pearled barley

Grain

Pearled barley is barley polished past its bran — slightly less fiber, same steady grain. How Bowlmark treats barley terms.

Also appears on labels as: pearl barley · cracked pearled barley

What it is

Pearled barley is barley with the hull and some or all of the bran polished away — the barley equivalent of white rice, though pearling usually leaves more of the grain intact than rice polishing does. It keeps most of the starch and some of the beta-glucan fiber.

Why it's in pet food

It cooks and extrudes more easily than whole barley, at a modest nutritional discount. Recipes use it for the same steady energy with fewer processing headaches.

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.

Pearled barley carries no deduction — barley terms are not among the cheap-grain first-ingredient terms (corn, wheat, soy), and barley is not a watched splitting base. The engine treats it as a neutral carbohydrate.

Read the full methodology

Foods that list pearled barley

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Sources

Related ingredients

Further reading

Cite this page

Bowlmark. "Pearled barley in pet food — what it is and how it scores." https://www.bowlmark.com/ingredient/pearled-barley

Engine
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Last verified August 9, 2026

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