What WoofChef does, and how it works

01

What WoofChef does

WoofChef has three parts: a profile for each of your dogs, a page for each recipe that checks it as you go, and Autobalance for when you want help fixing a recipe.

A profile for each dog

Everything starts with your dog. When you add a dog, you tell us its weight and how active it is. We use those to work out two things: how many calories your dog needs each day, and how much of each nutrient it needs.

If your dog is over or under its ideal weight, we ask what it should weigh and use that weight instead, because a dog's needs follow its healthy weight. If you're planning to help your dog gain or lose weight, do that with your vet.

Our calorie number is a starting estimate. Every dog is a little different, so if you already know your dog needs more or fewer calories, you can set your own target. Changing the calories doesn't change the nutrient needs, though. A dog that eats fewer calories still needs the same vitamins and minerals, so its food has to pack them into less.

A page for each recipe

Each recipe belongs to one of your dogs and is checked against that dog's needs. You build it on a single page: search a list of 163 foods, pick how each one is prepared (raw, boiled, roasted and so on), and type how many grams you use. Supplements, like eggshell powder, fish oil or vitamin D3, are added the same way; there are 9 to choose from.

If you cook several days of food at once, tell us how many days the batch lasts. You enter the amounts for the whole batch, and we check one day's share.

Your recipe saves as you type, and we check it again every time you change something. If you later update your dog's weight or activity, we mark its recipes so you know to check them again. Checking never changes your amounts.

Your result, in plain words

At the top of every recipe you'll see the result in a few words, how many calories the recipe gives your dog each day compared with what it needs, and how those calories split between protein, fat and carbs.

Tap the result to open the full nutrient analysis. It lists all 40 nutrients we check, always in the same order, and you can switch it to show only the ones that need attention.

Autobalance, when you want help

If your recipe comes up short, you don't have to work out the fix on your own. Autobalance is a feature that looks for a version of your recipe that meets every NRC minimum, close to your dog's daily calories, within the rules you set. It shows you what it would add and change, right next to your own recipe, and nothing changes unless you say so. Section 3 explains how it works.

02

How the check works

We compare your whole recipe with the NRC guidelines, one nutrient at a time, using amounts sized for your dog.

The guidelines we use

The National Research Council was part of the U.S. National Academies, which bring scientists together to review the research on a subject. In 2006 it published Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats, a detailed book on what dogs need to stay healthy. We use its numbers for healthy adult dogs at a steady weight, which nutritionists call maintenance.

You may have seen AAFCO on pet food bags. AAFCO's nutrient profiles are what let a commercial food call itself “complete and balanced”, and they were built partly on the NRC's work. Since you're cooking at home rather than selling food, we check your recipe against the NRC's numbers for what a dog actually needs.

Sized to your dog

A big dog needs more of each nutrient than a small one, but not in a straight line: a dog twice as heavy doesn't need twice as much. The NRC handles this with something called metabolic weight, which is your dog's weight raised to the power of 0.75. It sounds technical, but it simply follows how much energy a body uses better than weight alone does. We use it, with your dog's healthy weight, to size every nutrient.

The NRC also lists amounts per 1,000 calories. Each one is a concentration (how much of a nutrient should be packed into every 1,000 calories of food), and you multiply it by the calories a dog needs in a day to get a daily amount. The NRC adds one caveat: a dog that eats unusually little for its needs may not get enough that way, and should be fed the daily amounts based on metabolic weight instead. We've chosen to use those daily amounts for every dog, because what you really want to know is how much your dog needs each day, and that doesn't change with how much your dog eats.

Adding up your recipe

Food data lists the nutrients in every 100 grams of a food. We scale each food to the amount you entered, then add everything together to get the totals for the whole recipe. Calories come from each food's published energy value.

Minimums, targets and safety limits

For most nutrients, the NRC gives two numbers. The first is the minimum. Usually that's the least a dog needs; for some nutrients, where the research is thinner, it's an amount known to be enough. The second, higher number is the recommended amount, which we call the target. A recipe can meet every minimum and still fall short of a few targets.

