Nom Nom: Facts, Recalls & Verified Foods
Nom Nom is made by Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare / Royal Canin division), founded 2015 — it scores green on 2 of 4 WSAVA-aligned criteria we track (0 red, 2 undisclosed), no FDA recalls on record, and 0 of the 6 Nom Nom foods we've verified carry an AAFCO feeding-trial statement.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — · 6 Nom Nom foods in our corpus
The scorecard
WSAVA-aligned criteria
The World Small Animal Veterinary Association's nutrition guidelines suggest four questions to ask any pet food maker before you buy. Most "best dog food" sites skip straight to ingredient vibes and star ratings — we publish the actual answers instead, each sourced, or marked honestly undisclosed when we can't confirm it.
2 of 4 criteria confirmed yes · 0 confirmed no · 2 undisclosed. Undisclosed is common, especially for smaller brands — it means we couldn't confirm an answer from a public source, not that the answer is unfavorable.
Matthew Brooks, MS, PhD (Small Animal Nutritionist) is named on the brand's own vet page — a PhD animal nutritionist. The page also states recipes 'have always been developed under the guidance of a board certified veterinary nutritionist'; historically this was Dr. Justin Shmalberg, DVM, DACVN, per the fetched substack ('They brought in Dr. Justin Shmalberg, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist, as Chief Nutrition Officer').
source & quote
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No fetched source directly stated whether Nom Nom owns vs. co-packs its manufacturing. WebSearch results reference a 180-job Nom Nom production facility announced in Nashville in 2018 (suggesting owned/operated production), but this was not confirmed by a fetched source, so value=null.
source
No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 6 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.
658 PubMed-indexed papers carry "Waltham Petcare Science Institute (Mars)" in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered) — a reproducible floor, not a total.
source
These four checks come from WSAVA's global nutrition guidelines for evaluating a pet food manufacturer — not our own opinion score. Read our full methodology →
The company
Who makes Nom Nom
Ownership and history, each sourced independently — private-label and co-packed brands often hide the actual manufacturer behind the name on the bag.
Parent company
Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare / Royal Canin division)
source
Acquired by Mars in Jan 2022; corroborated by the brand's own vet page which says Nom Nom is 'supported by a team of expert nutritionists within the Mars and Royal Canin family.' Operating entity was NomNomNow, Inc. before acquisition.
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Founded
2015
source
Launched as NomNomNow in 2015.
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Headquarters
Oakland, California (originally; San Francisco Bay Area)
source
Same source notes it later 'moved out of the founders' kitchens into an Oakland headquarters.' Since the 2022 Mars acquisition it operates under Mars/Royal Canin; current HQ post-acquisition not confirmed by a fetched source.
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The safety record
FDA recall history
Joined from the FDA's own Animal & Veterinary recall feed (2019–present) plus curated pre-2019 records — the same live-checked feed as our full recall database, filtered to Nom Nom.
Join of data/recalls.json (FDA Animal & Veterinary recall feed, 2019-present) + data/recalls_historical.json. This is NOT a complete lifetime recall history; recalls predating 2019 (or absent from the FDA datatable) are not represented unless curated in recalls_historical.json.
The corpus
What we've verified from Nom Nom's labels
Computed directly from the official-label data we've extracted for this brand — never estimated.
Foods verified
6
6 dog
Feeding-trial validated
0
of 6 (0%)
Formulated to meet
6
AAFCO paper calculation
Label transparency
40%
avg. fields disclosed
The foods
Foods from Nom Nom we've verified
Every one links to its own Verified Label — guaranteed analysis, AAFCO statement, and (where priced) cost per day.