the nutritional content. If you look at the, like how much protein, how much fat, how many calories, how much of the various vitamins and minerals, there's nothing unique about this. It's I think 38% protein maybe cue up that part of the whip while I'm talking, you can pull up that part of the website and check that. But it's something like that. 38% protein. Yeah. Right. Is that right? I'm sorry. I'm sticking my, Yeah, none of this is one way or the other. It's not like a super high protein diet, all meat, but it's not super. I mean, it's very middle of the road and things, so yeah. It's a very standard. Yeah. It's like, there are definitely products with less protein than this, for sure. Like if you go into the like kind of Hills Purina category, you're going to find plenty of their stuff. That's lower. But like I said, it's like blue Buffalo wilderness. So that was the first one we did on this show and the numbers are pretty darn similar. Yeah. So the numbers aren't very unique. What's unique are the three things that stick out to me are the air dried concept, the human grade ingredients and the, um, what'd you say, no, synthetic vitamins, all of the nutritional content comes from whole food sources. No, no synthetic vitamins. And so, you know, those are three things that are unquestionably. Well, I don't know about exactly. Like we'll get into like the air dried and like what it is and isn't, but those are three things that like, I can't say about ketones and blue Buffalo, can't say about blue wilderness. The human grade ingredients is a real substantive thing. It has to do with basically where the, like what kind of factory who's regulating the kind of factory. There are some types of factories that make dog food that are regulated by primarily by the USDA, which is like responsible for the like big chunks of the us food system on like the agriculture side. And so traditionally makers of kibble your factory, it had to pass like health and safety stuff. That's not the same as, um, somebody packing meat for human consumption. Right. And so something I, and I'm not a hundred percent certain on this, but I think that like that round of startups that are talking about before the like farmer's dog, those guys, I think that was the first round of folks being like human grade. This is the thing we're going to make our stuff in facilities that are going to pass the FDA is same standards as are required at a producers that make, um, human foods. And so that's, that's like, like I said, I can't say that blue Buffalo can't say that. And these guys can, but it's important to note that there's no, like I get why somebody would hear that and be like, yeah, I want that. And that's, I respect that decision, but you can't make a decision without noting also that there's never been an iota of evidence. There's anything better about it. Anything safer, there's no less likely to be recalled or more likely to be recalled on one side or the other. No more likely to be contaminated on one side or the other. There's no, um, health benefit that's been demonstrated on one side or the other and not like demonstrated like there's holes in the scientific record. Like there's not one study that remotely says anything close to that. So it's all like, uh, yeah, but it still sounds better. Like I'm sure that the factory that's used to make my personal food is going to be better in some respects than the dog food factory. And so if that's what you feel, then this is a product that will provide that benefit. No doubt about it. And the same is kind of true with the synthetic vitamins. Then it's like really similar story. That's a real difference, right. Again, and it's probably something I don't have the blue Buffalo label in front of me, but I'll dollars to donuts. You know, just like us, they put, uh, like multivitamin supplement in their recipe as well. It's like, there's the nutritional profiles that every maker or pet food in the country has to meet. If they want to sell their product is what's called complete and balanced are like extensive. And they say, basically, you gotta make sure that your product has as much vitamin a, as much vitamin D blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. And one of the ways that's like a most sure-fire way to make sure that you hit that is to use like what essentially amounts, circle multivitamin, like the same, like a Centrum type thing. But that's in powdered form instead of like pill form. Like you take it home every day and you mix it into the recipe and it like ensures that everything matches up with what's required. And so it's long been kind of an industry standard thing. Yeah. Just like human grade feels, even though there's no evidence, it feels like better. There's like a kid, you can build a diet, a pet food diet and meet those nutritional requirements without using a multivitamin mixture. Like a hundred percent. Of course you can, it's more difficult. And there's a process involved. That's like, you have to, I am not saying that any individual brand is deviating from what they're putting on the label, but there's like a much greater degree of variability. Do you have to iron out, like, imagine if you're mixing in a sweet potato and like grapes and strawberries and pulling