The scores
Beneful: C (58/100) — Average tier. 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 that previously dragged it into D territory.
Purina Dog Chow: D (39/100) — Below average. Corn-first formula with unnamed “meat and bone meal” and generic “animal fat.”
A 19-point gap across a full letter grade boundary. Both are Purina-family budget lines, but Beneful’s reformulation moved it out of the bottom tier while Dog Chow’s formula has stayed essentially unchanged. 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: Ground Yellow Corn, Beef, Soybean Meal, Whole Grain Wheat, Corn Gluten Meal
Purina Dog Chow: Whole Grain Corn, Meat and Bone Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Animal Fat, Soybean Meal
Both formulas start with corn — the cheapest filler in the pet food industry. After that, they take slightly different paths to the same destination. Beneful lists beef at position two, which sounds better than Dog Chow’s “meat and bone meal.” 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. Beneful has two corn ingredients and soybean meal in the top five. 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.
The deeper ingredient lists tell the real story. Beneful includes sugar (which has no place in dog food), propylene glycol (a moisture-retaining chemical), and four artificial colors: Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 2, and Yellow 6. These are the additives that create those colorful kibble shapes meant to appeal to pet owners in the store aisle. Your dog does not care what color their food is. Dog Chow, to its credit, skips the cosmetic additives entirely — it’s a straightforward cheap food that doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.
Where Purina Dog Chow pulls ahead
No artificial colors: Dog Chow’s biggest advantage is what it doesn’t contain. It skips the Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 2, and Yellow 6 that Beneful uses to create its multi-colored kibble. Artificial food dyes have been flagged by various health organizations for potential concerns in humans, and there’s no reason to expose your dog to them. They add zero nutritional value — they exist only to make the food look appealing to the person buying it.
No added sugar: Beneful includes sugar in its ingredient list. Sugar in dog food serves one purpose: making dogs eat more of it. It’s an appetite stimulant that can contribute to obesity, dental problems, and blood sugar spikes. Dog Chow manages to be palatable enough for dogs without resorting to sweeteners, which is a low bar to clear but one that Beneful fails.
No propylene glycol: Beneful uses propylene glycol as a moisture-retaining agent to keep those soft, chewy pieces in the bag from drying out. While the FDA considers it “generally recognized as safe” for dogs (it’s banned in cat food), it’s an industrial chemical that has no nutritional function. Dog Chow doesn’t need it because it doesn’t have the multi-texture gimmick that Beneful relies on.
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 loaded with corn, artificial colors, and sugar. Dog Chow is at least transparent about what it is. Shop on Amazon →
Where Beneful holds its own
Beneful’s one structural advantage is that it lists a named whole meat — beef — at position two. 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.
However, this advantage is largely cosmetic. As noted above, whole beef is mostly water, so its actual contribution to the finished kibble is less than its position implies. And the rest of Beneful’s formula — with its sugar, artificial colors, and propylene glycol — more than negates whatever small benefit comes from a named protein at position two.
Beneful also includes some vegetable inclusions (carrots, peas, green beans) 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. Purina Dog Chow wins by the slimmest possible margin — 1 point — and it wins for the wrong reasons: not because it has good ingredients, but because Beneful actively adds bad ones. 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 food with actual named protein sources and no corn-first formula. Diamond Naturals scores B/78 and costs only a few dollars more per bag. That’s a 40-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.