I was wrong about synthetics in pet food...

Mar 16, 2026

I used to think synthetic vitamins were a red flag.

If I saw them on a pet food label, I’d put the bag back.

My logic made total sense at the time: whole foods are natural, synthetics are artificial, and natural is always better.

It felt protective. It felt like I was being a good pet parent.

But I was wrong.

And it wasn’t one big moment that changed my mind. It was a bunch of smaller things that started stacking up until I couldn’t ignore them anymore.

I learned that whole food nutrient levels are wildly inconsistent.

Two pieces of beef liver used in the same pet food could have completely different copper levels.

Not a little different. Wildly different.

That means if you’re relying on whole foods alone to hit your dog’s nutrient targets, you’re basically guessing. Every batch is a roll of the dice.

Synthetic copper, on the other hand, is standardized. You know exactly what you’re getting every single time.

Once I learned that, I started digging deeper.

And the more I dug, the more the “whole food only” argument fell apart.

Here’s what the whole food purists don’t tell you:

Whole foods can’t hit optimal nutrient levels for every life stage.
- To get enough of one nutrient, you have to overfeed something else or underfeed another.
Some nutrients dogs need barely exist in whole foods.
- Iodine, vitamin D, certain trace minerals. You’d have to use one or two ingredients in completely unrealistic amounts to get enough.
Bioavailability isn’t automatic.
- Some whole food nutrients are bound up in ways that make them harder for your dog to absorb. Synthetic forms are often already bioavailable, meaning the body can actually use them.
“Synthetic” sounds scary but it just means standardized.
- The molecule is the same. Your dog’s body doesn’t know or care if the zinc came from a whole food or a lab. It just needs the zinc.
The pet food industry didn’t add synthetics to cut corners.
- They added them because dogs were getting sick without them. Deficiencies were common before fortification became standard.

So when people say “whole food diets are better because they don’t use synthetic vitamins,” I get why it sounds right.

It sounds natural. It sounds cleaner. It sounds like you’re doing more for your dog.

But the reality is, this is the opposite of the truth.

And it isn’t just me saying it.

Dr. Amy Farcas is a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. She’s evaluated thousands of homemade pet diets.

Her take?

“A 100% whole-food, no-supplement diet is not practical if you want true balance.”

That’s not an opinion from some random pet influencer.

That’s someone who has literally spent her career analyzing what’s in these diets and whether they actually meet a dog’s needs or not.

So here’s where I’ve landed on all of this:

Whole foods are great. I’m not anti-whole food. But whole foods alone aren’t enough.

And avoiding synthetics doesn’t make a diet better. It usually makes it incomplete.

If you’ve been thinking about making homemade food for your dog but you’re overwhelmed by all the conflicting advice, I get it.

There’s so much noise out there telling you to avoid this, avoid that, go whole food only, don’t trust anything “artificial.”

That’s exactly why we created the Homemade Dog Food Guide.

This isn’t a collection of random recipes from the internet.

It’s 5 complete and balanced recipes formulated using the same software professional pet food formulators use.

Every recipe was designed to be:

We also include the full vitamin and mineral breakdown for each recipe so you can show your vet exactly what your dog is eating.

Because you’re part of our community, you can use code STACK for 20% off.

The goal isn’t to make you paranoid about what you’re feeding.

It’s to help you do homemade feeding the right way, with recipes that are actually complete, so you can feel confident instead of confused.

Thanks for reading and tell your pets I said hello ❤️

Bryce