Editorial · PetScored desk · June 3, 2026
Freshpet, honestly: what a fresh roll proves and what it doesn’t.
Freshpet is the rare fresh-food brand that holds up well under a label-driven rubric. Its Vital Chicken Recipe scores 7.3 on PetScored, the strongest of the fresh-fed foods we have scored, and unlike most rivals it scores a respectable 7on Value. But “fresh” is a format, not a guarantee of better nutrition, and in 2026 a self-regulatory body told Freshpet to stop implying its food is “human grade.” Here is the honest version.
What “fresh” does and does not mean
Refrigerated fresh food looks more like what we eat, and that is most of its appeal. But the appearance is not the evidence. The Tufts veterinary nutrition service has been blunt that there is minimal scientific data showing fresh or raw diets are nutritionally superior to dry or canned for an otherwise healthy dog. What actually matters is the same thing it always is: does the food meet a complete-and-balanced standard, and is that backed by formulation or, better, a feeding trial. Fresh is a delivery format. The rubric scores the substance under it.
What the label proves
Freshpet Vital Chicken Recipe with Peas, Carrots & Brown Rice leads with chicken and chicken liver and carries a short, readable panel. Its AAFCO statement is the strong kind: formulated to meet the profiles for all life stages, including the growth of large-breed dogs, which is a higher bar than adult maintenance. That earns a high Nutrition Fit and an excellent Sensitivity read, with Ingredient Clarity a little lower at 4 because peas and egg sit early and the recipe uses carrageenan as a binder. It is, by the numbers, a clean food.
The credential picture is where Freshpet separates from the heavily-advertised direct-to-consumer crowd. The company publicly names board-certified veterinary nutritionists on its team and states that it runs AAFCO feeding-trial studies in addition to formulating to profiles. That is the opposite of a brand that puts one vet’s face on the bag, and it is exactly what our Brand Trust dimension is built to reward.
The honest cost conversation
Fresh food is mostly water, and water is heavy, so the only fair way to compare it to kibble is cost per calorie rather than cost per pound. On that basis Freshpet runs roughly ten times the cost per calorie of mid-range kibble as a sole diet. The reason our Value sub-score still reads 7 rather than flooring is that we scored the economical configuration - the multi-roll case - which lands close to the fresh-category benchmark. Buy single one-pound rolls instead and the per-calorie cost climbs. The Tufts team also names a real trap here: the marketing placebo effect, where owners who spend more report improvements they cannot necessarily attribute to the food.
Where the marketing got reined in
In March 2026, the National Advertising Division, part of BBB National Programs, reviewed a challenge brought by a competitor and recommended that Freshpet discontinue advertising that conveys a “human grade” message. Freshpet said it would comply. This is worth understanding precisely, because “human grade” is not a vibe - it is a defined claim under AAFCO standards, requiring every ingredient and the finished product to be made and handled to human-food rules. The ruling did not say Freshpet is unsafe. It said the advertising implied more than the claim could carry. That is the same principle our rubric runs on: the label, and the ad, only get credit for what they can actually prove.
The recall record, in proportion
Freshpet has had two voluntary recalls in recent years, both single lots pulled for potential Salmonella - a Select Small Dog recipe in 2021 and a Home Cooked Chicken recipe in 2022 - both since terminated by the FDA, with no reported illnesses at announcement. For a refrigerated product made at scale, that is a measured record, not a pattern of failure. It is a reason to keep an eye on lot recalls, which is what our recall alerts are for, not a reason to avoid the brand.
Bottom line
In our opinion, Freshpet Vital is one of the more defensible fresh foods on the shelf: real credentials behind it, a clean all-life-stages label, and, bought as a case, a Value score that most fresh rivals cannot match. The honest caveats are that fresh itself proves nothing extra, that the per-calorie cost is still high if you do not buy in bulk, and that even a strong brand can have its claims trimmed by a regulator. The 7.3 reflects all of that: a good food, fairly priced in bulk, sold with a little more sizzle than the label needs.
- The PetScored desk. See the full Freshpet Vital Chicken scorecard, learn how to actually read a dog food label, or browse every scored food at /dog-food/browse.