+1 ...recommending brands loaded with cheap ingredients, oft repeated notions that are obsolete relics of another age, inaccurate or exaggerated claims about what some species need to be happy and healthy. There's room for more than one approach or brand, but, as you should expect, a lot of flawed opinions are also endlessly repeated. What should I feed threads are perfectly reasonable, but you feel bad for the person asking, knowing they're likely to get a dose of nonsense mixed in with the sound advice and may find it hard to distinguish which is which.
That aside, there are a couple of good posts above. I'll just add that it pays to understand ingredients a little bit. When I hear people recommending a new product, first thing I do is check the ingredients against what I already use and like. Potato, corn, feather meal, brewers dried yeast,rice, most versions of soy, too many versions of wheat, etc. are often cheaper substitutes for better ingredients. Several, or many, of these in a product pretty much equals a cheap product. Individually, an ingredient has likely been tested in short term aquaculture studies with clinically acceptable results for fish growth when not exceeding certain percentages, but other health effects or long term health effects, or the effects of a feed with several or many such ingredients are all often overlooked. You have a few things happening, commercial producers of other products, like poultry, beer, etc. look for ways to market a waste product in their industry to be used in another, growers and associations for a product (like corn or soy) look to market their product for as many uses as possible, all this at the same time that many pet food producers are looking for cheaper (or in some cases, more sustainable) alternatives to more expensive ingredients.
