Two of them, and they share their inputs with the rest of the site: every calorie figure in the
menus is the one the manufacturer published, linked to where we found it. Neither tool rates a
food, and neither invents a number when a maker publishes none — those foods are simply
missing from the menu, and we say how many.
Turns any price and package size into the one number that compares formats: dollars per 1,000 calories. Uses the calorie density each manufacturer publishes, so a can, a kibble and a frozen patty land on the same scale.
Estimates daily calories from body weight and an activity factor with the standard RER/MER method, then converts that into cups, cans, ounces or grams of a specific food using its own calorie statement.
What they run on
111 of the 122 foods in the database publish a calorie density
in kcal per kilogram, and 117 publish a calorie statement in some form —
per kilogram, per cup, per can or per ounce. That statement has been mandatory on US labels
since 2017, so a missing one is a decision by the manufacturer rather than an old label, and we
show it as a gap instead of filling it with a category average.
Both calculators print an estimate with a stated tolerance. Energy needs vary by ±25% between
individual dogs of the same weight, prices change weekly, and neither figure is veterinary
advice. The arithmetic behind each one — dry-matter conversion, grams per 1,000 kcal, the
RER/MER method — is written out in full in the methodology. A
25 lb neutered adult dog, the reference animal both tools use, works out at
692 kcal a day.