Home / Dog food / Fromm / Four-Star Zealambder® Recipe Dry Dog Food
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Four-Star Zealambder® Recipe Dry Dog Food
A formulated-to-meet, lamb-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 21% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 48% (you feed fewer cups) — $2.60 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.
THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-12
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 2026-07-12
Composition — dry-matter basis
why dry matter
Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog
Cost per 1,000 kcal: $2.65 — cheaper than 21% of the 360 dry foods we've priced (median $1.93). Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.
Standards & ingredients
what this means
why unknown
Safety
Source: official label source (official)· price: Amazon, 2026-07-12 · 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.
The source material
The full ingredient list
Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.
Lamb, whole oats, whole barley, dried egg product, oatmeal, pearled barley, lamb meal, salmon meal, dried tomato pomace, lamb liver, pork liver, pork fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), salmon oil (preserved with mixed tocopherols), venison, pumpkin, flaxseed, alfalfa meal, kiwifruit, apples, broccoli, carrots, alfalfa sprouts, potassium chloride, Vitamins [choline chloride, Vitamin E supplement, ascorbic acid, calcium carbonate, riboflavin supplement, niacin supplement, calcium pantothenate, Vitamin A supplement, Vitamin D3 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, biotin, Vitamin B12 supplement, thiamine mononitrate, folic acid], chicory root extract, New Zealand green mussels, salt, Minerals [zinc sulfate, manganese sulfate, ferrous sulfate, magnesium sulfate, zinc proteinate, ferrous proteinate, manganese proteinate, copper sulfate, magnesium proteinate, copper proteinate, calcium iodate], taurine, cranberries, yucca schidigera extract, sodium selenite, sorbic acid (preservative), blueberries, dried Lactobacillus paracasei fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus reuteri fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, dried Lactobacillus plantarum fermentation product
Wet ingredients like fresh lamb shrink once cooked — which is why named meals appearing high on the list matter: they keep meaningful animal protein after moisture is removed.
Nutritional twins
Cheaper close matches
Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost 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 four 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.
Fromm states directly that it does not contract manufacture; all production occurs at company-owned Wisconsin facilities.
source →Dr. Danielle Opetz, PhD in Nutritional Sciences (with an MS in Animal Science, companion animal nutrition emphasis), holds a named leadership role on Fromm's R&D/nutrition team. She is a PhD nutritionist, not a stated ACVN/ECVCN board-certified veterinary diplomate — no board certification was found in this source.
source →No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 163 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.
4 PubMed-indexed papers carry this brand's name in an author affiliation — but without a recognized pet-nutrition research arm we can't confirm these are the company's own studies rather than unrelated name matches (surnames, the taxonomic family "Canidae", institutions). We don't count it as confirmed research.
source →Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Fromm brand page →