Why fresh food
Most dogs eat the same dry food at every meal, for years. Here's what changes when the bowl is real chicken, rice and vegetables cooked by hand in Greenpoint, and exactly what it costs for your dog.
Start with the label
Plenty of dogs do fine on dry food, and much of it is carefully made. But turn over a bag and you'll usually find ingredients you couldn't pick out of the bowl. Ours you can.
Ingredients: chicken meal, brewers rice, corn gluten meal, whole grain wheat, animal fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), dried beet pulp, natural flavor, fish meal, salt, potassium chloride, choline chloride, vitamin and mineral premix…
Every one of these is legal and has a purpose. None of them looks like food by the time it's in the bowl.
How it's made
Dry food is built to keep for many months on a shelf. Ours is cooked the same day it reaches you. That changes everything about how it's made.
Real food is mostly water, the way your own dinner is: our meals are about two-thirds water. Dry food is dried to about a tenth.
What the research says
Each one comes from a published study or a veterinary survey. Every source is linked, along with what it does and doesn't show.
Digestion
2–2.9×
less poop on fresh food
In a University of Illinois study, dogs on kibble produced 2 to 2.9 times as much poop as dogs on fresh food made from human-food ingredients, and needed to eat more to hold their weight. One of the fresh foods was a chicken and white rice recipe, much like ours.
Do et al., Journal of Animal Science, 2021. Details
Weight
59%
of US dogs are overweight or obese
That's from vet assessments in 2022. It matters: in a lifetime study of 48 Labradors, the dogs kept lean lived a median of 1.8 years longer. So every container we make is portioned by calories for your dog's weight.
APOP 2022; Kealy et al., JAVMA, 2002. Details
Protein
92%
of the protein digested
Dogs digested 92% of the protein in a gently cooked fresh food, against 85% in an extruded kibble, in a second Illinois study. Gentle cooking leaves more of the protein your dog can actually use.
Algya et al., Journal of Animal Science, 2018. Details
Portions
A scoop is a guess, and most bags give you a range. We start from your dog's weight, work out the calories an adult dog that size needs each day, and fill every container to match.
Who makes it
RebelFood is Angelina's kitchen in Greenpoint. She cooks every meal Rebel eats (that's Rebel, our 70-lb black goldendoodle), and now she cooks for the neighborhood in small batches. If you ever have a question about what's in the bowl, you can ask the person who made it.
What it costs
Chicken breast costs more than chicken meal, and a person cooks it. We price by the pound, and the price per pound drops as your dog's portion grows.
Not ready for full meals? A topper is a quarter of your dog's daily calories as fresh food, mixed into what they eat now.
Delivered to your door anywhere in NYC, 4–8 PM any day, or picked up free at The Dupont in Greenpoint.
If your dog doesn't love their first week of RebelFood, tell us within 7 days of delivery and we'll refund what you paid for the food in that first order. No forms, no arguing. The full promise
Fair questions
Plenty of dogs live long, healthy lives on good kibble, and we won't pretend otherwise. What studies show is that gently cooked fresh food is digested more completely, so dogs need less of it by weight and leave less behind. The difference you'll see every day is simpler: real food you can name.
Ingredients and hands. A week of food for a 40-lb dog is about 12 lb of chicken, rice and vegetables, cooked by hand on the day it goes out and delivered cold. We charge $8 a pound for up to 7 lb a week, $7 up to 14 lb, and $6 above that.
Yes. That's what the topper plan is for: about a quarter of their daily calories as RebelFood, on top of what they already eat. However you start, switch over about a week, with a little more RebelFood in the bowl each day.
Our meals are whole-food recipes, and every gram is published, so you and your vet can see exactly what's in them. If RebelFood will be your dog's only food, or your dog has a health condition, talk to your vet first. We're happy to send them the full recipe.
Every ingredient is on the label and every gram is in the recipe book, so you and your vet can check exactly what's in the bowl. If your dog has a health condition or a special diet, ask your vet before switching.
Everything is cooked the day you get it. It keeps three days in the fridge from the date on the label, and up to two months in the freezer. Thaw frozen containers in the fridge overnight.
Pick your dog's recipe, tell us their weight, and Angelina will cook their first week.
