folic acid

What it is

Vitamin B9, required wherever DNA is being copied: growth, pregnancy, gut-lining turnover, red-cell production. The synthetic folic acid form is more stable and better absorbed than food folates — one of the few places the synthetic wins on merit.

Why it's in pet food

Premix completeness, with requirements that climb in gestation and growth formulas. Deficiency in formulated foods is essentially unknown; the vitamin is here so that stays true.

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.

Neutral, like the whole B-complex: water-soluble, hard to overdose from food, excess exits in urine. The B pages share one honest sentence — these entries at the bottom of a label are the definition of 'complete and balanced' being engineered, and none of them is a selling point or a warning.

Read the full methodology

Foods that list folic acid

Ranked by score where scores exist. Placement here is never sold.

• Kettle Creek Farmhouse Chicken & Sweet Potato94
• Whisker & Pine Free-Run Chicken & Sweet Potato Recipe94
• Copperfield Cats Kitten Heritage Chicken & Oat Recipe93
• Meadow Farms Chicken & Oatmeal Puppy93
• Open Farm Harvest Chicken & Ancient Grains Recipe93
• Open Farm Large Breed Grain-Free RawMix93
• Open Farm Large Breed RawMix with Ancient Grains93
• Open Farm Small Breed Chicken & Turkey Recipe93

Sources

• NRC Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats (2006)
• AAFCO Dog & Cat Food Nutrient Profiles (2016)

Related ingredients

• biotin
• calcium pantothenate
• choline chloride
• menadione sodium bisulfite complex
• niacin supplement
• pyridoxine hydrochloride

Further reading

• The guaranteed analysis, decoded
• How to read a pet food label