When it comes to feeding our dogs, many of us are on autopilot. We pick up the same old bag of food from the grocery store shelves like we always do, and trust that we’re doing the right thing.

But when you look more closely at the manufacturing process, ingredients, and promises that off-the-shelf dog food makes, things start to feel a little…fishy. How do we really know what’s in the food we feed our dogs?

This concern is exactly what a recent large-scale dog food study set out to answer. When you look at the findings and compare them to how fresh, personalized, human-grade dog food companies like Ollie approach things, the positive differences become hard to ignore.

Looking beyond the label

The study, conducted by the Clean Label Project, discovered ‘extremely high’ levels of lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium in dry dog food. The report tested 79 top-selling dry, freeze-dried, and fresh/frozen dog food products, and revealed that many popular dog foods contain dangerous levels of heavy metals, acrylamide, and plastic contaminants. Not only does this mean that many leading dog food brands are falling short of their safety and nutritional promises, they may even be harmful to feed to our pets. (Note: the study reported findings at a category level and did not disclose results by individual product).

Over 85% of dog food owners feed their dog dry dog food. That means that 8.5 out of 10 dogs are eating food that may contain environmental contaminants, day in, day out.

These findings speak to a larger pattern of danger and mistrust around how the food we feed our dogs, who are akin to our children. Why should our fur babies suffer through eating food every day that could be filled with possibly dangerous substances?

Ollie stands apart

When you put those findings next to a dog food brand like Ollie, it’s clear that their modern, whole-dog approach is the future of pet food. 

Ollie’s complete, balanced recipes are formulated with veterinary nutritionists and crafted from whole, human-grade ingredients that look, smell, and taste like the food you’d eat yourself. There’s clear sourcing, minimal processing, nothing artificial, and they fully abide by AAFCO standards. 

The study itself backs this up, It states that samples of fresh and frozen dog food were found to have ‘exponentially lower contaminants’ than dry dog food - a striking difference. 

The role of processing

One of the clearest through-lines of this research is that processing matters a lot. Foods that undergo extensive processing, especially those designed to last a long time on a shelf, tend to involve more steps, more handling, and more complex ingredient manipulation. Each of those steps introduces opportunities for contaminants to enter or concentrate within the food. 

Ollie’s fresh meals take a very different path. Gently cooked and delivered to your door without the need for heavy preservation. Fewer steps means fewer unknowns.

When most of us read an ingredient label, we're focused on the protein content, the first few ingredients listed, and the claims on the front of the pack. But the study highlights another layer to consider, which is ingredient quality and origin. Certain types of ingredients, particularly those that are heavily processed or derived from less traceable sources, are more likely to carry higher levels of contaminants.

But Ollie’s emphasis on whole foods and transparent sourcing changes that equation. When you know exactly what’s going in your food and where it comes from, you’re naturally limiting contaminant exposure.

The takeaway

The study makes it clear that factors like processing level, ingredient sourcing, and manufacturing methods all influence what ends up in the final product, beyond what's listed on the label. When you compare that to a small, closed-loop system like Ollie's, built on human-grade ingredients and intentionally designed to make dog food simpler and more approachable, the gap between what we're currently feeding our dogs and what we should be feeding them becomes pretty clear.

We know what we’re choosing.