Visionary Pet Food is located in Los Angeles, CA. It was founded in 2017 by Paul Raybould, who spent several years as Chief Innovation Officer at American Humane Association. Visionary Pet was established to research, formulate and produce ketogenic dog foods for KetoPet Sanctuary and the dog food marketplace.
KetoPet is a non-profit organization that Raybould co-founded in 2014 to assist dogs with cancer through nutritional therapy. That led to establishing The KetoPet Sanctuary (KPS) in Texas, to give shelter dogs with terminal cancer a home and save them from euthanization. Dogs are fed a ketogenic diet and monitored. In addition to nutritional therapy, KetoPet provides veterinary and oncology care.
For our Visionary pet dog food reviews we’ll look at each food line individually, based on the food ingredient quality and safety. Each dog food review was based on these criteria.
Visionary Keto Dry Dog Food Review
6.8/10
Package Ingredients For Low Carb Grain Free Beef Recipe: Beef, pork fat, pork meal, chicken meal, whole egg, miscanthus grass, gelatin, egg white, potassium chloride, zinc oxide, iron sulfate, niacin (vitamin B3), manganous oxide, vitamin E, copper sulfate, thiamine (vitamin B1), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), pyridoxine (vitamin B6), vitamin a, riboflavin (vitamin B2), ethylenediamine dihydriodide, cobalt carbonate, folic acid, sodium selenite, biotin, vitamin D3, vitamin B12
With an average score of 6.8/10, Visionary Keto Dry Dog Food is considered a moderate risk dog food, according to our evaluation criteria.
Ingredient Quality
Overall, there are 3 concerns when it comes to ingredient quality:
Excessive Added Vitamins and Minerals
This line loses ingredient quality points for excessive added vitamins and minerals. This usually reflects poor quality or overly processed ingredients, as is usually the case in dry dog food. Ideally, these nutrients should come from whole food sources. Vitamin and mineral excesses, especially vitamin D and copper, can also result from vitamin premixes.
Unnamed Animal Ingredients
Unnamed animal ingredients are a sign of low quality. These recipes contain gelatin which is a whole food source of amino acids but the source animal is not named. Unnamed animal ingredients are often a less expensive, low quality ingredient that can be made from many proteins.
High In Fat
It should be noted that the fat content of these recipes is high for a dry dog food, at 33%, but still lower than protein, which is 43%. That’s because these are specialized recipes based on a high fat ketogenic diet. Nonetheless, it’s a concern as high fat diets can cause unwanted shifts in gut bacteria populations and can add unwanted toxins since toxins are stored in fat. Most fats, especially pork and poultry fats, are also high in omega-6 fatty acids, which can cause systemic, low-grade inflammation.
Ingredient Safety
There are 2 concerns with the Visionary Keto Dry line:
Ultra-Processed
This line is an ultra-processed dog food. The individual ingredients in dry dog foods are heated several times during processing, which can cause a significant loss of enzymes, vitamins, amino acids and phytonutrients. Processed foods are also linked to higher mortality rates in many species.
Natural Flavor
The Chicken Recipe in this line contains natural flavor, which is added to make processed food more palatable. But natural flavor is often either MSG or animal digest, both low quality ingredients with limited safety studies
Read more Visionary Pet Dog Food Reviews
Visionary Keto Freeze Dried Dog Food Review
9/10
Package Ingredients For Low Carb Freeze Dried Beef Recipe: Beef, beef heart, broccoli, green beans, coconut oil, chia seeds, dried red cabbage, sunflower seeds, beef liver, calcium carbonate, kelp powder, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin E supplement, vitamin D3 supplement.
Package Ingredients For Low Carb Freeze Dried Beef Recipe: Beef, beef heart, broccoli, green beans, coconut oil, chia seeds, dried red cabbage, sunflower seeds, beef liver, calcium carbonate, kelp powder, zinc amino acid chelate, vitamin E supplement, vitamin D3 supplement.
With an average score of 9/10, Visionary Freeze Dried Dog Food is considered a low risk dog food, as determined by our evaluation criteria.
