fava beans

What it is

Fava beans — faba beans — are large legume seeds contributing plant protein and starch, adopted by grain-free recipes partly as a pea alternative as pea scrutiny grew.

Why it's in pet food

They do the pea job: structure, starch, protein numbers. A recipe swapping peas for favas changes the word on the label more than the nutritional pattern — worth knowing when reading a "pea-free" claim.

How Bowlmark scores it

Scores are deterministic math over the printed label — the rules below apply to every product identically, and nothing estimates or fills in a blank.

Fava beans carry no flag today: fava is not a splitting base, and the legume-rich grain-free informational flag's term list (pea, lentil, chickpea, garbanzo) does not include it — so a fava-heavy grain-free label currently shows no DCM context note. The term lists are versioned, advisor-tuned config; this page states the rules as they stand, never ahead of them.

Read the full methodology

Foods that list fava beans

No food on the shelf lists fava beans yet. Scan a bag that does and its label joins the catalog — versioned from the day it arrives.

Sources

• WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee — Selecting a pet food
• FDA investigation: potential link between diet and canine DCM (2019 update)

Related ingredients

• chickpea flour
• chickpeas
• fava bean protein
• green beans
• green lentils
• kidney beans

Further reading

• Grain-free, legumes and the DCM question
• How to read a pet food label