Storing Natural Dry Dog Foods

Do you sometimes purchase large sacks of dog food for convenience or when they’re on sale? A large sack of dog food may last many weeks before your dog is finished with it…but how should you store it in the meantime? And if you’ve purchased natural dog food, does that make a difference?

Recently we interviewed Dr. Marcie Campion (photo, right, with her dog, Tucker), a leading pet nutritionist and scientific relations manager for Iams/P&G Pet Care, about the best way to store your large sacks of natural dog food, specifically the recently-introduced IAMS Naturals products. None of these new IAMS Naturals foods contain artificial preservatives (or colors or flavors), and we wondered if this impacted the storage of large bags of the food.

“Natural dog foods are preserved with natural preservatives, in this case, vitamin E, rosemary, and citric acid,” said Dr. Campion. “When you put that combination together, that is the preservative we use in Iams Naturals. Our products have a 16-month shelf life so you have plenty of time. You can store it like a traditional dog food but, like with any of your food products, you want to keep it in a cool place. Typically room temperature is what we think about because if you have it in a hot, humid place, the preservative won’t be as effective long term. It’s like any other foodstuff, human or pet: you want to make sure you store it in a cool, dry place.”

You don’t have to worry about putting the package in a dark place if it’s stored in the bag. However, according to Dr. Campion, “a lot of times we find our consumers opening up the package and putting it into something else that’s resealable like Tupperware or something like that. If your Tupperware container is clear, you wouldn’t want to leave that sitting in the window in sunlight.”

Photo courtesy Iams/P&G Pet Care

About Paris Permenter and John Bigley

DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.

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