Wellness Dog Food Reviews 2023 – Complete Guide

Wellness is rapidly becoming one of the major contenders in the luxury pet food world, and its wide range of formulas and flavors attests to the brands success in meeting customer demand. Since their beginnings, Wellness has spread into a multinational and well-respected brand, and can currently be found in retail stores across the country, as well as in many locations abroad.

In this article, you will find out if Wellness is a good dog food, find out what score we gave in our Wellness dog food rating and learn more about their puppy food in the Wellness puppy food review section. Pet owners will all agree that our pets are part of the family, so surely what we feed them is one of the top priorities on our lists. Read our review to find out if Wellness is the right dog food for your furry friend.

Wellness Dog Food Reviews –Quality of Ingredients

On the company website, curious customers can find a complete list of the ingredients that go into each bag of food, as well as a brief description of why these items were selected.

Additionally, the company website promises that “rigorous standards and practices are put in place to protect the nutritional integrity of our food,” and that all of their food “is carefully handled, carefully prepared and undoubtedly safe.” This strong commitment to quality assurance placed Wellness on our list of best dog food.

Full Ingredients and Analysis

To get a better analysis of what’s inside Wellness Dog Food, we sampled the Wellness CORE Grain-Free Original Turkey & Chicken Recipe. Analyzing the first 10 ingredients in a dog food is a great way to understand the overall nutrient content of the dog food because AAFCO requires all dog food ingredients to be listed in order of predominance by their weight. Here’s a closer look at what’s inside Wellness CORE Original Dog Food.

The Estimated Nutrient Content in this Wellness CORE dog food was found to have a healthy nutrient breakdown. When analyzing the top 10 ingredients of the Wellness CORE Original formula, you see a decent amount of potatoes which adds to the carb total. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it all depends on your dogs activity levels and digestion state (sometimes too much protein can be hard to digest). Apart from the obvious ones, a few additional ingredients that are great for dogs include flax, taurine, and glucosamine. Flaxseed or flaxseed oil is a great source of healthy fats for your dog. It has a variety of health benefits including anti-inflammatory properties and helps maintain a healthy coat and skin. In addition, Taurine is an essential amino acid commonly added to meet your dog’s nutritional requirements and Glucosamine is a natural supplement that helps your dog’s joint health. If your dog has arthritis or joint issues, this is a great ingredient to add to your dog’s diet.

Here are some more interesting and good quality Ingredients found in their dog food products and why they are good:

Magnesium Proteinate and Copper Proteinate – These are protineates (metal salts) that are derived from a protein. 

Magnesium Sulfate – A form of salt, you might have heard of this ingredient being used in bath salts. 

Dried Lactobacillus Casei Fermentation Product – this is a probiotic. Probiotics are healthy bacteria that are good for your gut. 

Thiamine Mononitrate – this is a salt. It is often used in the form of vitamin B1. 

Overall, from looking at the ingredients list, we are confident in its nutrient contents and are especially impressed by how good a protein source it is for dogs. This dog food is also recommended for all breeds and the estimated cost is $2.31 per lb, which makes it a great dog food for the price.

Fun Fact: Mixed tocopherols are added to preserve the food’s freshness. Tocopherols are forms of vitamin E and essentially lengthen the food’s shelf life.

Wellness Dog Food Product Line

Wellness has become well known for the quality of its ingredients, and this knowledge has helped to endear it to a wide audience. In order to continue to meet the needs of pet parents, the company has created four different product lines, each of which have their own varieties and formulas under their name.

Complete Health

The Complete Health line of Wellness Food promises to create a well-balanced diet to meet all of your pet’s needs, combining high-quality proteins, fruits, and veggies with healthy vitamins, antioxidants, and minerals to create a well-rounded meal in every bowl.

The Complete Health line also comes in twenty different varieties, ensuring that it has a formula meant specifically to meet your animal’s unique demands, and has both grain-free and normal varieties. In addition, there are also thirteen different varieties of wet foods to ensure plenty of diversity when it comes to feeding time.

See Related Topic: 6 Trending Natural Dog Treat Companies to Watch

Core

Core is designed as Wellness’s high protein, evolution-focused line to better compete with the other more natural products on the market. Core comes in seven different dry varieties, and has a huge amount of treats, toppers, and wet foods that also share the name. According to the company website, “Core recipes are crafted based on the nutritional philosophy that dogs, based on their primal ancestry, thrive on a natural diet mainly comprised of meal,” and as such meat is always the first ingredient, and there is never any corn, wheat, or soy in any of their bags.

