Pedigree Little Champions Dog Food receives the Advisor’s second-lowest tier rating of 2 stars.

The Pedigree Little Champions product line includes 14 pouched dog foods.

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

• Pedigree Little Champions Butcher’s Stew [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Casserole Dinner [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Chunks in Gravy with Beef [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Chunks in Gravy with Chicken [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Grilled Flavors in Sauce with Beef [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Grilled Flavors in Sauce with Chicken [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Puppy Complete Nutrition with Chicken [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Meaty Ground Dinner with Beef (2.5 stars) [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Meaty Ground Dinner with Turkey (2.5 stars) [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Meaty Ground Dinner with Chicken (2.5 stars) [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Senior Complete Nutrition Morsels with Lamb and Rice [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Meaty Ground Dinner with Beef and Cheese (2.5 stars) [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Meaty Ground Dinner with Chicken and Beef (2.5 stars) [U]
• Pedigree Little Champions Senior Complete Nutrition Morsels with Chicken and Rice [U]

Pedigree Little Champions Grilled Flavors in Sauce with Beef 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”.²

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

The third 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 fourth ingredient is beef, another quality raw item.

The fifth 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 must be considered when judging the actual meat content of this dog food.

The sixth 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 seventh 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.

After the natural flavor, we find starch. The source of this starch is unknown but it is most likely derived from corn or wheat. Without more information, it’s impossible to adequately judge the quality of this ingredient.

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 four notable exceptions…

First, 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’re always disappointed to find any artificial 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, tomato pomace. Tomato pomace is a by-product remaining after processing tomatoes into juice, soup and ketchup. Many praise tomato pomace for its high fiber and nutrient content, while others believe it’s often used as an inexpensive pet food filler.

As the presence of fiber in a dog’s diet is shown to have great importance, we view the inclusion of tomato pomace in this food as a positive.

In addition, we note the use of 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.

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.

Pedigree Little Champions Dog Food
The Bottom Line

Judging by its ingredients alone, Pedigree Little Champions Dog Food looks like a below-average wet 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%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 42% and a mean fat level of 21%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 30% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 49%.

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

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

Bottom line?

Pedigree Little Champions is a meat-based pouched dog food using a moderate amount of chicken, chicken by-products and meat by-products as its main sources of animal protein, thus earning the brand 2 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.

Pedigree Dog Food
Recall History

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

• Mars Petcare Recalls Bags of Pedigree Adult Complete Nutrition Due To Potential Loose Metal Contamination (5/20/2024)
• Pedigree Dog Food Recall Expanded (9/1/2014)
• Pedigree Dog Food Recall (8/27/2014)
• Pedigree Dog Food Recall (6/30/2012)

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

To learn why our ratings have nothing to do with a product’s recall history, please visit our Dog Food Recalls FAQ page.

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