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Kroger Value Chunk Dog Food receives the Advisor’s lowest rating of one star.

The Kroger Value Chunk product line includes one dry dog food. Since we could not locate AAFCO nutritional adequacy statements for this product, we cannot report life stage recommendations.

Thanks to the generosity of one of our readers¹, we were able to manually collect the data used to create this Kroger Value Chunk review.

The first ingredient in this dog food is corn. Now, contrary to what you may have heard, corn isn’t necessarily a bad ingredient.

On the other hand, although there’s no way to know from the list entry itself, the corn used in making many pet foods can be similar to the kind used to make feed for livestock.

And that can sometimes be problematic.

What’s more, corn is commonly linked to canine food allergies².

For these reasons, we rarely consider corn a preferred component in any dog food.

The second ingredient is wheat middlings… commonly known as “wheat mill run”. Though it may sound wholesome, wheat mill run is actually an inexpensive by-product of cereal grain processing.

In reality, middlings are nothing more than milling dust and floor sweepings.

The third ingredient is soybean meal. Soybean meal is actually a useful by-product. It’s what remains of soybeans after all the oil has been removed.

Soybean meal contains 48% protein. However, compared to meat, this item is considered an inferior plant-based protein providing a lower biological value.

The fourth ingredient is meat and bone meal, a dry “rendered product from mammal tissues, including bone, exclusive of any added blood, hair, hoof, horn, hide trimmings, manure, stomach and rumen contents”.³

Meat and bone meal can have a lower digestibility than most other meat meals.

Scientists believe this decreased absorption may be due to the ingredient’s higher ash and lower essential amino acid content.⁴

What’s worse, this particular item is anonymous. Since there’s no mention of a specific animal, this ingredient could come from almost anywhere: spoiled supermarket meat, roadkill, dead, diseased or dying livestock — even euthanized farm animals.

Even though meat and bone meals are still considered protein-rich meat concentrates, we do not consider a generic ingredient like this a quality item.

The fifth ingredient is animal fat. Animal fat is a generic by-product of rendering, the same high-temperature process used to make meat meals.

Since there’s no mention of a specific animal, this item could come from just about anywhere: salvaged roadkill, spoiled supermarket meat… even dead, diseased or dying cattle.

For this reason, we do not consider generic animal fat a quality ingredient.

What’s worse, this fat is preserved with BHA… a suspected cancer-causing agent.

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

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

With three notable exceptions…

First, we find no mention of probiotics… friendly bacteria applied to the surface of the kibble after processing.

Next, the minerals listed here do not appear to be chelated. And that can make them more difficult to absorb. Non-chelated minerals are usually associated with lower quality dog foods.

And lastly, this Kroger Value product also contains menadione… a controversial form of vitamin K linked to liver toxicity, allergies and the abnormal break-down of red blood cells.

Kroger Value Chunk Dog Food
The Bottom Line

Judging by its ingredients alone, Kroger Value Chunk Dog Food looks to be a below-average kibble.

But ingredient quality by itself cannot tell the whole story. We still need to estimate the product’s meat content before determining a final rating.

The dashboard displays a dry matter protein reading of 24%, a fat level of 9% and estimated carbohydrates of about 59%.

Below-average protein. Low fat. And above-average carbs when compared to a typical dry dog food.

In addition, when you consider the plant-based protein-boosting effect of the soybean meal, this looks like the profile of a kibble containing only a limited amount of meat.

Yet it’s difficult to ignore the presence of so many Red Flag items… especially the two controversial additives… menadione and BHA.

Bottom line?

Kroger Value Chunk Dog Food is a grain-based dry kibble using a limited amount of meat and bone meal as its main source of animal protein… thus earning the brand one star.

Not recommended.

Notes and Updates