Too much of some nutrients can cause harm, so we check upper limits too. The NRC sets them for preformed vitamin A, vitamin D, the omega-3s EPA and DHA, fat and linoleic acid. Sodium and chloride are checked against the recipe's dry matter, meaning its weight once the water is taken out, which is how the NRC states those limits. Iodine is checked on dry matter too, but its red line isn't an NRC number: the NRC says it can't set a firm limit for adult dogs, so we use the European pet food guideline's legal maximum, the highest figure any published guideline calls safe, with the NRC's own figure as a caution below it. Selenium has a limit too; that one is our own safety rule rather than an NRC number. The analysis says which is which.

A few needs change with the recipe. More polyunsaturated fat means your dog needs more vitamin E, and more protein raises the need for arginine, an amino acid. We also check two balances: calcium against phosphorus, which should be between 1:1 and 2:1, and two fatty acids, linoleic against alpha-linolenic acid, which should be between 2.6:1 and 26:1. If too few of your foods have fatty-acid data to work out that second balance, we tell you, and it doesn't count against the recipe.

The five results

Every recipe gets one of these five results.

Safety always comes first. If any nutrient is over a known limit, the result is Do not feed, even when other data is missing. For example, a bowl for Milo with 220 g of beef liver puts preformed vitamin A at 106% of its limit. And if a number that matters for safety is missing, we won't call the recipe safe, however good the rest looks. Only after those checks do the minimums and targets decide the result.

For most other nutrients the NRC sets no upper limit at all, and we don't invent one. When a recipe has far more of one than your dog needs, we tell you without pretending to know where harm starts. If a recognised source has published a maximum, you get an ochre caution in the analysis, with the published figure next to your recipe's; from twice the allowance the recipe page says so too, for example "Copper is 5 times the daily allowance". The result itself doesn't change. For copper, zinc, iron and manganese that figure is the European legal maximum for a complete food made with those additives, a legal limit rather than a known toxic dose; for calcium and phosphorus it's FEDIAF's nutritional maximum, the highest level its data have not linked to harm. That same liver bowl puts copper at 21 times Milo's allowance, so it carries a caution too. Where nothing is published, as for the B vitamins, the analysis just shows the multiple, like "7x allowance", in grey, and says that no one publishes a limit.

03

How Autobalance works

Autobalance is a feature that looks for a version of your recipe that meets every NRC minimum, close to your dog's daily calories, within the rules you set.

What it can change

Autobalance can change the amounts you typed, unless you lock them. In its Options, under Lock ingredient amounts, tick each amount you want to stay exactly as you typed it, or choose Lock all. A locked amount never changes.

Autobalance can then change any amount that isn't locked, pick an amount for a food you added without one, and add new foods and supplements.

The rules you set

You decide what Autobalance may add, in its Options. New foods come from a set of everyday foods we've reviewed, and only while Allow new foods is on. Supplements such as zinc, copper and vitamin D are added only while Allow supplements is on. Eggshell, iodized salt and wheat germ oil stay available either way, because we treat them like everyday ingredients. Fish oil has its own switch, and if there's a food you never want to use, you can tell Autobalance to leave it out.

What it won't do

An example

Here's what happened with Milo's bowl. Every amount was locked, so Autobalance could only add. It added 2 foods and 5 supplements, and now every nutrient reaches its minimum.

What a good result means

A result of Essentials covered or Meets targets tells you the recipe reaches the NRC's numbers for a healthy adult dog. That's a great sign, but it isn't the same as saying the recipe is right for your dog. The NRC's guidelines describe dogs in general, and your dog might need something different. Whether you built the recipe yourself or Autobalance suggested it, think of a good result as a well-informed starting point to talk over with your vet. Section 5 explains why.

04

Where the numbers come from

Our numbers come from published food data, matched with care. When a number is missing, we show you instead of guessing.

Food data

Most of our food data comes from USDA FoodData Central, the U.S. government's food database. When an important number is missing there and the UK's official food database (CoFID) has a matching one, we may use that. A few foods use our own reviewed estimates from other food tables, and their names say so.

We only use a number when it truly matches: the same food, prepared the same way, measuring the same nutrient in the same unit. Two foods that just sound alike don't share numbers.

Supplements

A supplement counts only for the nutrient it provides, at the dose you enter. We never add made-up weight, calories or extra nutrients for it. Fish oil uses a standard profile of 18% EPA and 12% DHA, and we only list a branded product when its current label backs up the numbers. You can enter any dose; we don't cap it. The check judges what the dose supplies, and the caution lines in section 2 catch a dose that goes far over. Autobalance keeps a dose range of its own for each supplement, sized so that even a 90 kg dog can get its full allowance.

