Purina Alpo Dog Food Review 2024

Welcome to our Purina Alpo dog food review. 

Purina Alpo is a particular brand that Nestle Purina produces, and is designed as a budget option. It is extremely cheap, but on the downside, this also means that it contains some lower-quality ingredients. 

While this food does advertise that it contains some “prime cuts,” the ingredient lists don’t really show this to be the case. Many of the Alpo options include ingredients like corn gluten meal and ground yellow corn. 

Keep reading for a discussion of this dog food’s high and low points. We’ll look at some of this food’s particular product lines, as well as their ingredients and macronutrient content. 

Purina Alpo Introduction

The Nestle Purina PetCare Company owns Purina Alpo. This is one of the largest in the pet food industry and has been around for years. They produce many different dog foods and cat foods, owning big name brands like dog chow and meow mix. 

The Purina line is typically their higher-tier dog food ― and though it is not as expensive as some other brands out there, it usually ranks under Nestle Purina’s other brands.

The Purina Alpo brand is a bit different, though. 

This brand creates a wide variety of different products, including both wet and dry dog foods, and a variety of treats. 

It’s regularly advertised as being pro-meat, and so you may believe this means it contains more (and better) meats than other brands. 

However, we found this to be largely untrue. 

Their recipes do not contain more meats than most other brands, and the meats they do contain seem to be relatively low-quality. 

This dog food brand is made to be as cheap as possible ― that means the use of mediocre ingredients to keep their prices lower. 

While this may be great for those solely focused on saving money, it is not a great option for many canines.

What Kind of Dog Food Does Purina Alpo Offer?

Purina Alpo offers a few different recipes for dogs. They absolutely do not make as many different dog foods as some of the other Purina lines, but there is still a wide variety of options for dog owners to choose from. 

This brand does include both wet foods and dry foods. Which is a positive, as some of their other lines focus on only one type. 

They also craft various treats, and these seem to be made with similar ingredients and quality to their foods. 

While they do offer a few different options for your pooch’s dinner, most of them do not actually include many recipes ― in some cases, even a whole line may only include a single recipe.

Keep reading for our review on each Purina Alpo food. 

Come and Get It!

According to the advertising on this dog food, it is focused on a wide variety of different meats. However, we did not really find this to be the case. 

A quick look at the ingredient list shows us that there isn’t much meat included at all. And the ingredients that are included are quite low quality. 

Based on this information and the food’s low price, it seems that this line’s main focus is on remaining as cheap as possible. It does this by using extremely low-quality ingredients, which are often less expensive than using quality meat products. 

ALPO Come & Get It! Cookout Classic Dry Dog Food

This budget dry dog food is focused on remaining as cheap as possible while still providing complete nutrition. 

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Prime Cuts Dry

There isn’t actually much of a difference between this line and the Come and Get It option we just reviewed above. For the most part, this food is focused on remaining cheap ― and not necessarily on what is best for your dog. 

However, it does provide complete nutrition according to the AAFCO standards ― just with poorer quality ingredients than most recipes on the market. 

Even the meat included is relatively low-quality, despite the line’s name. 

The recipe does include about 23 added vitamins and minerals, as are necessary under AAFCO standards. But nearly all dog foods on the market include these additives, so it doesn’t necessarily make this food of higher quality. 

ALPO Prime Cuts Savory Beef Flavor Dry Dog Food

While this recipe does meet current AAFCO guidelines, it does so using very low-quality ingredients.

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Prime Cuts Wet

As the name suggests, this dog food is one of Purina Alpo’s wet food options. 

This line includes similar ingredients to the others this brand makes. It appears that its main purpose is to also remain inexpensive while meeting basic AAFCO standards. 

Unlike other ingredient lines Purina Alpo makes, this option is not as widely available. We had trouble locating it on some of the most popular online marketplaces, so it is possible that your local pet stores won’t carry it. 

Overall, this line doesn’t include very high-quality ingredients ― most are things like chicken by-product meats and low-quality veggies and grains. 

Alpo Gravy Cravers Wet Dog Food, With Chicken in Gravy

While this food does include many low-quality ingredients, it also includes some whole meats as well. 

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Chop House

The Chop House line is another one of the wet food options that this company makes. This isn’t the highest quality pet food you can find, but it is a bit better than the other formulas we’ve discussed thus far.

It is quite inexpensive as far as dog foods go, but it accomplishes this by using low-quality ingredients like meat meals. 

Still, it is much better than some of the dry food recipes we’ve mentioned thus far. 

This line also isn’t very widely available, so you have to do some searching before locating it. 

Alpo Chop House Originals Dog Food

Featuring a few whole meat ingredients, this wet food is of better quality than some of the other Alpo dog foods available. 

