Unveiling the Secrets Behind PLUTOS Cheese & Bacon Chew: How It's Made
When it comes to dog treats, PLUTOS Cheese & Bacon Chew stands out from the rest. This chew has become a favourite among dogs and their owners alike. But have you ever wondered how it is actually made? Let's go through it properly.
The Ingredients
PLUTOS Cheese & Bacon Chew is a cheese chew built on milk protein. The base is lactose-free milk protein, apple flour and pea protein, with real bacon for the flavour, plus fat and minerals including salt and calcium, and natural additives.
Two things are worth being clear about, because a lot of dog treats are vague on both.
The bacon is real. In our European range the savoury flavours are made with genuine animal protein rather than a flavouring. That is a deliberate choice and it is the reason dogs respond to it the way they do.
It is 100% grain free. There are no grains of any kind in any PLUTOS product. That is worth pausing on, because a lot of chews lean on wheat or rice to bulk out the recipe and to carry fibre. We do it differently. The fibre and carbohydrate come from ingredients such as apple flour, sweet potato and cassava flour, depending on the recipe, and the plant protein from peas. Those ingredients do the same job as grain, and they do it without the grain.
The milk protein is lactose free, which is the reason the chew suits dogs that do not handle dairy well. The analytical breakdown is 55% crude protein, 16% moisture, 11% minerals, 9.9% soluble carbohydrate, 2% fat and 1.5% crude fibre.
How It Is Made
It starts as a Madeira Island cheese recipe, reworked for dogs and made mostly from human grade ingredients. The ingredients are mixed and pasteurised at our own factory in the Zona Franca Industrial in Caniçal, on the island of Madeira, then shaped and naturally air dried.
Nothing is smoked and nothing is baked. No oven, no smokehouse. The chew gets its character from the cheese and from slow air drying, which is why it comes out firm enough to last but not so hard that a dog cannot work through it to the end.
The full process is explained here: How PLUTOS Chews Are Made.
Sizes
Five sizes, so you can match the chew to the dog rather than the other way round:
- S at 40 g
- M at 60 g
- L at 85 g
- XL at 127 g
- XXL at 220 g
Each carries a tolerance of plus or minus 5% on weight, which is normal for a natural product that is air dried rather than moulded to a fixed mass. Shelf life is 24 months.
Why Dogs Like It
The savoury bacon note sits on top of a genuinely cheesy base, and dogs respond to both. That is most of the answer.
PLUTOS chews are a complementary pet food, which means they are a treat rather than a meal. Always supervise your dog while they are chewing.