Hikari products - confused, getting upset

[LilGreenPuffer]

Recently, Hikari seems to have changed the formula for betta pellets. (I'll get the the general aquaria/puffer part later, don't worry.) They have listed wheat flour as the first ingredient on their more recent packages of pellets; before, it was fish meal. Since bettas are carnivorous (insectivorous, technically), it is of course preferable to minimize plant matter, especially grains. Hikari was always one of the best betta pellets on the market. Now I (and a lot of other betta owners) are pretty upset and want to know why they changed it to a less nutritious formula. I wrote and asked, and they told me that they did not change the formula and that wheat flour is not the biggest portion of their recipe. And yet, here I sit with a packet of food in my hands that lists "wheat flour" as the first ingredient! Their website still lists fish meal as number one, and their larger packets do as well, but my 20g packet says flour. Maybe it's a typo... But how could they miss something that big?

Anyway, I'm starting to get concerned. I love Hikari's sterilized, vitamin-enriched frozen foods. I love being able to feed tubifex to my insectivores and feel confident that they're safe. And I love being able to feed vitamin-enriched frozen foods to my puffers and shrimp and frog. I've always preferred it over San Fransisco Bay, the other commonly-available brand of frozen foods. But how can I trust these products the way I used to when they're lying so blatantly about their betta formula?

Argh!

[LilGreenPuffer]

Heh, they also added MSG to the new ingredients list. Typo? I think not.

[bazil323]

That's concerning! I don't have a betta anymore, but when I did I fed Ocean Nutrition Atison Betta Pro.

[LilGreenPuffer]

I use Atison's too. It's great that its main ingredient is an invertebrate (brine shrimp embryos), since bettas are insectivores and weren't made to eat much in the way of vertebrate species. My bettas get Atison's pellets, Hikari pellets, Omega One betta flakes (soaked before feeding), Omega One small fish pellets, HBH pellets, Hikari frozen bloodworms and tubifex, live blackworms, and various bits of raw vitamin-soaked seafood (prawns, scallops, and shrimp so far). Once in a while I give them a couple of Hikari Shrimp Cuisine micropellets, and Lola has this thing for algae pellets, so once in a blue moon I'll give him a tiny piece of one.

All the puffers are willing to eat is live blackworms, live snails, and (on occasion) they'll degrade themselves enough for frozen bloodworms. They're so spoiled.

Hikari had better get back to me soon on this...

[riggers]

MSG is on the website list as well. Perhaps the fish meal and wheat flour are of equal quantities, or maybe there is very little difference between them, and they have only actually increased the wheat flour a little? Maybe anyway lol.

[LilGreenPuffer]

If they're of equal quantities, why would they switch the order to something less appealing to customers? :/

I'm probably going to have to replace Hikari's place in my menu rotation with Ken's betta crumbles and New Life Spectrum small fish formula. Dang it, I'm going to have to order online.

[RTR]

US regulations require ingredients to be listed from the most to the least. If their package says an ingredient is the largest, it had better be or it could cost them megabucks. The gov. tends to picky and nasty about that. labels ahs a multitude of regulations.

But the first listed component need not be a "majority" of the product. If there are many ingredients, all of them may be present in small percentages. Imagine a food made up of five or so main ingredients and a bunch of stabilizers, etc. Those five could easily have none of them above 20% of the total. So, watch how they use the words in their letter(s) to you. - "majority" means over 50%. of the total -so in the case I mentioned, no single ingredient would be a majority. But whichever is listed first had better the largest single component, even if its total percentage is not large.

Marketing folks can be slippery.

Does that make sense?

[LilGreenPuffer]

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. But since the ingredients are wheat flour, fish meal, soybean meal, gluten meal, krill meal, wheat germ meal, cuttlefish oil, brewers dried yeast, and then all those extracts and chemical things (including MSG, argh!), I think that the flours and grains and plants probably overpower the meat. I'm not a math whiz, but when I compare the number of plant ingredients vs. the number of meat ingredients, and when I consider the order, I think it's a mathematical impossibility in this instance for there to be more meat than plant.

And in their e-mail, they said, "The first ingredient remains fish meal as it always has. Please check the package and remember you cannot always believe everything you read on the internet." They never used words like "majority" or "portion" or "main" - only "first."

So yeah, they've pretty much lied.

[Lil' Swimz$]

That sucks. I love Hikare Frozen Vitamin-Enriched Bloodworms. That's what I use. Yah, I really hope they don't lie now about the bloodworms!

[riggers]

Seems like a pretty 'blunt' statement, what do they mean by don't believe everything you read on the internet. It was their website which lists fish meal first lol, and yet it doesn't match up to the real product. Hmmm?

[RTR]

Actually I like their admonition, especially when you apply it to their own site.

Can you scan in the package and send that to them for a response in relation to the site info?

Production could have changed the formula without telling marketing. That would be a hoot! Egg on the face is always embarrassing.

Time consuming, but a fun sidelight.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Someone else who's equally ticked off scanned their package and I sent that to them this afternoon.

[LilGreenPuffer]

Hikari's about to lose some customers.

"Clare - thank you for your concerns. Please remember that Hikari has been making aquatic diets for many decades and is the only fish food maker who actually breeds and sells live fish. We would never add anything to a diet that would be adverse to the health of the fish in any way. MSG is added in a very small trace amount as a flavor attractant and we have done a significant amount of research to be sure there is no negative impact to the bettas who would eat this diet. Furthermore, especially for bettas, we have to consider the ability for the fish in a small aquarium to utilize the nutrients properly to avoid any water quality issues that can also negatively impact their health. For this reason, there are times when protein selection requires a balance of meat based (like fish meal) and vegetable based (like wheat flour or wheat-germ) which allows a more complete utilization of the nutrient package, thus providing great nutrition and also avoiding ammonia or nitrate buildup from waste. Since we spend a considerable amount of money and time each year researching these issues, we have always, and will continue to, base our diets on scientific evidence and not speculation about one ingredient or another. This is one of the reasons Hikari has developed such a high quality image over many decades and enjoys the loyal following of consumers we have today. We appreciate your insight and opinions and the time you took to contact us!"

My reply: "So, you did indeed change the formula? Why, then, did you tell me that you had not?"

[RTR]

In a word, Brava!

[Flutter]

You go girl!

Thanks for sharing it with us too.