all the vitamin mineral concept from there, there's variability in those things. They're not like you can just measure out a teaspoon of them. They're like individual unitized things and there's more variability, but assuming you get it all right, that's still, it's like, that's another way you can meet those profiles. And again, there's no, no, no evidence anywhere that says you give a dog whole like these vitamins from natural, as opposed to synthetic sources that it's healthier for the dog, that there's any kind of like difference within the body material difference within the, how the body deals with it. Um, it does feel better. It does feel better. Good. Like I want my dog, of course I would want them to thinking of the, like you said, like the, the actual ingredients have been mixed in with the me and that just makes it feel so much better. Like, oh, of course I don't want something made in a lab, but you're right. There's been no study or science around the nutritional impact of synthetic versus whole, but also the human grade versus food grade cooking process and the, um, actual where they're made, like there's no impact on nutrition. And I think, yeah, it's definitely becomes like a branding impact. I think at that point Works Obviously work. I eat, um, I, I I'm somebody that happens to believe that for my own nutrition, a good pillar, like of how I think about what I should eat is I should eat a lot of, most of my calories from protein. I should get a lot of protein. I do a lot of mussels stuff and I should eat a lot of protein. And so one of the best ways for me to do that, the most convenient ways is I eat protein bars and they can say 20 grams of protein per bar. And they're 200 calories per bar. So like nutritional content from my perspective is fantastic. My girlfriend, when she sees them, like always rolls, right? Like when she talks to people about what I eat is always like, oh my God, he eats these nutrition bar, these protein bars. And I'm like, what is the, what I don't understand? And she's like, well, it's just all synthetic. And it's like, well, okay, so what are you, what are you saying about that? What, what, in what way is that different? And there's no real they're there, but it's just like, it basically boils down to this feeling of like, it just feels different, not the same as like a whole food. And I, I feel that way too. I feel that difference too. But at the end of the day, it's like, I overcome that in my thinking about what's best for me to eat. Yeah. And it's sorta like that with this synthetic vitamins. It's like, yeah, exactly. It's not, it's not that it's never been studied. Like whether synthetic vitamins, it's not like, we're trying to say like, well, nobody's studied either one of these. And so you're rolling the dice one way or the other it's like dogs. Absolutely do absorb synthetics. Nobody's proven there's any kind of difference in health outcomes when it comes to, if you give dogs synthetic produced vitamins or naturally produced wrongs. Yeah. I agree. Great, great discussion on, you know, human grade versus the synthetic vitamins, which they kind of use as these other pillars in their branding. And I let's circle back to this air-dry cause there's some points in it and I'm so excited to kind of hear more from, cause you work behind the scenes as a CEO of a pet food company that makes the traditional kibble so to speak, even though we're kind of in this midst of suddenly kibbles bad and you don't want to feed them something that's, you know, been cooked to death. I know that's used a lot in the industry of these people that are not just air dried, but gently cooked as another phrase that's kind of floating up in other start-ups. But yeah, let's kind of walk through what air dried means, but also comparing anything it's very important to compare it to the traditional process that kibble normally. Yeah. Ah, yeah. Tell him to say on this. So again, I'll start with the kind of content that like larger industry contexts. Once upon a time, there were to some degree you could get pet food in two varieties. There are two of the ways you could get pet food. This is the accurate way to say it. Two of the more common ways you could get it was by far, the most common way was kibble. And one of the other more common ways was raw and raw guys. This is circa 1990s. The raw ones are smaller companies. So all the biggest companies make kibble products primarily. And the raw guys start producing their products. Um, kibble until Quito, natural pet foods came along was believed. It's always been the case. You use a lot of carbohydrate to make it okay. And it's like, basically like making a loaf of bread. Like you have to use starch salt, not have to cause we jumped. But like people have long believed like, no that's a necessary ingredient. If you don't put enough carbohydrate in there, the dough doesn't hold together. You can't make kibble. So the vast majority of kibbles, tons of carbohydrate in them, raw diets come along. You don't have to make them like kibble. You don't have to heat up the dough and get it to stick together. Like a loaf Of bread. Bread Is just wrong. It's just wrong ingredients. And so many of them don't contain carbohydrate dogs, start eating these new generation