The Honest Kicthen: Prefrence Taste Test

This is not an actual review since I have not fed this food for longer than a day.


The Honest Kitchen looked appealing to me since it was made with ingredients Conker can handle and is easily brought along on hiking trips due to it's low weight.  The food is "lightly dehydrated" and on the food's site, is claimed to be raw but the dehydration process of the meat brings the temperature up to 165 degrees Fahrenheit which in my book, counts as cooking. 
I shot an e-mail off to The Honest Kitchen requesting a couple samples and they were more than happy to oblige.  I received two bags of Keen and one bag of Preference, each with about 1 ounce of the food inside.  I also got some paper handouts talking about their food and the process of dehydration.
(They were incredibly nice and first sent only the Keen, the the Preference a couple days later, and finally a hand-written letter thanking me for my interest in their company along with a $3.00 off coupon.)

Lets start with the Preference, since this was the one I was pretty interested in initially.
According to the website:  "Preference is suggested for use with added raw meat, meaty bones or cooked meat of your preference (never cooked bones), as a base for a home made diet."  Meaning that you HAVE to add meat to this food to have it be of any use.
The site also states:  "...Preference is intended for supplemental feeding only, and has not been developed to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles or provide a complete and balanced diet when fed alone..."  So if you feed just Preference and use say, only one meat source like chicken, then you'll seriously be lacking in many things like copper and zinc amongst others. If you were to only feed Preference then I suggest you really get a variety going and use like, five or more meats but I don't recommend that.

Preference has yellow packaging.

Ingredients: Alfalfa, sweet potatoes, cabbage, celery, apples, spinach, organic kelp, coconut, bananas, zucchini, honey, tricalcium phosphate, choline chloride, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, potassium iodide, potassium chloride, iron amino acid chelate, copper amino acid chelate.

Guaranteed Analysis:
Protein, min 12%
Fat, min 5%
Fiber, max 10%
Moisture, max 8%
Calcium, min 1.51%  max 1.60%
Phosphorus,  min .64%  max .68%
Sodium,  .min 62% max .66%
Magnesium, min .20% max .26%
Calories per cup, 398
Calories per kg, 3510

Up until I'd received the Preference sample, I'd never really actually looked at the ingredients.   I'd scanned them over for things Conker was reactive to and decided that since it had none, it was one of the possible test choices.  Plus I liked the idea of adding whatever meats I wanted to the food.
So lets actually look at these ingredients.  First one is alfalfa.  Wait, alfalfa? In dog food?  Yep.  Second is sweet potatoes, a common ingredient in grain free dog foods.  Next up is cabbage then celery, both veggies that I've never considered adding to Conker's diet.  Apples and spinach, maybe, and the rest aren't really that important since they're numbers are so low. 

With the addition of a meat source, the ingredients still look out of whack.  Most grain free dog foods have at least two or three meat sources, and a lot of them are before the carbs.  I don't even know what alfalfa is, except that it belongs in rabbit food.



Remember that Preference is NOT supposed to be used as the only food, it's for occasional feeding.  Even then it doesn't look that good on paper, so lets go with the taste test to see how it fares.

When opened and poured into a bowl (1 once is a little less than half a cup) it looks like some sort of herb seasoning.  It's very green and smells like... herbs.  It had longish pieces of what I was guessing were the alfalfa and seemed to resemble some sort of loose rabbit feed.  I re-hydrateed it and added in some pork and turkey, about a cup of meat, and gave it to Conker.

Terrible picture, but you can see still see the "rabbit feed"

He sniffed it, picked at a piece of pork then left.  Keep in mind that Conker is in a picky state right now and has turned down even his most favorite foods, so this reaction was kinda expected.  But I didn't think he wouldn't even try it.  He always at least tries the food then decided to leave it, so this Preference stuff must really not appeal to Conker at all.

I didn't want to waste the food and was hoping that by starving Conker for a day he'd reconsider his intital thought of the Preference so I packaged it up, stuck it in the fridge and ignored Conker for a day.

Pulled it out the following early afternoon.  Conker looked somewhat excited at the sight of his bowl but that instantly vanished when he realized that the stuff from yesterday was still in it.  He again picked at the meat, ate a couple pieces but nosed all the Preference off and didn't seem to enjoy the greenish tinted meat.
I didn't want Conker to only eat the meat so I divided the rest of the meal in half and gave one portion to Juneau and one to Sasha.  Sasha, like usual, scarfed the food down.  Juneau nosed it around, picked at the meat, took her time deciding if it was good or not but did eat her full share.  She wasn't too thrilled about the green stuff though.


So when it comes down to it, Preference was not a hit in this house.  I might try it again later but I doubt the dogs will change their opinions.