→ See the live ingredient breakdown for Badlands Ranch
What’s actually in Badlands Ranch?
We analyzed Badlands Ranch Superfood Complete in the Beef recipe — the brand co-founded by actress Katherine Heigl and marketed as a “35 Super Ingredient” air-dried food. The deck opens with four animal ingredients: beef, beef heart, beef liver, and salmon, followed by flaxseed, sweet potato, pumpkin, carrots, broccoli, chia seeds, blueberry, ginger, salt, potassium chloride, turmeric, and Lion’s Mane mushroom, then a chelated mineral and vitamin pack (zinc, iron, copper, and manganese proteinate, selenium yeast, and the B-vitamins). The brand claims roughly 87% meat by fresh weight; the guaranteed analysis is 33% protein and 30% fat minimum. Shop on Amazon →
Air-dried means the food is gently dehydrated at low heat rather than cooked at the 250–300°F extrusion temperatures kibble sees, and it is positioned as a shelf-stable raw alternative — no refrigeration or rehydration required. It is a premium direct-to-consumer product at roughly $25–29 per pound, which makes it expensive to feed as a complete diet; many owners use it as a topper over kibble instead.
The good stuff
The animal foundation is the strongest part of this formula. Leading with beef, beef heart, beef liver, and salmon stacks muscle meat with two organ meats — heart is a natural source of taurine and CoQ10, liver delivers vitamin A, B12, iron, and copper — plus a marine protein. That is a genuinely meat-forward deck, not a starch-padded one dressed up with a few meat names at the top.
Two things further separate it from the pack. First, there are no peas, lentils, chickpeas, or potato anywhere on the list, so the legume-stacking pattern the FDA flagged in its grain-free DCM investigation simply does not apply here — a meaningful point in a grain-free food. Second, the trace minerals are proteinated (zinc, iron, copper, and manganese) with selenium from selenium yeast, all higher-bioavailability forms than the sulfate and oxide salts cheaper foods rely on. Added salmon, flaxseed, and chia also supply omega-3s from both marine and plant sources.
The not-so-good stuff
The marketing is where a buyer should slow down. The celebrity founder framing — Katherine Heigl’s involvement — is a brand story, not a nutritional credential, and it has no bearing on the grade. The “35 Super Ingredients” and “Superfood Complete” positioning is technically accurate but oversells: turmeric, ginger, blueberry, broccoli, and Lion’s Mane all sit low on the ingredient list, which by definition means small inclusion amounts. At those doses, the functional benefits implied for digestion, joints, skin, and immunity are unsubstantiated — the botanicals are present, but not necessarily at levels shown to do anything.
The “87% meat” figure is a fresh-weight claim, measured before the moisture is removed during air-drying, so it overstates the meat share of the finished food by weight. None of the brand’s health claims are backed by feeding trials, and the AAFCO statement is not printed on the product page itself — a transparency gap worth noting on a food at this price.
The substantiation itself is the real ceiling. The label reads “formulated to meet” the AAFCO profiles for adult maintenance, which is the formulation-only path rather than a completed AAFCO feeding trial. That is common for air-dried foods and not a red flag, but it is the difference between a calculated nutrient profile and one validated in live dogs — and it is the main reason a deck this strong lands at B rather than A.
How it compares
At B/88, Badlands Ranch ties Dr. Marty (B/88), another celebrity-marketed, meat-forward food, and sits just under the air-dried leaders ZIWI Peak (A/90) and Sundays (A/90), both of which clear the bar on cleaner, more single-mindedly animal-based decks. It scores well above Wellness CORE Air-Dried (B/78) within the same format, and trails freeze-dried raw such as Stella & Chewy’s (A/90).
The closest head-to-head is the other Heigl-versus-celebrity comparison: see Badlands Ranch vs Dr. Marty for how an air-dried beef-and-organ formula stacks up against a freeze-dried multi-protein one at the identical B/88 grade.
The bottom line
Badlands Ranch Superfood Complete (Beef) earns a B (88/100). The quality is high: a four-deep animal foundation of beef, organs, and salmon, a clean no-legume grain-free formula that sidesteps the FDA DCM concern, bioavailable chelated minerals, and omega-3s from multiple sources. What keeps it out of A territory is substantiation and marketing honesty — formulation-only AAFCO rather than a feeding trial, and headline “superfoods” included in amounts too small to deliver on the implied health benefits. It is a legitimately good food, best understood as a premium topper or rotation option rather than a value staple given the cost. Shop on Amazon →