Product Review: All Living Things Cookie Treats

Long-time readers know we've reviewed some bad products and given them 1-star reviews. Sometimes, we don't realize right away that it's a bad product, and other times, it's pretty obvious upfront that we're dealing with a bad product. In the past, the humans have purchased some products that they suspected might be bad a few times just to give us something to review. In retrospect, this seems like a waste of that money stuff that they care so much about, so we came up with a new idea: Why not just have our humans take pictures of suspected bad products at the pet store, which we can then research further to determine if they're actually bad? This way, the humans save their money for stuff we can actually use and appreciate, and we're not supporting companies who put out bad guinea pig products. (If our initial hunch turns out to be wrong and there's nothing wrong with them, we can always get them later on.)

Our first suspected bad product that we're going to use this method on is: All Living Things Cookie Treats. These treats are designed to look like human junk food, and come in at least two varieties that we saw:

I can see why the humans thought we probably couldn't eat these.

I wonder if those things have little fortunes inside. Since they're a suspected-bad product, we'll probably never find out.

Let's take a look at what's in these things:

Ingredient list #1.

Ingredient list #2.

Here are the ingredients listed in these things, along with our notes where applicable:

• Added color (FD&C) - Guinea pigs should not eat artificial colors.
• Buckwheat Flour
• Corn starch - The diet expert at guineapigcages.com and Guinea Lynx state that: "Corn products (including corn bran, corn germ, corn gluten, ground corn, etc. There is no legal definition of 'corn' alone in animal feed, so it may be any combination of products. Corn is not a normal feed for cavies, may contribute to allergies, and can be high in fat and certain sugars/starch depending on the product. Additionally, some corn is contaminated with deadly aflatoxin which can cause liver failure and death.)"
• Dried Egg Powder - Guinea pigs are herbivores and shouldn't be fed egg.
• Maltodextrin
• Mixed Tocopherols (preservative) - We suspected at first that all the preservatives in this things were probably bad, although they might not be as bad as we initially thought. The diet expert at guineapigcages.com says: "Not all preservatives are bad. The bad preservatives are ethoxyquin, BHA and BHT and there is one other one I can't think of offhand at the moment. These are the potentially cancer causing preservatives that need to be avoided. The others are not harmful and thus ok."
• Oatmeal - We've read some concerns that too much oatmeal could swell in the digestive tract and cause blockages, although we've also heard that some vets have recommended oatmeal. Oatmeal might be fine in small dosages, although we'd like to see more information before making a recommendation one way or the other.
• Palm Oil - Not only is this high in fat, but it may have negative environmental impacts. 
• Peanut Butter - Guinea pigs should not be given processed foods like this, especially those high in fat.
• Potassium sorbate (preservative) - There are some health concerns associated with this preservative.
• Salt - According to the guineapigcages.com diet expert, "Too much salt or minerals in a pigs diet only cause problems later on down the road."
• Sodium Bicarbonate
• Sodium Erythorbate (a preservative) - See previous note on preservatives.
• Soy Flour
• Sucrose - Sucrose is sugar, and guinea pigs shouldn't have too much sugar. 
• Wheat Bran
• Wheat flour
• Whole Wheat Flour

As we suspected, All Living Things Cookie Treats are full of bad and questionable ingredients, so it gets 1/5 stars.