Kanumi's yellowfin tuna is caught in the Atlantic Ocean, slow steamed, and packaged in fresh water at their renowned factory in Galicia, Spain. It costs about $6 a can and comes in an Instagram-worthy peach box designed with a cheerful typography. (The brand also makes tote bags.) Honestly, I'd love to try it, but it's been sold out in the US for weeks. And it's for dogs.
If you're old enough to be reading this and grew up with a dog, that dog probably didn't eat anything that a human adult with a reasonably sophisticated palate would enjoy. What it probably ate was dog food: tough, smelly, cereal-like kernels with a little meat, processed at high heat and pressure and sold in big, unphotogenic bags by a global food conglomerate. Dog food buyers might have been able to choose between, say, salmon, chicken, or beef, but the differences between them were due to poor flavoring rather than any meaningful difference in taste or ingredients. Your dog may have liked the food, or he may have hated it. It's almost certain that he didn't know any better.
Today's dogs, at least those with wealthy parents, have far more appealing and expensive options. If a dog eats dry food, it might be a chicken-and-vegetable asado recipe from Michelin-star chef José Andrés, who last fall introduced Real Mesa, a “Mediterranean-inspired” dog-food brand. Or owners might cook for their dogs, such as vegetable-and-beef crepes ($41 a bag) with a packaged mix of organic vegetables, powdered vitamins, pre- and probiotics, and minerals specially created in consultation with veterinarians to optimize gut health.
For dessert, there are gluten-free pumpkin biscuits, freeze-dried purple sweet potato, or corn- and wheat-free macarons in flavors like crème brûlée and lavender for $23.99 for six. (The company that makes them, Bonne et Filou, calls itself “the first French-inspired luxury lifestyle brand for pets” and is named after King Louis XIV's dog.) Most of the companies making this food are new, spurred by economic trends that have made it much easier to launch and grow niche businesses. Many are running cheap, targeted Web ads, selling directly to consumers without a retail middleman, and attracting venture capitalists who sense an opportunity. Meanwhile, the big players that have long dominated the industry are reshaping their products for new or newly attentive customer segments. As market research firm Euromonitor International said in a report last year, “nothing seems likely to stop the trend toward premiumization in the pet-care industry.”
Much of this growth is driven by the market for fresh produce, typically human-grade and delivered to buyers' doorsteps on ice, a sector that has expanded more than 30% annually since 2019. Maev, which sells flash-frozen, uncooked USDA-grade meat and vegetable mixes for medium-sized dogs for about $150 a month, quadrupled its sales in 2022. Farmer's Dog, which The Information reported late last year as “one of the highest-valued startups selling products and services to pet owners,” saw its sales increase by about 60% from 2022 to 2023. That means it sold more than $800 million last year of minimally processed blended vegetables and meats that are regulated to the same standards as what you and I eat.
That's what I did a few weeks ago. Farmer's Dog turkey soup came in a clear plastic bag that would have been inscribed with my dog's name if I had one. It looked like a giant frozen pop of semi-liquid terrazzo tiles, mustard yellow with green and orange flecks. In addition to turkey, the recipe included chickpeas, spinach, carrots, parsnips, fish oil, and lots of vitamins and minerals. It tasted good, a little bland, but healthy, because Farmer's Dog controls its salt intake much more carefully than I do. Imagine a soup that was very rich and slightly underseasoned. You'd be lucky to eat that.
The creatures that consume it know no concept of Galician seafood, José Andrés, or gut health, and they eat like kings in a country where one in eight households will not have enough to eat in 2022. This reveals more about the people who love them than it does about the dogs. More than half of dog owners consider their pets “as much a part of the family as humans,” according to the Pew Research Center. Food is one of the few ways owners can properly care for the captive creatures for which they are responsible. And because our time with them is short, the stakes are high. The great tragedy, and foolish beauty, of keeping a pet is that we know it will almost always end the same way, and yet we do it anyway.
Anxiety is the other half of love. Anxiety is also very good at making us buy things. In a 2019 study, researchers found that 96% of survey respondents prioritized buying healthy food for their pets as much as or more than they prioritized buying healthy food for themselves. Beth Daly, a professor of animal anthropology at the University of Windsor, told me there's a widespread mindset that “if you love your animals, you have to feed them the best gourmet food, and the more expensive it is, the better.” (By the way, she feeds her yellow Labrador, Paddington, dog food from Royal Canin, a well-established brand.) “People want to do the best they can for their animals, but there's an element of fear there,” Daly said.
Pet food ads appeal to the same health concerns as human food: They emphasize natural ingredients and flavors, superfoods and probiotics, health-conscious diets, and what's best for you and your family. (Maeve's ads promise benefits like reduced stress, improved oral and gut health, softer coats, and improved brain development.) Pet food exploits our fears of aging and death, but cleverly enough to make us feel like we can do something about it.
I've never seen a storytelling of the messy tangle of anxiety, love and obligation as well as The Farmer's Dog's Super Bowl ad last year. It begins with a girl whispering to her floppy-eared black Labrador, “I'll always look after you.” The two run on the beach, play in the rain and have a highlight: a dog-kids play session. Then time speeds up: she moves out, comes back, gets married, gets pregnant, all the while with the dog by her side. We know what's going to happen, but the minute-long spot never gives us any indication of it. “Nothing matters more than the years we spend together,” the ad copy reads, over an overhead shot of the girl, now a woman, cuddling in bed with her family, including an unrealistically old black Labrador.
This is the kind of sentimental, manipulative advertising often is, appealing to the basest insecurities of anyone who has ever loved another animal. By that logic, the opposite of premium dog food is not non-premium dog food, but fewer years spent playing in the rain with them. If you love your dog (and you do, passionately, as millions of Americans do), and if there's even the slightest chance that feeding him an expensive chickpea-and-kale slurry will make him live longer and happier, and if you can afford the chickpea slurry, why not do it? “There's so much to gain from dogs,” Alan Beck, former director of the Center for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, told me. “It's not so bad to want to make them eat better.” Sure, it's all a bit silly. But what could be less silly than caring for the animals we love most, doing the best we can to make them better?
