ground yellow corn

What it is

Ground yellow corn is the whole kernel — starch, germ, and bran — milled into a meal. "Yellow" is the commodity class, not a quality claim; nutritionally it is corn, with the germ's fat and the bran's fiber still aboard.

Why it's in pet food

Whole ground corn is among the cheapest calories a formulator can buy, and it appears first on many budget dry labels. That lead position is the tell worth reading: a recipe built on grain rather than animal protein — a bigger compromise for cats than for dogs.

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.

The engine matches the word "corn" in a DRY formula's first ingredient, so ground yellow corn leading the label takes the first-ingredient deduction: 10 points for dog food, 14 for cat food, on the ingredient-quality pillar. Anywhere else on the list it takes nothing. It also counts toward corn splitting: three or more corn-word ingredients in the top eight is a single 12-point deduction.

Read the full methodology

Foods that list ground yellow corn

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

• Purina ONE Urinary Tract Health Formula70
• Tabby Republic Crunchy Dinners Chicken Flavor65
• Purina Cat Chow Complete61
• Purina Cat Chow Complete with Salmon61
• Old Quarry Hearty Beef Flavor Dinner59
• Old Quarry Complete Adult Crunchy Bites58
• Alpo Prime Cuts56
• Friskies Seafood Sensations Dry Cat Food With Flavors of Salmon, Tuna & Shrimp56

Sources

• WSAVA Global Nutrition Committee — Selecting a pet food

Related ingredients

• corn gluten meal
• corn meal
• corn starch
• malted barley
• millet
• oat bran

Further reading

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