of raw products and are observably healthier. Okay. Leaner, most notably. And they develop like a big following and the main and they basically just like, they kind of got it wrong is my judgment of what happened. It's like what became the fixation? There are two big differences between these two classes of products. One is whether or not they're cooked. So are they brought or are they not raw? And the other is what's the composition, what kind of nutrients, what kind of ingredients are in there? And that was really different too, because there are no. And basically I think the industry just gravitated around the rawness and said basically like the consumers came to believe that it was the rawness in and of itself. That was what was the like magic elixir for their dog. Not the fact you just take carbohydrates out of the diet as a completely different nutritional makeup. And so what that means is that Raul became a like, um, uh, another way of saying like magically healthy, basically like that, that represents like its own class of like, It was like a magic bullet, like feed them raw and yeah, I agree. Yeah. And so now what you start seeing are folks, like I said, the way that it feels like Sunday is like trying to have it both ways. They're making a product that is cooked. That is dehydrated. That is shelf stable, carbohydrate heavy. You can hold it, hold it. You're you're showing like the camera actual, it's not like balls. It's like squint. It's like flat, flat stuff. That's still the same kind of like a consistency, right? Like it's like When you forget, when you break it apart, like if it's not in, in the existence of these strips that are, it seems like they're extruded strips that are still broken apart into these little squares. But yeah, when you break it apart, it still is like kibble inside in terms of the dryness, in terms of the texture, it's just, it's like the final product that's extruded as these flat pieces versus a ball or a square shape or you know, the different traditional kibble shapes. And so basically one of the things that it feels like what they're trying to do is trying to be like, look, we're going to try to use as many of the raw ish buzzwords as possible. Even though we're not selling a raw product, we've got a product here that is shelf stable. That's been heated up, make the bacteria go away, suck the moisture out of it, all the same things that kibble happens with kibble. But we're going to try to find a way to frame this so that it's not kibble. Like that's, that's kind of like something that came out of the raw versus kibble dichotomy is it was like raw magic bullet, kibble bad, basically. And so now you've got these brands that are coming along that are trying to get the health halo, but they're like, and so one of the ways they're doing that is like kibble bad, but really you look at it and you'd like to start to tick off, like what's in it, how it's made and whatever. And it's like, no, this is basically 95% of the way to Kimball. This is not a raw dies are completely different. This is basically the same thing. And so the like prime example of that is their use of this expression. That's very vague, gently air dried. You see it all over their marketing materials and date on their website. You can pull up the, like, they've got the very simple write-up of how their process works and it's stepwise, you know, it's like mixing the ingredients together and then gently air dried is just like picture of some nuggets under a fan. Yeah. Under like a fan. Yeah. And I mean, nobody needs me to tell you that, like when you're producing pet food at scale, that is not what's going on. You know, like you can just imagine like how many of these boxes are in the United States right now? Um, so you start to ask yourself like, here's, here's, our table is made. Um, you take all the ingredients that you're gonna use in it and you mix them together with, um, like you add water to it basically. And the ingredients, all like dough, it's just like think meaty biscuits, meaty, basically like you can make a dough and then what's different than in bread is you extrude, you squeeze basically like extrude means it's like, what you like, oh, this is perfect. This is like some kind of lotion that is sitting on my counter. And another word for squeezing the material out. The nozzle is extrude. That is what extrusion is. It's like squeezing out through a nozzle. And that's why kibble all has the like shape that it does is they have like part, these factory tooling has like tons of these little nozzles basically. Right? So it's got like a blade that's running really sharp or really fast. And as you push all the dough out these like, like think of a pasta maker, you know what I mean? Like it's getting pushed out through the nozzles and then it's getting cut over and over again. So it's not like pasta where it's like cutting once every 12 inches or whatever. It's just really rapidly chunking it out. It's a little balls. Right. So when it comes out of that, it's been mixed together. It's been heated up and it's been pushed out through the little nozzle into little balls. And when you're making, when you're testing it, like when we were going to in the early days, our challenge was like, could we get