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"I've heard that the first ingredient in a diet should be meat - that this indicates a better diet. Is this true?"
Not necessarily. Quality protein can have a significant benefit over quantity! Ingredients are listed in order of decreasing weight (prior to processing). So, for example, whole chicken may be first on the list, but that is by weight - and 70% of that weight is water, which evaporates in the cooking process for dry diets. In addition, the breakdown of the products can be misleading , e.g.corn starch, zea mays, corn bran, corn gluten are all corn, but they might all be listed as separate weights, lowering their order in the ingredient list. However, if you added them up and listed them as just "corn", they would rise to the top of the ingredient list. Be careful about falling into the "more is better" trap. Higher amounts of poor quality proteins are not as beneficial to your pet as the appropriate amounts of high quality protein! Additionally, several different protein sources may actually result in a better variety of amino acids for your pet's benefit
"Can you compare pet foods by comparing labels? Based on the "Guaranteed Analysis" and ingredient list on the bag, it appears to me that diets from veterinary hospitals are essentially the same as pet food sold elsewhere."
When you just look at the ingredient list it does appear to be so! The "Guaranteed Analysis" is a laboratory analysis, however, it doesn't tell us anything about ingredient quality. Shoe leather, hair, feathers, beaks and chicken feet would be high in crude protein on a lab analysis, but provide poor nutrient value for your pet. There are many different quality grades of ingredients. An excellent example is poultry meal, a common ingredient. The cost of top grade meal (chicken meal) is significantly higher than the cost of regular poultry meal - and the digestibility and nutrients provided to your pet are significantly better. You cannot determine the quality of an ingredient based solely on label information. . The diets veterinarians recommend focus on nutrient delivery, not simply ingredients.
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