Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy Dog Food receives the Advisor’s lowest-tier rating of 1.5 stars.

The Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy product line includes three canned dog foods, each claimed to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles for all life stages.

The following is a list of recipes available at the time of this review.

• Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy Ribeye Flavor
• Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy Filet Mignon Flavor
• Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy New York Strip Flavor

Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy Filet Mignon Flavor 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 chicken. Chicken is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of chicken”.¹

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

The third ingredient is 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.²

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 fourth ingredient is wheat flour, a highly-refined product of wheat milling. Like corn, wheat is an inexpensive and controversial cereal grain of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

For this reason, we do not consider wheat a preferred component in any dog food.

The fifth 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.³

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

The sixth 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 seventh 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.

The eighth ingredient is chicken meal. Chicken meal is considered a meat concentrate and contains nearly 300% more protein than fresh chicken.

The ninth ingredient is salt (also known as sodium chloride). Salt is a common additive in many dog foods. That’s because sodium is a necessary mineral for all animals — including humans.

However, since the actual amount of salt added to this recipe isn’t disclosed on the list of ingredients, it’s impossible to judge the nutritional value of this item.

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 six notable exceptions…

First, this food includes vegetable oil, a generic oil of unknown origin. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in any oil is nutritionally critical and can vary significantly (depending on the source).

Without knowing more, it’s impossible to judge the quality of an item so vaguely described. However, compared to a named animal fat, a generic vegetable oil cannot be considered a quality ingredient.

What’s worse, this fat is preserved with BHA and BHT, suspected cancer-causing agents.

Next, titanium dioxide is a white coloring agent. Although most claim the pigment to be a safe food additive, one international agency⁴ has classified titanium dioxide as a “Group 2B carcinogen” possibly linked to cancer in humans.

In addition, iron oxide is a synthetic color additive used in industry to impart a reddish color to food — and paint. In its natural form, this chemical compound is more commonly known as “iron rust”.

We’d also like to mention that caramel is a natural coloring agent made by caramelizing carbohydrates. It’s used by pet food manufacturers to impart a golden brown tint to the finished product.

However, the concentrated version of this ingredient commonly known as caramel coloring has been more recently considered controversial and found to cause cancer in laboratory animals.⁵

In any case, even though caramel is considered safe by the FDA, we’re always disappointed to find any added coloring in a 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?

Next, garlic extract and onion extract can be controversial items. Although most experts favor the ingredient for its numerous health benefits, garlic and onion (in rare cases) has been linked to Heinz body anemia in dogs.⁶

However, the limited professional literature we surveyed provided no definitive warnings regarding the use of garlic or onion — especially when used in small amounts (as it likely is here).

And lastly, 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.

Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy Dog Food Review

Judging by its ingredients alone, Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy dog food looks like a below-average canned product.

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 44%, a fat level of 17% and estimated carbohydrates of about 31%.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 38%.

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

Free of any plant-based protein boosters, this looks like the profile of a wet product containing a notable amount of meat.

Bottom line?

Ol’ Roy Strips in Gravy is a meat-based canned dog food using a notable amount of chicken and meat by-products as its main sources of animal protein, thus earning the brand 1.5 stars.

Not recommended.

Please note certain recipes are sometimes given a higher or lower rating based upon our estimate of their total meat content and (when appropriate) their fat-to-protein ratios.

Special Alert

Because we’re unable to locate complete label information for this product on a company owned website, we’re compelled to rely on photos collected by volunteers at various retail locations.

So, information manually copied from these images and used for analysis can lead to data entry errors, incomplete product listings and inaccurate nutrient averages.

In addition, recipe changes and ingredient substitutions may not be apparent to our research staff or consumers.

For these reasons, we recommend shoppers use caution when considering the purchase of any dog food listed in this review.