the dough to hold together without the carbohydrate? And so w what you do is you're like standing at that point, you're like picking them off the line and they're still soft. It's still contain all the, but they're in their little balls. Basically the ingredients have all been mixed together. And so you can pick them off the line, the guys that like real hardcore, like pet food dudes, who've been doing it forever, will eat it. And they can, like, they know whether or not something is right or wrong and how much moisture or what temperature or whatever. And so then if that's not shelf stable, because basically the issue is like, it has too much water in it. Like, that's, that's why an orange will rot and a dried orange will not, is like things that spoil have water in them. Right. Because the thing that's kind of the way it is. And so when you buy, um, uh, raw pet food product, meat is heavily, you know, your body is whatever percent moisture and it's like cows bodies, the same thing, chicken spot is the same thing. A lot of moisture in it, right. It's the same with like fresh vegetables and fruits. Um, and it's the same in kibble. That's just finished the extruding bit of the whole process. And so the second step, the other big step is you dry them out. You put them through an oven and you blow air over it. And between the Keat and the air, it drives them out. It pulls out most of the moisture, and it goes through a long conveyor belt and just like goes one through the other and eventually comes out the other end. By the time it comes out, the other end, a lot of the moisture has gone something like 10% is all that remains, but boom, now you've got something you can sell. And during that process, in our case, okay. And we do nothing special manufacturing. We have a special Product traditional. Yep. Yeah, exactly. We have a very special product nutritionally substantively, but in terms of the manufacturing, absolutely nothing special. I don't believe there's anything, any benefit to doing it any different way. And so I will tell you straight up, it's like exactly the same as blue Buffalo. And what that means is basically you heat it up as hot as like your kitchen oven on medium. It gets to like 300 degrees. Okay. So it's like, think about roasting a chicken breast, but think about roasting a piece of salmon. It's like the vast majority of things that I'm cooking in my oven are hotter than that. You know, when you cook salmon, it's at 400 degrees. When I touch it, Nebraska is at 400 degrees. There are times I have a big green egg smoker that I like to use to smoke pork shoulder, or like, um, brisket and there to, in order to do that, well, you do it much lower temperature, put it like 2 25 and you just let it chill all day. And it does some unique things to the consistency of it. Right. But at the end of the day, I mean, like, if you want to, you know, like kitchen oven is not stressing itself to get to 300, like, it's just like, not that high, a temperature, Average temperature. Yep. Yeah. I mean, like, here's the thing it's like, think about this. It's like these, if it gets too hot things, burn meat products, burn, like, think about if I'm running it through a con, if I'm running my conveyor belt through drying process where it's going to put some heat and some air across it, in order to pull the moisture out, I can't make it like the temperature of the sun in there because it burns and it becomes blackened. And like, that's not what this is. This is drying it out. This is like not the process of like, it doesn't need to be cooked anymore. Like that does. And so anyway, so I say all that to give the listener a good sense of what the garden variety kibble process looks like. So to compare it against what is being implied here, because it's really important to it's like, they don't talk about what they mean by gently air drive. Like it is unquestionably the case that there they are doing the same fundamental two things to dry out their mixture as we are, which is like, they're pushing air blowing air across it, and they're heating it up, like putting it in a hotter environment. And I think generally speaking, what the idea is, like the concept of air dried is not, that is, I think we could basically say that to what, you know, there's nothing that is drying the product, except for air it's just hot air or has air that's blowing across the product. That's all that's happening here. And it's the same two things that they're doing. They're applying, you know, they're blowing air across it and they're heating up the temperature of that air, the same two things everybody's doing. And so it's kind of just like the word gently is carrying a lot of water here and they don't specify exactly what it means, but the implication is we're going lower. We're not going to heat it up as much as a kibble manufacturer is, therefore it's better. And, And I think from like a fact point, they're really harboring on this. We're maximizing nutrition. We're not lowering any nutritional content by doing so versus hot extrusion. So I think that's interesting because, well, you touched on it at the top of this episode is there's no scientific study out there that shows that exact claim in terms of lowering, There's a better, there's