Home / Dog food / Nutro / Natural Choice Large Breed Senior Dog Food, Chicken & Brown Rice

Nutro Natural Choice Large Breed Senior Dog Food, Chicken & Brown Rice package official product image via Amazon

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Natural Choice Large Breed Senior Dog Food, Chicken & Brown Rice

Dry food · senior dogs

A chicken-first dry food that's cheaper per calorie than 71% of the dry foods we've priced and denser than 14% (you feed fewer cups) — $1.57 a day for your 40-lb adult dog.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference dog 40 lb · updated 2026-07-12

$74.98 · 30 lb $1.57/day as of 2026-07-12 Check price →
Tell us about your dogevery number on this page updates live ↓
40 lb
For a 40-lb adult: 3 cupsper day $1.57per day 47 daysbag lasts passes 1 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 № NUTRO-
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: kibble is ~10% water, canned food ~78%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 26.7%label: 24% min lower than 77% of dry foods
Fat 11.1%label: 10% min lower than 93% of dry foods
Fiber 4.4%label: 4% max lower than 69% of dry foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈48.9%computed anchor available once more brands disclose ash
Calcium / Phosphorus extended guarantees: Ω-3 0.2% Not yet verifiedcalcium/phosphorus no ratio to anchor

Calories & cost — for your 40-lb adult dog

Calorie density 335 kcal/cup3457 kcal/kg lighter than 86% of dry foods (median 388) — you feed more cups
Daily serving3 cups
Cost per day$1.57
30-lb bag lasts47 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $1.59 — cheaper than 71% 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 kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real dogs in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · Chicken Meal (source of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate) · Brown Rice · Barley · Oatmeal
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)1 (peas)
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Nutro, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 8 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, 2026-07-12 · 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.

·
Life-stage coverage not disclosedNo AAFCO nutrient-adequacy statement was found on the label for this SKU, so we cannot confirm adult-maintenance coverage.
✓
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 on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Chicken, Chicken Meal (source of Glucosamine and Chondroitin Sulfate), Brown Rice, Barley, Oatmeal, Brewers Rice, Peas, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Natural Flavors, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Potassium Chloride, Salt, Fish Oil (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Choline Chloride, DL-Methionine, Chia Seed, Dried Coconut, Dried Tomato Pomace, Dried Egg Product, Dried Pumpkin, Dried Kale, Dried Spinach, Citric Acid (preservative), Mixed Tocopherols (preservative), Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Sodium Selenite, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (Vitamin B1), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement (Vitamin B2), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Vitamin D3 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Manganous Oxide, Folic Acid, Rosemary Extract

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

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

Canidae All Life Stages Dry Dog Food: Multi-Protein Chicken, Turkey, and Lamb
26.7% protein (DM)$0.81 / 1,000 kcal49% less per 1,000 kcal
Canidae All Life Stages Salmon & Ancient Grains Recipe
26.7% protein (DM)$1.19 / 1,000 kcal25% less per 1,000 kcal
Canidae All Life Stages Lamb & Ancient Grains Recipe
26.7% protein (DM)$1.21 / 1,000 kcal24% 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 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.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Nutro FAQ (nutro.com/faqs) adds: 'We have two dry pet food manufacturing facilities for NUTRO products located in Henderson, North Carolina, and Victorville, California.' Some products are co-packed abroad (SO SIMPLE trays made in Thailand per the FAQ), so it is not exclusively self-owned, but dry food is made in Mars-owned US plants — primary answer 'owns' with minor co-pack exception.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Nutro's fetched FAQ discusses quality controls but does not state any nutritionist credentials (no PhD/board-certified vet nutritionist named). Part of Mars Pet Nutrition system, but no Nutro-specific fetched source confirms a qualified nutritionist on staff, so null.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 84 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.

Peer-reviewed research Yes — sourced

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 →
Parent company Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare) ↗ Founded 1926 ↗ Headquarters / plant Franklin, Tennessee, U.S. ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

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