Ingredient Quality
Overall, there is only 1 concern when it comes to ingredient quality:
High In Fat
The fat content of these recipes is high for a freeze-dried dog food, at 46%, with protein at only 36%. We prefer to see fat lower than protein in a raw or freeze-dried food. In this case the high fat is because these are specialized recipes based on a high fat ketogenic diet. Nonetheless, it’s a concern, because high fat diets can cause unwanted shifts in gut bacteria populations and can add unwanted toxins since toxins are stored in fat. Most fats, especially pork and poultry fats, are also high in omega-6 fatty acids, which can cause systemic, low-grade inflammation.
Ingredient Safety
There is just 1 concern with the Visionary Keto Freeze Dried line:
High Pesticide/Herbicide Ingredients
Both of these recipes have ingredients known to carry large pesticide/herbicide residues. Spinach and sunflower seeds (unless organic) are crops that are spray-dried with Roundup, leaving them with more glyphosate/herbicide residue than other crops, even genetically modified ones. Glyphosate is an antibiotic that can kill beneficial gut bacteria and has been linked to cancer and other diseases.
Read more Visionary Pet Dog Food Reviews
Is Visionary Keto A Good Dog Food?
When evaluating ingredient quality and safety, we consider Visionary Keto freeze dried dog foods to be low risk, while the dry dog foods are moderate risk.
These diets have been created based on a high fat, moderate protein ketogenic diet for dogs with cancer. There are minimal carbohydrates which is what we’d like to see in all dog foods. In fact, on the company website, they note that all dogs have no nutritional need for carbohydrates, not just dogs with cancer. Large amounts of starch can increase insulin levels, cause obesity and negatively impact gut balance.
It’s pleasing to note that the dry recipes have no measurable carbohydrate, as calculated. Starches are usually included by other dry food manufacturers, often in excessive amounts, as they’re needed for the extrusion process. And yet here is an extruded dry dog food made without starches. However, ultra-processed dry dog foods like this undergo several stages of heating that reduce nutrients, leading to the addition of vitamins and minerals to make up for that.
These diets are not like typical veterinary diets that often share the same ingredients and composition with sister brands sold in pet stores. These recipes are fed to dogs at The KetoPet Sanctuary (KPS) where they monitor blood glucose and ketones to ensure nutritional ketosis and maintain case studies of their results.
The company is focused on dogs with cancer so it’s unfortunate that there are several ingredients that are known for herbicide and pesticide residues. Choosing organic options would improve the recipes and their ingredient safety score.
Visionary Pets also notes that healthy dogs can be fed these diets but it’s worth noting that not all dogs do well on a high fat diet, and high fat can often mean a shortfall in other important nutrients.
There are a few other things worth mentioning:
Does Not Provide Omega-6:Omega-3 Ratio
It’s also worth noting that Visionary Pets does not state the omega-6:omega-3 ratio in their foods. While this is true of most foods, AAFCO allows a very inflammatory limit of 30:1. Diets rich in omega-6 fats can cause chronic inflammation and disease.
Coconut Oil
The use of coconut oil doesn’t cost points but it should be noted that it may be harmful to gut health as it’s been shown to cause undesirable changes in the gut lining.
VISIONARY PETS DOG FOOD RECALLS
02/2021: Voluntary recall for Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella.
Evaluation Criteria
We evaluate and score dog foods based on two criteria:
Are the Ingredients High Quality?
Here are some common low quality ingredients or markers we look for:
- Is there excessive carbohydrate content, which can cause gut imbalances?
- Does the food contain unnamed proteins, which are low quality?
- Does the food use cellulose (wood pulp) as a source of fiber instead of real food?
- Are there excessive vitamins and minerals added in place of real food nutrition?
- Are there excessive added amino acids or plant proteins instead of expensive meat protein?
- Does the food contain inflammatory processed seed oils?
How Safe Are the Ingredients?
Many ingredients come from unhealthy, inflammatory sources or are full of pesticides so we look for:
- How processed is the food?
- Does the food contain known genetically modified foods?
- Does the food contain ingredients known to be high in pesticides?
- Does the food contain natural flavor, which are often MSG or animal digest?
- Does the food contain rice, which is high in arsenic?
Each food is objectively evaluated by these criteria and a score is assigned using the average of ingredient quality and safety.
This is NOT a paid list and there are no affiliate links. We’ve partnered with DogFoodReviews.com to make sure dog owners have unbiased, objective criteria to help them choose the best dog food on the market. You can view the full Evaluation Criteria at DogFoodReviews.com.