A scientific comparison of chewies and their degradation in stomach & intestinal juices

[Minga & Malu & Costa]

For those of you who use Greenies, Nutri dent Nylabone, Waggin' Train Freshies or Bone-A-Mint Wheat free dental chews:

Because I work for a university, I have access to scientific medical and veterinary journals. I was just reading an article in the American Journal of Animal and Veterinary Sciences comparing these four similar chewy treats. I give my Lhasa Apso Greenies, so I was curious to see how they stood up to these other similar type chewies. The issue here is whether the treats can dissolve in the gastric juices of the dog and therefore not result in an intestinal blockage.

Bone-A-Mint came out the best treat in terms of degradation in the in vitro gastric juices (for any non-scientists, this means they concocted formulas that have the same properties as stomach and intestinal juices and placed them in an environment (dog body temperature) to simulate the tummy, then placed same-sized chunks of the chewy in the environment to time the degradation).

At 2 hours, a 1 cm cube of the chewy was degraded 60% and by 4 hours 85% for Bone-A-Mint. The other 3 chewies at similar time points were only 15-20% degraded and 20-30% degraded. After 12 hours the Greenies and Nutri Dent by Nylabone were only about 50% degraded!! Freshies was about 75% degraded at 12 hours.

So, if you want the benefit of a dental chew for your dog but are afraid of a blockage it looks like Bone-A-Mint is the way to go. I had never heard of them before, but I will likely be giving them a try in the very near future. They were available to buy online from a variety of sources.

[Minga & Malu & Costa]

Here is the reply I received from the N-Bone people concerning their treats. The treat in question (Bone-A-Mint) is made in the USA. I think I may try some.

Dear Minga,

We have several products that are produced in our manufacturing plant in Taiwan. They are: Twistix, Tummylove, SensiBelly, Puppy Teething Ring and The Quado. The rest of our products (Get Naked, Bone-A-Mints, Puppy Teething Ring, Cat Chews, Ferret Treats, N-Bone Original, Pearly Whites and the Pupper Nutter) are manufactured in the United States. We are very concerned with the health of all companion animals and our Plant in Taiwan adheres to the exact same Quality control procedures that we do here at our Plano Plant. Both facilities are GMP (Good Manufacturing Practiced) certified. We have never had to recall any items at either facility. We are in the process of having the Plano Facility APHIS Certified. We source our raw material from the United States when available, unfortunately there are some raw materials that are not available in the United States. For instance all Green Tea comes from China. We purchase our Green tea from a company in France that brings the Green Tea to their facility and processes it.

Please fell free to contact us with any other questions,

[Mommy2Max]

Great information. Thank you for sharing and "translating" (I needed that). :)