The Simple Food Project Review: Simple, Real Food for Dogs

Today, more and more pet parents around the world see their dogs as a true member of the family. Naturally, these parents are doing more research into the foods they give their dogs. A quick glance at the nutrition label on the back of your big-box-store-purchased kibble can make you question the ingredients and quality. Because of this growing concern, the premium pet food market is sky-rocketing with billion dollar acquisitions and new companies dedicated to fresh dog food delivery services.

Among the growing premium pet food industry includes a manufacturing process called freeze-dried or dehydrated dog food. This process essentially retains all of the natural nutrients within the food that are often lost when processed into kibble.

Introducing The Simple Food Project

The Simple Food Project is a newer company to the market specializing in freeze-dried dog food with simple ingredients. The company also believes our dogs “deserve real food in amounts proportional to their naturally carnivorous diets.” We had the opportunity to test out their product and our pup Sasha willingly obliged to taste test!

Ingredients

The first thing I noticed after opening a pack was the incredibly obvious ingredients. The beef and trout recipe had very noticeable cranberries and peas while the chicken and turkey recipe had carrots and blueberries. Try identifying those ingredients inside of a kibble!

Another thing we loved is that the company crafts all of their recipes in small batches with “USA-sourced ingredients” and at their “state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Wisconsin.”

Recipes

Currently, The Simple Food Project has 3 tasty recipes to choose from. Looking at the ingredients, we really like what we see. Each recipe leads with a meat as the primary protein source, and quickly follows up with organs (these are a vital source of nutrients for dogs) and high quality fruits/vegetables. Let’s take a deeper look into each one.

Duck & Trout: 

Duck, beef, beef liver, lentils, flaxseed, green beans, trout, apples, whole ground krill, pumpkin seeds, spinach, turmeric, iodized salt, mixed tocopherols (natural preservative)

Beef & Salmon (Sasha’s favorite!):

Beef, salmon, beef liver, flaxseed, peas, beef heart, carrots, cranberries, whole ground krill, pumpkin seeds, ginger, spinach, iodized salt, mixed tocopherols (natural preservative)

Chicken & Turkey:

Chicken, turkey, chicken hearts, flaxseed, sweet potato, chicken liver, carrots, whole ground krill, pumpkin seeds, blueberries, cinnamon, spinach, iodized salt, mixed tocopherols (natural preservative)

Price

Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for! To be quite frank, the prices may initially shock you; I’ll tell you the prices first, but quickly explain why its not as bad as it may seem.

The 6lb box (Duck & Trout recipe) is $84.99. BUT, what you need to know is that this is dehydrated food. Once you add water, the weight increases dramatically. Using The Simple Food Project’s feeding chart, our 50lb shepherd mix would last 17 days on this 6lb box. As a quick comparison, The Farmer’s Dog (fresh dog food delivered) would cost roughly $130 for the same 17 day period.

Final Thoughts on The Simple Food Project

Overall, we really like this company. The dehydrated and freeze-dried sector of premium pet food is certainly growing due to the enormous benefits, including being able to retain nutrients from real food without paying the price of fresh dog food delivery.

Better yet, our dog Sasha LOVED every recipe. She sits there drooling as I’m adding water to the food and waiting for it to hydrate!