an even more persuasive point. Okay. It here's what they, they, they say in places on the ingredients, like we air dry it, which means that, um, we, the nutrients don't get messed up basically the way they say it. They're just like, when you put it through hot, hot extrusion, then it messes up all the nutrients and they're no longer nutrients anymore. And your dog can't, it's not good for your dog. Right. And it's like the better point you're you're right. There is no evidence that, that happens to a material degree. There's like, you can find evidence of minor changes in a couple of things. And they're like the most, it's not related to how healthy your dice, but that's like secondary. The main point is I will tell you how we figure out what, how much, what the nutritional content of our product is. And, and what we tell you on the label, it is this, we cook it, we'd send it through the, all of the machines, including the hot extrusion. And then we send it off to the lab for nutritional analytics. And then they tell us how much of the various nutrients are in there. So it, it, it, if the idea is, well, you put it through the hot thing and therefore like you made your steak medium. And if you had made it rare, it would have been healthier. Like it, even if that was the case, that's all like, I I'm telling you what's in it after all that is done. And so it makes, you know, it's just like, it's a, what is the game called? Like a slight of hand thing. So, anyway, I mean, it's like, it's a process that's not described. And honestly, I know there's like a critical tone here because I am critical of some of this. This is some of this feels like pulling the wool over people's eyes and kind of unfairly trying to compete. But if anyone from Sundays is hearing this on the, they say we were founded by a veterinarian and an engineer couldn't find the perfect food for their own dogs. And they decided to make it, I welcome being told that I'm misunderstanding any elements of this process. And I promise you that we don't speak to your respectfully. I apologize if we get out of line and talk about this, like two adults and professionals, no problem. But I'm pretty confident in what we're saying about the, like how this process works there. It's not, if it was like, again, think about the scale, think about the fundamental pieces that are involved heat and blowing air over it. And think about what comes out the other end. What's going into the bag. It's a PR, it's a dried out like mixture of ingredients in their case. It's been cut. Like you said, it's like, you can see in the case of kibble, it gets squeezed out through a tube and cut in a little nubs. There's this very thin, whatever, like a eighth of an inch thick mixture. And you could see it definitely been like spread flat and then chopped into little squares. Right? Like it's just different. It's making a difference. So what you get are these little pieces of cinnamon toast crunch instead of little balls. Yeah. As a pet food consumer, if right. If air dried w was this truly like fundamental game changer, I would expect to see something like when we air our food, we preserve X more protein or something that is very a plus B equals C, but it's not, when you look at, and we'll kind of jump into the snacks of the guaranteed analysis and the calorie content, nothing's really changing. It's just more of, yeah. Maybe an impacts, like density, the way that their food is made. Um, and then depends on if you're swayed by the no synthetic vitamin claim. But it, at the end of the day, the numbers are still the numbers. It's, you know, it's not like the air-dry does impacting the nutrition outright. So yeah, it's an, it's just a very, it's just, It's also the, like the, you can feel when you, when you start, when you, when you're, when you're, when it's your intuition, that's operating and telling you like, yeah, but it does feel healthier. It's like, just think about the steak analogy. It's like, nobody goes, I always eat my steak rare because that's the best nutritional content there. That's not a thing. You know what I mean? It's like people don't, there is no difference between if it is cooked to medium rare, it's cooked to medium. There's like the product changes aren't questionably, but material changes in the amount of nutrition that's being supplied, such that the numbers that are being reported are no longer, the real numbers is complete BS. Yeah. And I think it's worth noting. Um, before we move on, is we did find just like to compare the numbers. Cause we haven't mentioned any numbers yet is on Sunday's website. They're saying the air dried, just to give some definition to that is 140 degrees to 180. And I think you had mentioned in our prep for this episode, that traditional kibble goes through about 350 degrees. Like you mentioned, like a at home oven, like you're just turning it on to like a very medium temperature. It's not being blasted 600 degrees, you know, in this huge industrial oven, it's being on a conveyor belt with warm air, basically going over it. Okay. I mean, it's hot, but 180 degrees is pretty like you can't, none of us can be like, we were in the sauna out here in Norway the other day, and that gets, I don't know, 120 degrees. And then it becomes an