I hope you don't leave carolinemaltas. This forum can sometimes be very concensus appearing, and I've had occasions where I though my view was being put down without consideration, but the truth of the matter is that we all have our opinions based, mostly I hope, on actual experience or balanced reading/consideration.
I grew up with a dog that was fed tinned food exclusively, and because of financial reasons she often had to make do with Chappie,, which I've heard some bpeople rave about these days, but was then as bad as it got (and cheap too).
This quote comes very close to the situation: "What happened before complete foods were available?? Dogs ate a large variety of leftovers (from proper food, rather than the convenience rubbish we eat these days) - far healthier than a lot of these complete foods... they would get the entrails out of the sunday roast, bones to chew on etc etc. They weren't fed a diet artificially high in wheat and other cereals, they weren't fed loads of carbohydrate and they weren't fed food full of additives."
Another thing to consider is that the commercial aspects of vet practices is that they are much more tied in to the drug and food manufacturers than they ever were before. Consider how much your vet bills have gone up over the time you've had dogs. I see them in the same light as dentists: they still do the job but now seem to drive around in much more expensive cars.
The article that brought a lot of the "food snobbery" to the forefront pointed out an absolute fact: most vetinary schools have their nutrician courses subsidised or even wholly funded by food manufacturers. This has to have a knock effect, whether the vets are knowingly biased or not. My vet willingly agreed that some foods are better than others and that wheat is not a good filler. Is my vet in the pocket of JWB, Burn's or whoever? Possibly, but that also opens the possibility that other vets are in the pocket of the brands that use the wheat filler.
On balance, I decided to change Posie over to Burn's, and that was after much advice including the independant local shop who sell Bakers as well as the "posh" stuff. They are a commercial outlet and so will provide what their customers demand, but they advised in favour of the "posh" varieties. I can't imagine the capacity to bribe a shopkeeper is greater with the smaller companies than a multinational, so I give a little more weight to their opinion.
Finally, and I think most importantly, we all do what we believe is best for our animals, and if you are happy with what you do, then it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks - as long as you have the information to make that decision.
Stay and see how good this forum is. Don't take it personally if somebody disagrees with you (or even if they appears nasty). Not everyone has good communication skills, some people are genuinely just narrow-minded and some people like an argument, but the verwhelming majority in here are good folk and I doubt the occasional other really means any harm but is maybe just more passionate with a different viewpoint.
