Purina Pro Plan Select canned dog food receives the Advisor’s mid-tier rating of 3.5 stars.

The Purina Pro Plan Select product line includes six canned dog foods, four claimed to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles for adult maintenance and two for all life stages.

The following is a list of recipes available at the time of this review. Recipes marked with an (*) are grain free.

• Select Adult Beef and Peas (3 stars)*
• Select Adult Chicken and Carrots (3 stars)*
• Select Adult Turkey and Sweet Potato (3 stars)*
• Select All Life Stages Beef and Brown Rice (4 stars)
• Select All Life Stages Chicken and Brown Rice (4 stars)
• Select Sensitive Skin and Stomach Salmon and Rice (3 stars)

Pro Plan Select All Life Stages Chicken and Brown Rice was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

The first ingredient in this dog food includes 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 second ingredient is poultry broth. Broths are nutritionally empty. But because they add both flavor and moisture to a dog food they are a common addition component in many canned products.

The third ingredient is turkey. Turkey is considered “the clean combination of flesh and skin… derived from the parts or whole carcasses of turkey”.³

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

The fourth 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 fifth ingredient is brown rice, a complex carbohydrate that (once cooked) can be fairly easy to digest. However, aside from its natural energy content, rice is of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

The sixth ingredient is oatmeal, a whole-grain product made from coarsely ground oats. Oatmeal is naturally rich in B-vitamins, dietary fiber and can be (depending upon its level of purity) gluten-free.

The seventh ingredient is tomato, a nutrient rich vegetable consisting of about 72% carbohydrates.

The eighth ingredient is carrots. Carrots are rich in beta-carotene, minerals and dietary fiber.

The ninth ingredient includes potato. Potatoes can be considered a gluten-free source of digestible carbohydrates. Yet with the exception of perhaps their caloric content, potatoes are of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

The tenth ingredient is egg product, an unspecified (wet or dry?) form of shell-free eggs. Quality can vary significantly. Lower grade egg product can even come from commercial hatcheries — from eggs that have failed to hatch.

In any case, eggs are easy to digest and have an exceptionally high biological value.

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 two notable exceptions…

First, carrageenan is a gelatin-like thickening agent extracted from seaweed. Although carrageenan has been used as a food additive for hundreds of years, there does appear to be some recent controversy regarding its long term biological safety.

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.

Purina Pro Plan Select Canned Dog Food
The Bottom Line

Judging by its ingredients alone, Purina Pro Plan Select canned dog food looks like an 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 36%, a fat level of 27% and estimated carbohydrates of about 28%.

As a group, the brand features an average protein content of 38% and a mean fat level of 27%. Together, these figures suggest a carbohydrate content of 28% for the overall product line.

And a fat-to-protein ratio of about 70%.

Near-average protein. Above-average fat. And near-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 moderate amount of meat.

Bottom line?

Purina Pro Plan Select is a meat-based canned dog food using a moderate amount of poultry, beef or salmon as its main sources of animal protein, thus earning the brand 3.5 stars.

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.

Other spellings: Proplan

Notes and Updates