How do you compare wet to dry matter basis to know the level of nutrients?Updated 7 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.