Home / Dog food / Beneful / Beneful Originals With Farm-Raised Beef Natural Dry Dog Food

Beneful Originals With Farm-Raised Beef Natural Dry Dog Food package official product image via Amazon

Beneful · brand facts & recall history →

Beneful Originals With Farm-Raised Beef Natural Dry Dog Food

Dry food · adult dogs · made by Nestlé Purina PetCare Company

A formulated-to-meet, beef-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 0% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 34% (you feed fewer cups) — $7.78 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-10-18

$45.54 · 3.5 lb $7.78/day as of 2026-10-18 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 2¾ cupsper day $7.78per day 5 daysbag lasts passes 2 fit checks ↓

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 494 dry foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № BENEFU
verified 2026-10-18

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%, so as-fed numbers are on two different scales. As-fed values shown small. How the conversion works →
Protein 26.1%label: 23% min lower than 82% of dry foods
Fat 13.6%label: 12% min lower than 75% of dry foods
Fiber 4.5%label: 4% max typical — the median dry food is 5.4%
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈46.6%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: Ca 1% Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 366 kcal/cup3631 kcal/kg lighter than 66% of dry foods (median 388) — you feed more cups
Daily serving2¾ cups
Cost per day$7.78
3.5-lb bag lasts5 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $7.90 — cheaper than 0% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two claims exist: formulated to meet a profile, or fed to real dogs in an AAFCO trial. Which is stronger, and how rare it is →
Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Beef · whole grain corn · barley · rice · whole grain wheat
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)1 (soybean meal)
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
A preservative added by a fish-meal supplier need not appear on the finished label, so no label can prove its absence. Why we show gaps →
None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Beneful, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNestlé Purina PetCare Company, St. Louis, MO 63164 USA
Label transparency 9 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official)· price: Amazon, 2026-10-18 · anchors: 494 verified dry dog foods (360 priced) · how to read this label

The fit

For your dog, specifically

Checked for a 40-lb adult with a sensitive stomach — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your dog above and these update.

✓
Validated for adult dogsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
✓
Passes our sensitive-stomach checksNamed animal protein first, and no unnamed by-products in the ingredient list.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your dog — shown here for reference.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →

Beef, whole grain corn, barley, rice, whole grain wheat, soybean meal, corn protein meal, chicken by-product meal, beef fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols, egg and chicken flavor, oat meal, natural flavor, calcium carbonate, salt, mono and dicalcium phosphate, glycerin, soybean oil, dried carrots, dried peas, dried spinach, annatto color, vegetable juice (color), Minerals [zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite], Vitamins [Vitamin E supplement, niacin (Vitamin B-3), Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate (Vitamin B-5), thiamine mononitrate (Vitamin B-1), pyridoxine hydrochloride (Vitamin B-6), riboflavin supplement (Vitamin B-2), Vitamin B-12 supplement, folic acid (Vitamin B-9), menadione sodium bisulfite complex (Vitamin K), biotin (Vitamin B-7), Vitamin D-3 supplement], potassium chloride, choline chloride, carmine, L-Lysine monohydrochloride

3 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and 1 of them is genuinely contested rather than merely unpopular online.

  • Peas · ingredient 19ContestedA pulse (legume) used in many grain-free foods as a plant protein and carbohydrate source. Peas are central to an open FDA investigation, begun in July 2018, into a possible link between diets high in peas, other pulses, and potatoes and canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM); 93% of reported products contained peas and/or lentils.
  • Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 9Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
  • By-Product Meal (Meat / Poultry By-Product Meal) · ingredient 8NeutralA rendered concentrate made from clean, non-muscle parts of the carcass (organs, necks, feet, and similar), defined by AAFCO. It is more variable and lower-transparency than a named muscle meal, but it is not inherently unsafe or low-nutrition: controlled feeding trials in dogs report high protein digestibility (roughly 92-95%) for poultry by-product-based diets, and some by-product organs are nutrient-dense.

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.

26.7% protein (DM)$1.10 / 1,000 kcal86% less per 1,000 kcal
25.6% protein (DM)$2.25 / 1,000 kcal72% less per 1,000 kcal
25.6% protein (DM)$2.25 / 1,000 kcal71% less per 1,000 kcal

Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The five questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Nestlé Purina owns and operates its own U.S. factories.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

Arleigh Reynolds, DVM, board-certified in veterinary nutrition, employed by Nestlé Purina PetCare (maker of Beneful).

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 3 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.

Publishes quality-control testing Not checked

The company website blocked our automated check, so we could not read its quality-control page. This is not a "no".

Peer-reviewed research Yes — sourced

144 PubMed papers (animal/pet filtered) list Nestlé Purina in an author address; we checked 144 and 143 really name the company. A floor, not a total.

source →
Parent company Nestlé Purina PetCare ↗ Founded 2001 ↗ Headquarters / plant St. Louis, Missouri, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Beneful brand page →