How do you compare wet to dry matter basis to know the level of nutrients?Updated 10 months ago

When comparing the nutrient content of different products, it’s important to first remove 100% of the moisture content from every dog food being evaluated. This will give you the Dry Matter basis.

Let’s say you have a pouch or can of wet dog food listing a Guaranteed Analysis protein figure of 10%. This is the protein content just as it’s fed from the can — what the industry refers to as “as fed basis”. This may not seem like much protein if compared to a dry kibble.

Thus, to compare the protein levels, you must remove the percent of moisture. In this case, we will use a label of 75% moisture. When you remove the moisture from the pouch, you would be left with 25% “dry matter”. To determine the amount of protein on a dry matter basis, simply divide the reported amount of protein (in this case, 10%) by the total amount of dry matter (25%) in the can. Then, multiply the result by 100.

Dry Matter Protein Content = (10/25) x 100 = 40%

That gives you a dry matter protein content of 40%-much more than stated on the wet pouch label — a lot more than the label’s reported protein content of 10%.  Thus when comparing wet food to dry food, it is necessary to compare on a dry matter basis.