The scores
Beneful: D (46/100) — Below average. Reformulated recipe now leads with real beef as the first ingredient, beef fat preserved with mixed tocopherols, and has dropped the sugar/propylene-glycol/four-artificial-colors recipe.
Purina Dog Chow: D (39/100) — Below average. Corn-first formula with unnamed “meat and bone meal” and generic “animal fat.”
A 7-point gap, with both in the D range. Both are Purina-family budget lines. What they still share: heavy carb load, low-quality filler ingredients further down the list, and pricing optimized for cost over nutrition.
How the ingredients compare
Here are the first five ingredients side by side:
Beneful: Beef, Whole Grain Corn, Barley, Rice, Whole Grain Wheat
Purina Dog Chow: Whole Grain Corn, Meat and Bone Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Animal Fat, Soybean Meal
Beneful lists beef first, which sounds better than Dog Chow’s corn-first list with “meat and bone meal” at position two. But whole beef is roughly 70% water by weight, so after processing, there’s far less actual beef protein than the label position implies. Dog Chow’s meat and bone meal is already rendered (water removed), meaning its protein contribution at position two may actually be comparable to or greater than Beneful’s beef despite the less appealing name.
Both foods rely heavily on corn and soybean meal to fill out the formula. Dog Chow has two corn ingredients, soybean meal at five, and unnamed “animal fat” at four. Neither formula has a named, high-quality animal protein meal anywhere near the top.
Where Purina Dog Chow holds its own
More honest positioning: This isn’t an ingredient difference, but it matters. Purina Dog Chow has always been marketed as an affordable, everyday dog food. Beneful, on the other hand, uses words like “healthy” and “wholesome” in its branding while delivering a D-grade formula. Dog Chow is at least transparent about what it is. Shop on Amazon →
Where Beneful pulls ahead
Beneful’s one structural advantage is that it lists a named whole meat — beef — first. Dog Chow uses “meat and bone meal,” which is a generic, unnamed rendered protein. The AAFCO definition of “meat and bone meal” allows it to come from any mammalian source, which means there’s no guarantee of consistency from batch to batch. Having “beef” on the label at least tells you what species the protein came from.
As noted above, whole beef is mostly water, so its actual contribution to the finished kibble is less than its position implies.
Beneful also includes some vegetable inclusions (spinach, peas, carrots) that appear further down the ingredient list. These are present in such small quantities that their nutritional impact is negligible, but they contribute to the “real food” appearance that Beneful’s marketing emphasizes. It’s window dressing on a formula that doesn’t earn its “healthy” branding. Shop on Amazon →
The bottom line
This is a comparison between two below-average foods from the same company, and neither comes out looking good. Beneful wins by 7 points (D/46 vs D/39). Dog Chow is a cheap food that knows it’s a cheap food. Beneful is a cheap food that spends its marketing budget convincing you otherwise.
If you’re currently feeding either of these, the most meaningful upgrade isn’t switching from one to the other — it’s moving up to a higher-scoring food. Diamond Naturals scores B/78 and costs only a few dollars more per bag. That’s a 32-to-39-point improvement for a modest increase in price, and it’s the kind of change that genuinely benefits your dog.
Read our full reviews of Beneful and Purina Dog Chow for the complete ingredient breakdowns.
Corrected 2026-10-19: we removed claims we could not support; we corrected factual errors, and grades and score comparisons that did not match our current scores.