Product May Have Been Discontinued
Unable to Locate Complete Label Info
On Company Website¹

Mighty Dog Food receives the Advisor’s second-lowest tier rating of 2.5 stars.

The Mighty Dog product line includes the 12 canned dog foods listed below.

Each recipe includes its related AAFCO nutrient profile when available on the product’s official webpage: Growth, Maintenance, All Life Stages, Supplemental or Unspecified.

• Mighty Dog Lamb and Rice [M]
• Mighty Dog Hearty Beef Dinner (1.5 stars) [M]
• Mighty Dog Savory Steak Flavor [M]
• Mighty Dog Tenderloin Tips Flavor in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Hearty Pulled-Style Beef in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Thick-Sliced Beef Dinner in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Porterhouse Steak Flavor in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Rotisserie Chicken Flavor [M]
• Mighty Dog Chicken and Smoked Bacon Combo [M]
• Mighty Dog Hearty Pulled-Style Chicken in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Thick-Sliced Chicken Dinner in Gravy [M]
• Mighty Dog Chicken, Egg & Bacon Country Platter [M]

Mighty Dog Thick-Sliced Beef Dinner in Gravy was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

The first ingredient in this dog food is water, which adds nothing but moisture to this food. Water is a routine finding in most canned dog foods.

The second ingredient is beef. Beef is defined as “the clean flesh derived from slaughtered cattle” and includes skeletal muscle or the muscle tissues of the tongue, diaphragm, heart or esophagus.²

Beef is naturally rich in all ten essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

The third ingredient is liver. Normally, liver can be considered a quality component. However, in this case, the source of the liver is not identified. For this reason, it’s impossible to judge the quality of this item.

The fourth ingredient is wheat gluten. Gluten is the rubbery residue remaining once wheat has had most of its starchy carbohydrate washed out of it.

Although wheat gluten contains 80% protein, this ingredient would be expected to have a lower biological value than meat.

And less costly plant-based products like this can notably boost the total protein reported on the label — a factor that can’t be ignored when judging the actual meat content of this dog food.

The fifth ingredient includes meat by-products, an item made from slaughterhouse waste. This is what’s left of slaughtered animals after all the prime striated muscle cuts have been removed.

With the exception of hair, horns, teeth and hooves, this item can include almost any other part of the animal.³

What’s worse, this particular item is anonymous. So, the meat itself can come from any combination of cattle, pigs, sheep or goats — which can make identifying specific food allergies impossible.

Although most meat by-products can be nutritious, we do not consider such vaguely described (generic) ingredients to be as high in quality as those derived from a named animal source.

The next ingredient is chicken. Chicken is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chicken”.⁴

Chicken is naturally rich in the ten essential amino acids required by a dog to sustain life.

Next, we find soy flour, a high-protein by-product of soybean processing.

Although soy flour contains about 51% protein, this ingredient would be expected to have a lower biological value than meat, and it can notably boost the total protein reported on the label — a factor that must be considered when judging the actual meat content of this dog food.

The eighth ingredient is corn starch, a starchy powder extracted from the endosperm found at the heart of a kernel of corn. Corn starch is most likely used here to thicken the broth into a gravy.

Corn starch isn’t a true red flag item. Yet we’ve highlighted here for those wishing to avoid corn-based ingredients.

From here, the list goes on to include a number of other ingredients.

But to be realistic, items located this far down the list (other than nutritional supplements) are not likely to affect the overall rating of this Purina product.

With 2 notable exceptions…

First, we’re always disappointed to find artificial coloring in any pet food. That’s because coloring is used to make the product more appealing to humans — not your dog. After all, do you really think your dog cares what color his food is?

And lastly, the minerals listed here do not appear to be chelated. And that can make them more difficult to absorb. Chelated minerals are usually associated with higher quality dog foods.

Mighty Dog Food Review

Judging by its ingredients alone, Mighty Dog looks like a below-average canned product.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 46%, a fat level of 14% and estimated carbohydrates of about 33%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 44% and a mean fat level of 22%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 26% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 51%.

Which means this Purina product line contains…

Above-average protein. Near-average fat. And below-average carbs when compared to a typical canned dog food.

When you consider the protein-boosting effect of the wheat gluten and soy flour, this looks like the profile of a canned product containing at least a moderate amount of meat.

Bottom line?

Mighty Dog is a grain-inclusive canned dog food using a moderate amount of named and unnamed meats and by-products as its dominant source of animal protein, thus receiving 2.5 stars.

Not recommended.

Mighty Dog Dog Food
Recall History

The following list (if present) includes all dog food recalls since 2009 directly related to Purina. If there are no recalls listed in this section, we have not yet reported any events.

• Purina Recalls Pro Plan Vet Diet Product Due to Elevated Levels of Vitamin D (2/9/2023)
• Purina Recalls Pro Plan Vet Diet Product Due to Mislabeling (12/6/2022)
• Purina Beneful and Pro Plan Dog Food Recall (3/11/2016)
• Purina One Beyond Dog Food Recall (8/30/2013)

You can view a complete list of all dog food recalls sorted by date. Or view the same list sorted alphabetically by brand.

Notes and Updates