[kandy]

I trust my own research when choosing food for my dogs.

IMO, It sounds like you are just regurgitating pieces of a lecture from an 'instructor' provided by Hills or Medi-cal. The average vet student is required to take very little in the way of nutrition classes, and what they are required to take is most often provided by Hills or Medi-cal. Of course they are going to say that their products are the absolute best diet for a dog, doesn't matter that most Hill's products number one ingredient is corn - they'll tell you that the carnivore in your living room will do very well on a corn based diet. Humans don't even digest corn very well - and dogs have an even harder time converting it. It's a cheap filler. When those kinds of diets do work for special medical conditions, I believe it is the additives in the food that work, certainly not the sub-par ingredients.