How Do I Pick Out Commercial Dog Food? It’s difficult to narrow down exactly what food is best for your dog because of the abundance of choices available to you. Dog foods can be formulated for three stages of life, growth stage, adult stage, and senior stage, while other foods will simply be for “all stages of life.” After choosing which stage of life food you want to look for, the best way to begin selecting a brand is to compare product labels. When reading a product label, the ingredients are listed in order of largest to smallest quantities. Be aware of manufacturers hiding the amount of undesirable ingredients by listing them separately and disguising what percent of the food they make up. When looking at the product label you’ll want to see a variety of nutritional ingredients. Dogs can digest and gain nutrition from fruits, grains and vegetables in addition to meat. A good dog food will contain a combination of those ingredients, while the best dog foods will contain the highest quality versions of those ingredients. Ingredients to avoid are corn, cornmeal, soy and wheat as they are harder for dogs to digest.