Well, it would make the overall percentage of protein go down because you are adding volume that does not contain any protein. But that's if you drank all the water too.

If you took a 5 oz dry sponge and called it "100% sponge" and soaked it in water, you would have maybe 80% sponge and 20% water. But you would still have 5oz of sponge. If you let that sponge dry out again, you would be back to 100% sponge weighing 5oz.

So yes, the protein percentage of food would go down if you soaked it in water. But only if the water is also consumed.

Does that make sense? I suck at explaining mathy stuff!

 

Thanks so much. I just like to have something to say to back up what im preaching!! I suck at math stuff too im all over the place.

 

If this confuses the issue please ignore and simply go with richelle.

In comercial dog food basically the only bits that a dog can process are the fat and protein so for chappie which is a low protein food I would have to feed tons to get to the amount of protein my dog needs.

essentially I find the % argument to be nonsensical, I want to feed between 200 - 300 g of protein per day so I do. If it came from 100 % protein source then I would only feed 200 g if it comes from a 10 % protein source (webbox wet food) I would need to feed 2 kg!!:noidea:

Hope that makes sense

 

Right eternalstudent! I learned that from home cooking for Sassy who had kidney disease. I want to feed Max a minimum of 1 gram per pound of dog and a maximum of about 3 grams of protein per pound of dog. I am looking for between 38 and 114 grams of protein a day. He actually gets about 1.5 grams per pound, maybe an average of 60 grams per day in his measly 10-12 ounces of food. Then I look at the fat content, if he needs to eat 1000 calories to get that amount of protein in the meal isn't a real good one for him.

Here is a sample recipe for Max on nutritiondata.
Nutrition Facts and Analysis for mackerelchickenfootporkbeef

It is about 300 grams total weight. About 200 grams is water leaving about 100 grams of minerals, carbohydrates, fat and protein as dry weight. Not sure where the vitamins go, I think they are proteins? Total weight is in the nutrition facts box near the top, water content is way at the bottom under Other. This recipe has 38 grams of fat, 1 gram of carbohydrate, 59 grams of protein and 5.5 grams of ash [down in the Other box again].

Nutritiondata does the little pyramid by calories and since there are about twice as many calories in a fat gram as in a protein gram this recipe is 42% protein and 58% fat by calories.

Kibbles do it by weight where a fat gram is equal to a protein gram. If I figured the percentage 60 grams of protein is to the whole 300 grams of wet meal it would come to 20% protein in this example if I round off.

If you take the 104 dry weight grams and divide the protein grams by it you come up with 57% protein and 36% fat. Since kibbles do have a little water a 50% protein one would be 55% with the water removed but really comparing dry weight of a raw meal to kibble is pretty good.

And if you divide the protein grams by Max's 38 pounds you come up with about 1.5 grams of protein per pound of dog.

 

The vitamins and minerals go under Ash content, they are usually a pretty small amount so you don't need to worry about it messing with your calculations too much, maybe account for the macro-minerals like Calcium and Phosphorous, since you are feeding a kidney dog.