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Alpo Ingredient Analysis

This brand includes some rather low-quality ingredients. In fact, they have some of the lowest quality ingredients of most dog foods on the market. 

Their prices may be good for your wallet, but their recipes probably aren’t very good for your dog’s health. 

Most of the time, their recipes do not include meat as the first ingredient ― and this is most common in their dry food recipes. 

Ground yellow corn is a common ingredient, which  is a low-quality grain that doesn’t have much nutritional value. 

It does include a lot of calories, though. 

Many companies use it to cheaply bulk up the calorie content of their food, and that seems to be the case here as well.

Corn can trigger food allergies, despite what some companies claim. It is not “allergy safe.” [1]

Corn Germ meal is another common ingredient. This is a by-product of corn production, and is basically ground corn that has had much of the oil removed. 

Corn Germ meal is extremely protein-rich for a grain. While this may seem like a good thing, dogs may be unable to absorb and use this plant-based protein as well as a meat-based protein. It also doesn’t include the same amino acids as meat. 

This means it will likely increase the protein content of the dog food ― but with lower quality protein. 

Meat and bone meal is a prevalent ingredient in all of the food. It is sometimes labeled under more specific names, like “pork and bone meal” or “beef and bone meal.” 

No matter what they call it, meat and bone meal is a very low-quality ingredient. 

It includes the unwanted parts of the animal, such as bone, hair, blood, hoof, hide trimmings, horn, and manure. It’s all the extras leftover after the actual meat has been removed. 

We highly doubt that anyone wants to feed their dog a low-quality ingredient like meat and bone meal, yet it seems to be the most common meat product in the Purina Alpo line.  [2]

Soybean meal is commonly included as well ― an ingredient that is a by-product of processed soybean. It is extremely high in protein, but the protein is veggie-based and therefore lower-quality. 

As we previously discussed, dogs may be unable to utilize this sort of protein. If soybean meal is included in the ingredient list, be sure to interpret the protein content carefully. 

Soybean meal may also be high in pesticides. [3]

Beef tallow also commonly occurs on the ingredient list. This increases the fat content and tastiness of the food ― something often necessary when you aren’t using real meat and high-quality protein. 

This is a higher-quality ingredient, though it may not sound very appetizing to people. Animal fat is one of the better ways for dogs to meet their fat needs. 

Purina Alpo Dog Food Reviews

The reviews on this food seem to be rather mixed. Many pet owners were pleased that they could purchase nutritionally complete food at such a low price.

However, others were upset by the low-quality ingredients, like beef and bone meal, in ALPO Prime Cuts Savory Beef Flavor Dry Dog Food.

“I bought a bag of this thinking my dogs would like it. And they did! But I did my research, and I saw that it contained carcinogen! An ingredient in causing cancer! Do not buy at all costs!”

You can read more Purina Alpo reviews on Chewy.

Despite this, we also found that many reviews stated that their dogs were doing great on ALPO Prime Cuts:

“My dog loves this food. It has different textures, and it’s his favorite flavor, beef. It gives him energy throughout the day, and he has no trouble eating it. The price of this food is very affordable for a 16-pound bag. Lucky has already eaten half of the bag.”

You can read more Purina Alpo reviews on Chewy.

On the other hand, many dog owners stated that Alpo triggered food allergies or made their dogs sick. 

Of course, when someone claims that the food made their dog sick, you have to take it with a grain of salt ― without a study of some sort, it is impossible to be sure that it was the food that caused it. 

Purina Alpo Dog Food Recalls

Purina is typically a pretty safe company without many dog food recalls. However, the Alpo line has experienced one serious recall. 

This took place in 2007 and affected all of their “cuts in gravy” wet foods. It was a voluntary recall, which means that the company realized the problem and took care of it themselves. [4]

However, this was fairly serious. Some of the wheat gluten included in the dog food contained melamine, which is a toxin. This chemical was likely included in ingredients imported from China. 

14 dogs died before the food was recalled. 

Beyond this, no recalls have been done on this line itself. Purina does have a few recalls on other brands, but nothing that would affect this dog food line in particular. 

To stay updated on new recalls, visit the FDA website. 

Our Verdict

Out of all the dog foods we’ve reviewed, this is probably one of the worst options out there. The food’s main focus is on being as cheap as possible. They accomplish this by using a lot of low-quality ingredients. 

Many of their foods include corn gluten meals, meat and bone meal, and soybean meal. Low-quality meat meals are a common theme, with very few of their recipes actually containing whole meat. 

Much of their advertising revolves around their pet food being very meat-based, but this doesn’t seem to be the case in the least. The animal protein in their food is actually quite low compared to other recipes. 

Overall, this is extremely low-quality food. We don’t recommend it for any dogs out there unless it is, absolutely, the only thing you can afford.