Your own ingredients

You can add an ingredient of your own, from its label or a food table, when the food list doesn't have it: a supplement, a branded product, your own turkey. WoofChef calculates with the values you type, exactly as you typed them. We don't check them against anything, and a nutrient you leave blank counts as zero, so every result that uses one of your ingredients says so and names what was left blank among the safety limits.

When a number is missing

Sometimes the food data simply has no number for a nutrient. That doesn't mean the food has none of it. We count it as zero and mark the nutrient Partial data, so you know the real total could be higher than what you see. A missing number never makes a recipe look better than it is.

When a missing number could hide a safety problem, like vitamin D or iodine in some fish, organ meats and supplements, we won't call the recipe safe. The result will be Safety can't be verified.

Vitamin A

Vitamin A comes in more than one form, and food data sometimes lumps them together. Preformed vitamin A, found in liver and fish oils, is the kind that can build up and cause harm, so it's the only kind we count for the safety limit. For the minimum we also count beta-carotene from plants, which a dog's body turns into vitamin A. We use the rate that FEDIAF, the European pet food industry federation, publishes for dogs: 1 mg of beta-carotene gives 833 IU of vitamin A.

05

What WoofChef can't tell you

WoofChef is a planning tool. It does careful math with good data, but it isn't a vet, and it's important to know where it stops.

We built WoofChef to give people who cook for their dogs clear guidance from a trusted standard. To keep it simple enough to use, it can't look as closely as a professional would. Here is what that means for you.

• Passing the check doesn't make a recipe right for your dog.WoofChef does the math for you, comparing your recipe with the NRC's numbers for healthy adult dogs. But a recipe that meets those numbers isn't automatically suitable for every dog, or for yours. Your dog may need different limits from the NRC's general guidelines: a very low-fat diet, for example, or more or less of some nutrients because of its breed. WoofChef doesn't know these things about your dog, so we can't promise that a recipe you check, or one Autobalance suggests, is right to feed.
• A veterinary nutritionist goes much further.A veterinary nutritionist looks at your dog's health and history, asks far more questions than we do, and works in much more detail, down to exactly how each food is cooked and prepared. No veterinarian has reviewed or approved WoofChef's results for your dog, and WoofChef can't replace that kind of care. It's here to help you plan, learn and ask better questions.
• It's for healthy adult dogs.It isn't designed for puppies, pregnant or nursing dogs, or dogs who need a medical or special diet.
• It doesn't know your dog's health.It can't account for allergies, illness, medication, digestion, or how food is stored and handled.
• Food data is an average.Real food varies with the animal or plant it came from, the season, storage, trimming and cooking. Our numbers are good estimates, not a lab test of your bowl.
• Missing numbers can hide a shortfall.A Partial data total may be lower than the real amount, and no check can confirm what nobody has measured.
• Some nutrients affect each other in complicated ways.Zinc and copper, for example, influence each other in dogs, but the research doesn't give one simple formula for every recipe.
• Calories are a starting point.Keep an eye on your dog's weight and body shape over the weeks, and adjust the amounts.
• Your own ingredients are only as good as their labels.When you add an ingredient yourself, WoofChef uses the numbers you enter and can't tell whether the label, or your typing, was right. A blank counts as zero, and a result built on your values says so.
• We're still testing.Mistakes can happen. Check your recipes again after updates.

Please talk to your vet before you change what your dog eats. If your dog has special needs, a veterinary nutritionist can look at your dog and your recipe together. You can find one in the ACVIM directory (USA and Canada) or the EBVS directory (Europe). Questions, or a food we're missing? Contact us.

Sources

1. National Research Council, Nutrient Requirements of Dogs and Cats (2006)

   The standard WoofChef checks against, for healthy adult dogs at maintenance.

2. AAFCO Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles

   The profiles behind “complete and balanced” claims on commercial food, and their NRC 2006 basis.

3. USDA FoodData Central

   WoofChef’s main source of food data.

4. McCance and Widdowson’s CoFID 2021

   Official UK food data, used for compatible values USDA lacks.

5. FEDIAF Nutritional Guidelines 2025, Table VII-14

   The dog-specific conversion from beta-carotene to vitamin A.

6. Canine zinc and copper studies

   Why the zinc and copper interaction has no single formula.