intolerably hot, like 180 degrees. It's hot, but it's so is enough at 300 degree oven. And so w I, I'm not trying to say that it's not hot. I'm trying to say it's not different. It's just like, Yeah. Uh, when I used to dehydrate a lot of my food back in the day, um, it's, uh, it can to a dehydrator that you would have at home, it's just like this warm air, but it's still, you know, there's still heat involved. It's not, you know, like truly air dried in terms of it's sitting out at 72 degree room and Yeah, exactly. It's still too hot for a human being to be in there for any length of time. Yeah. And I think it's just important to define this as, as we go through it, just so everyone can understand the comparison that we're making for defining their true cooking process versus traditional kibbles. So, Yeah, it's like, there is when I, you know, I love, love smoking pork shoulder and beef brisket, and it's so delicious. And it's a great thing to do for a barbecue to have people over Memorial day coming up. But there is no part of my mind. That's like, when you cook it that way, then it's healthier than just grilling a steak for 10 minutes. You know what I mean? Like that's not, no, no, no, it's tasty because all the, like if you cook it really slow, all the connected tissue like liquefies, instead of, and it's like, it's tasty. It's not like, you're like, you're like, oh, that's the only healthy way to do it is low and slow forever. And it's much healthier, like go talk to a barbecue guy or two, and talk to me about like, who's Right. You're not having right. The barbecue Kings are not sitting around having nutrition, content discussions. It's more of the end product and the tenderizing of the meat. But anyway, now I'm really hungry. I know. All right. So, so then let's so, so we've been doing it for almost 45 minutes now. There's one other point. The other point is this is like, like I was saying before, it's like the way they're trying to frame it is a very Kimberly products in the sense that it's the nutritional content is very Kimberly three big differences. I mean, three differences, material, substantive differences, human grade, factory versus USDA, factory synthetic, or no synthetic and air dried versus traditional kibble preparation. But the nutrition garden variety, What you will pay for it will blow your mind. Like it is legit. I like we had to double check the decimal point on it because it's like, what's. So, like I said, before we sell expensive kibble, the most problematic thing for us is that people are like, I would love to feed your product, but I can't afford it. And it's, you know, that's just what it costs. If you're going to put a lot of meat, like here's the dirty little secret of the pet food industry that probably eight out of 10 people listening to this already know costs a lot. A calorie of meat costs a lot more than a calorie of vegetable per calorie of cereal products, like a kind of like, um, uh, corn or wheat or potato. And so if you're going to put a lot of meat in there, it's going to cost you more to make it. And it's going to, you got to have to pass more of that cost onto the consumer. So when we sell a 24 pound bag of chicken recipe, Katonah, it's $112. It's a lot more than blue Buffalo. For instance, when you buy Sundays, you're only paying $75. That sounds good. That's less than 112. Okay. Yeah. So what you get the dimensions, the volume of the box is maybe like a third of the volume of our air sealed 24 pound bag of kibble. Right? But the amount of product in there is less than 10% of the amount of kibble in our 24 pound bag. Okay. It's one kilogram versus whatever killed 24 pounds works out to one kilogram, something like 11 or 12. Okay. Less than 10%. And like I said, the calorie content they're there, they report 500 calories per cup, our chicken recipes, 450 calories per cup. This just different. It's not that different. Okay. It's like you, you said that when you they're feeding directions for your dog or your end up, you end up getting the same. Like if you plug in her weight to our taquito naturals feeding recommendations, you get the same amount, same volume, same number of cups For 10. And maybe that doesn't hold for every size dog. Maybe when you get up to larger dog, it's like they round up and it's a little different, but it's like, and totally might be like, you might, you're going to feed if yeah. So I've got St Bernard's, right? Like you're going to feed right. 10% less volume, right. Because I contain 10%, less calories per cup than they do something like that. There's but I'm talking about a PR a product that their bag is 10, not percent, 10 times, a thousand percent less product. So if you were to buy 24 pounds of Sunday's chicken recipe for the equivalent of 24 pounds of Katonah, you would be paying something like $800. Okay. $800. And that is not a misprint. Think about that. And like I said, it is not the case that there's nothing different about the product. Nope. There are different things. They're just minor. It's really, those things are not things that have science says, this is better and you pay for it. And, but it's better. And if you're willing to do anything for your dog, you do it. It's like, no, these are things where it's like, it feels