You know to avoid heavily processed foods. Any nutritionist would agree that whole foods are healthier. But, what about your pet’s diet?
At Tiki Pets™, we believe that pets should eat as well as we do. (Sometimes they eat even better, am I right?) We proudly make whole-food, minimally processed nutrition that dogs and cats love.
What do we mean by minimally processed?
According to the USDA, “minimal processing means that the product was processed in a manner that does not fundamentally alter the product.” In other words, the natural nutrients in the ingredients are retained throughout the preparation process.
Our dedication to minimal processing is three-part. Tiki Pets® foods use:
Real, whole-food ingredients
Never animal by-products, artificial colors, flavors or preservatives
…that are carefully selected
Each ingredient serves a nutritional purpose. No fillers. No junk.
…and prepared using simple methods.
This maintains the flavor and nutrient value of our high-quality ingredients.
Wet Food
With wet food, it’s easy to see how processed the food is. No matter the form – mousse, pate, chunks in gravy, and so on – you can usually tell if the product is high quality and minimally processed. See Tiki Pet’s food for yourself below:
Dry Food
Most dry pet foods look similar, but kibble can actually be cooked in different ways. To make it, the wet and dry ingredients are first mixed together to make a kind of dough, and then this dough is cooked by either extrusion or baking.
- Extruded
Most commercial dry pet foods are extruded. This process involves using high heat and pressure to cook the dough, forcing, or extruding, it through shaped holes, then slicing them off to create the kibble pieces. They’re then dried and sprayed with fats for palatability, vitamins, and sometimes artificial colors and preservatives. - Baked
It’s as simple as it sounds, like baking at home but on a much larger scale. The dough is shaped into kibble using molds, like cookie cutters, and then baked in ovens and slowly dried. Tiki Dog™ Aloha Petites™ and Tiki Cat® Born Carnivore™ are oven-baked dry foods. Baking not only helps preserve the nutrients, it also caramelizes the kibble’s surface, locking in the delicious flavor pets love. Baking also allows us to include higher levels of fresh meat than extrusion, so we can give dogs and cats the high-protein nutrition they need.
Here are a few other simple preparation methods that we use for our foods:
- Air-Drying: Tiki Dog™ Aloha Petites™ Air-Dried Morsels are fully cooked by slowly circulating warm, dry air.
- Smoking: Tiki Cat® Dash™ fish flakes are hand-flaked and smoked.
- High-Pressure Pasteurization (HPP): Our uncooked products, Tiki Dog™ Raw™ and Tiki Cat® Raw™, undergo HPP after packaging to ensure the product’s safety.
Real, whole foods taste better and make you feel better than the heavily processed stuff. Who feels good after eating junk food? And, it’s not just good for you and your pets, it’s also better for the environment. More processed foods contain more chemicals and use more energy to produce.
So, reach for the real stuff. We owe it to ourselves, our pets, and our planet.
