Complete Balance Dog Food Review

Complete Balance is Cole’s home brand. It’s one of the cheapest dog foods you can buy.

But ask yourself this – is cheap a good thing when it comes to feeding the dog you love?

After reading our Complete Balance dog food review you’ll be able to answer this question yourself, as cheap can mean very expensive when it comes to dog food.

Complete Balance dog food review

Coles Complete Balance dog food is Made in Australia, which many would consider a good thing, but given we have some of the worst pet food standards in the Western World this isn’t necessarily the case.

Most Australian dog foods and home brands come from our leading manufacturer The Real Pet Food Co, and many come with reams of consumer complaints which never seem to be addressed.

Coles used to hide the fact Complete Balance was made mostly from grains by putting meat by-products first on the ingredients list. They don’t even bother to do that anymore as they know most people who buy this “dog food” won’t have a clue what’s in it, and probably never will.

The two major ingredients in this food for your essentially carnivorous pet dog are wheat or rice (probably wheat) and wheat or rice bran (probably wheat). Wheat is the cheapest and nastiest inclusion in a dog food, and if your dog has rashes, itchy skin, lethargy, is fat, or generally unhealthy then this is probably why.

If you feed your dog so many carbohydrates (sugars) from cheap grains for a long period of time, day after day, then it’s also likely their organs will start to fail from an inability to digest such a poor canine diet. This is where the real cost is – Complete Balance may be cheap to buy, but the vets bills down the track may cost you a fortune, either in dollars or heartbreak.

We don’t find meat on the ingredients list until the third spot, so not very significant as ingredients are listed in percentage order of weight. The meat is also “wet weight”, so inclusive of about 70% moisture. That moisture gets cooked off in the kibble making process, so the end result is far less as the end result.

It won’t be quality meat either. More the wastage from what gets sold off to us humans (i.e. the succulent chicken breasts you’ll buy for yourself).

In layman’s terms – feeding Complete Balance to your dog is similar to feeding a load of high carbohydrate and not very nutritious grains.

We find tallow further down the list, a fatty broth from a process known as meat rendering. In terms of dog food it’s usually from the meat ingredients in the product being cooked up in a vat.

Essential vitamins and minerals are included to label the food “complete and balanced”, or perhaps to justify the name “Complete Balance”, but these will be the bog standard minimum requirements.

All in all Coles Complete Balance has all the hallmarks of a cheap and not very nutritious dog food. Not recommended.

If you’re on a tight budget and Coles Complete Balance is all you can afford, then at least try your best to feed your dog meats, organs, and meaty bones which are often reduced on the supermarket shelves. These will likely benefit your dog far more than Complete Balance ever will.

Where to buy Complete Balance dog food?

As a Coles home brand Complete Balance dog food is only available in Coles, but it’s likely made in the same factory as other home brands like Woolworths Baxters.

Complete Balance Ingredients

Ingredients of Coles Complete Balance dog food (at the time of writing) are:

Wholegrain Cereals (Wheat and/or Rice), Bran (Wheat and/or Rice), Animal Meals(Beef, Chicken and/or Lamb), Beef Tallow, Essential Vitamins, Minerals and Amino Acids, Choline Chloride, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Natural Antioxidants (Tocopherols, Rosemary Extract, Green Tea Extract, Spearmint Extract).

Note: Ingredients change over time and these may be incorrect. Always check the label.