good. And maybe some people are like, yeah. Even if there's not evidence, I still want to do it. Cause it's just like, I, I, I bet even despite the lack of evidence, they probably haven't studied well enough yet. And I bet it's going to be shown eventually I get it. Totally fair. But I'm talking like you were, we'll be paying eight times as much. You'll be paying roughly. And this is where it all kind of comes back to is like, like I said, they're trying to have it both ways. They're trying to do branding, pricing language, feel of the raw delivery companies, but they're going to do it while they're only making shelf stable. You know, they don't make a big fuss about not being kibble. Okay. It's dried out mixture of, you know, beef and chicken and other ingredients that gets dried out and cut into it different When the protein content in and of itself, which we exactly good episode on is 38%. Which all, Yeah, it's not bad. Like I said, it's blue wilderness. It's not great. It's just, it's not bad, but it's not. It's probably, they don't specify the amount of carbohydrate in here. I'm sure it's about 25%. Yeah. Okay. So like, you know, you could switch from them to us and you, if you, if you did that, you will be getting a synthetic product or nice synthetic Brian. They're awesome. But we, we put a multivitamin in ours. They don't right. We'd make ours in a USDA inspected facility, not an FDA inspected once it doesn't qualify as human grade. And we use garden variety, extrusion processing, not whatever they are doing when they call it gently air drive. However, we will give you more protein and less carbohydrate. We will give you more meat-based amino acids, essential amino acids. And we will do it for roughly one eighth of the price. And we'll give you 80% less carbohydrate. That's like the substance. So I guess this just kind of is like a long-winded way of saying like, this is a really good example of how a lot of pet food is marketed in the U S in a way that's like damaging in terms of public health. It's just like people, there's a big focus on issues that don't have an evidentiary basis. And the pricing reflects stuff that's like not grounded in evidence. And so people get focused on the wrong stuff and get a nation of really unhealthy dogs. Yeah. I agree. I think that was a really great summary of the purpose of these label reviews. It's not to villainize one type of food, one brand, any particulars it's just really breaking it down of, do these claims have any type of evidence, scientific studies, et cetera? Yes or no, but then really breaking down what those claims mean. So this was, this was great. I think this is, we, I've learned more about air-dry dog food the whole last week. Like I said, if they come on, I would welcome the opportunity to talk to these people about what that is just like. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's just one of these things where it's like, if I were a betting man, like, look, you look at the website and it's like, for this being the main selling point is the gently air dried. If you really want to, if that's a big thing and you really believe that's revolutionized like a big revolutionary thing, it's like, explain what it is. Like there's no explain. It's not like they have a picture of a fan so that you get like a general feeling of like, oh, that seems very Jeff. And is so just one fan is so gentle, but nobody says like, you know, when we describe it, I try to give people a sense of the scale and the actual temperatures and like what the process looks and Sarah product. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And also made in a commercial, uh, right. A commercial building with commercial equipment. It's not bright. It's not a rotary fan from 1950, but it's not to make fun of that. It's just, it's good branding. It shows we really kind of broke down the facts from what we could find. Um, but yes, absolutely. Like if someone from Sunday's wants to come on the feed, your dog, Fox facts podcast, we are more than open to additional discussion on this. This is what we could find on their website, as well as, you know, online resources, all of the things. But anyway, well thank you. Going through a novel nother labored. Absolutely. You are the one that had to wake up early four. O'clock here For Dan. He's our world world traveler. But if you Have one vacation a year Creation a year, that's true. That's fair. That's fair. Um, but if you have as a listener, any brands you would like us to do, please reach out, please contact us. It's just hello@yourdogfacts.com. And that is our general email and intake with that. We take on all of your comments. If you have additional information, if you want us to discuss certain issues, topics on this podcast, please let us know we are open. Thank you for listening. If somebody from Sundays sends us an email on that, if you don't want to appear on the show, if you want to put together some kind of written thing, we will read it word for word, promise you every word of it on the show. If you feel like we're misrepresenting your product a hundred percent. Yeah. We believe in transparency. We believe in information first. So we're open. Well thank you for listening. And until next time, Take care, everybody.