Simple

Simple is Wellness’s limited ingredient diet that focuses primarily on a single protein source and easily digestible carbohydrates that make it a great choice for pets with food sensitivities. There are six dry formulas of the food altogether, two made with oatmeal and four that are grain-free, as well as three different canned pates to allow for some diversity, even when on a strict limited ingredient diet.

TruFood

Trufood is Wellness’s high-quality formula that, according to the company website, is “free of rendered meats, by-product meals, grains, wheat and potatoes” to deliver a more natural meal that pets love. Every Trufood blend is crafted in small batches to ensure that only the finest ingredients go into every bag, and each kibble is then baked or dehydrated under the close supervision of factory staff.

For the dry formulas, Trufood is available in five different “Nugget” flavors, but raw food, mixers, and pates are also available under the Trufood name as well.

Complete Health Grain Free 

Wellness has a grain-free food option for puppies. This is important as many puppies can’t handle eating food that contains grains and, when consumed, gives them a very upset tummy.

About Wellness Pet Food

Wellness pet food was first launched in 1997 by a team of experienced animal nutritionists, veterinarians, and food scientists. In less than a decade, the company grew to become the leading natural pet food at independent retailers, and this success allowed it to grow and eventually merge with other companies to create the WellPet LLC, which governs its operations today.

Today, the WellPet company controls not only Wellness, but also Old Mother Hubbard, Eagle Pack, and Sojo’s. They are currently headquartered in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, with a manufacturing plant in Mishawaka, Indiana. Interestingly, the company is also quite vocal about its commitment to sustainability, and its buildings, as well as many of their food packages, are created using green technologies and as much renewable energy as possible.

Wellness Dog Food Costs

On average, Wellness dog food costs about $60 per pack. That is quite a high price point, but looking at the ingredients you can see why.  

Wellness Dog Food Rating

Is Wellness a good dog food? We think so! It appears to be well balanced and made of high quality, healthy ingredients. We give Wellness dog food 4 out of 5 stars. 

Wellness Dog Food Recall History

Unfortunately, Wellness has been recalled a number of times due to different food quality issues. Here are the recall dates, products and reasons for the recall:

May 4, 2012 – Wellness dry dog food was recalled due to fears of Salmonella contamination. 

October 30, 2012 – 12 pound Small Breed Adult Healthy Dry Dog Food was recalled due to high moisture levels in the food. 

February 10, 2017 – The following tinned food was recalled due to foreign materials’ contamination:

• Chicken & Herring Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 04 AUG 2019)
• Chicken Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 03 AUG 2019 & 04 AUG 2019)
• Chicken & Lobster Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 04 AUG 2019)
• Turkey & Salmon Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 05 AUG 2019)
• Turkey Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 04 AUG 2019 & 05 AUG 2019)
• Beef & Chicken Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 05 AUG 2019)
• Beef & Salmon Canned Cat Food (Best By Date: 05 AUG 2019)

March 17, 2017-  Wellness suspected that their Wellness 95% Beef Topper dog food had high levels of natural beef thyroid hormones, and therefore voluntarily recalled the product. 

Wellness Dog Food Pros:

• Great nutritional balance

• Caters for dogs of all sizes

• Canned and dried food options available

Wellness Dog Food Cons:

• Multiple recalls have been conducted over the years

• High price point

Where to Buy

Wellness is a very widespread brand, and can be found in most places that dog foods are sold. Both the larger chain retailers like Petco and Petsmart usually stock a wide variety of Wellness products on their shelves, and smaller retailers typically have a number of different formulas on hand as well.

For those who prefer to do their shopping online, Wellness can be found at just about every major site, such as Chewy and Amazon. Unfortunately, however, the company website does not offer any direct to consumer sales, but they do provide links to their most trusted online partners, as well as a handy Find a Store button to let potential customers locate retailers near them.

Alternatives

If after reading our Wellness dog food review you don’t feel that it’s right for your pup, the below options might be better for you. Check them out!

American Journey Dried Dog Foods

Wellness have just a slightly higher percentage of proteins in their dog food than American Journey, however, we still feel that they give Wellness a run for its money. 

Evanger’s Dog Food

Evanger’s dog food doesn’t contain any ingredients that could be harmful to your furry friend. 

I and Love and You

What a great name for a pet food brand! Their food has a 35% protein content, which is much higher than the industry standard.