Why Freeze-Dried?
Real nutrition. Real ingredients. The benefits of raw — without the freezer, the thawing, or the ice packs. Here’s everything you need to know.
Use code KING40 — 40% off your first order
Our freeze-dried dog food preserves essential nutrients, enzymes, and proteins for the optimal health of your Loyal Saint. Made with high-quality, natural ingredients and no artificial additives — it’s easy to digest, ideal for dogs with sensitivities, and supports healthy skin, a shiny coat, and increased energy. Shelf-stable up to 24 months. The benefits of a raw diet in a convenient, mess-free form.
What freeze-drying actually does
Traditional cooking inactivates enzymes, degrades heat-sensitive vitamins and can damage amino acids. Freeze-drying removes only the moisture — everything else stays exactly as nature intended.
Nutrients Locked In
Freeze-drying keeps the proteins, natural enzymes and heat-sensitive nutrients that cooking degrades — delivering genuine raw nutrition in every bite.
No Artificial Anything
No preservatives, no fillers, no artificial flavors or colors. Freeze-drying is its own preservation method — moisture removal is all it takes to make real food shelf-stable.
Easy to Digest
Freeze-drying keeps the natural enzymes in raw food — and freeze-dried raw is highly digestible: in a 2024 controlled study, dogs digested 94% of its protein. Ideal for pups with sensitivities, allergies, or transitioning from kibble.
No Fridge. No Thaw. Ever.
Unlike fresh or raw frozen food, Loyal Saints stores in your pantry for up to 24 months. No freezer. No insulated boxes. No thawing. Just open the bag and pour.
Convinced? Try Loyal Saints risk-free.
Shop Now — Code KING40Real ingredients. Every time.
Unlike many dog foods loaded with corn, wheat, soy, and grains, Loyal Saints is built on high-protein whole foods. No grains or starches required.
- Whole-muscle meat + organ blends
- Whole fruits — blueberries, cranberries
- Whole vegetables — carrot, broccoli, spinach, pumpkin
- Fish oil — omega-3 fatty acids
- Natural vitamins + chelated minerals
- Natural antioxidants
- No corn, wheat, soy, or grains
- No artificial preservatives, flavors, or colors
The convenience of freeze-dried
Extended Shelf Life
Due to having the moisture content removed during the freeze-drying process, Loyal Saints has an extended shelf life of up to 24 months when stored according to package instructions. No refrigeration needed — ever.
Ingredient Integrity
Freeze-drying allows ingredients to remain structurally unchanged. Their taste, smell, and natural composition are unaffected by processing — which means better palatability and higher nutrient density in every bag.
Nutrient Dense
Because freeze-drying retains the integrity of the food, the full nutritional content is preserved. You are getting a highly concentrated, nutrient-dense product — not a diluted or processed approximation of real food.
Superior Digestibility
Freeze-drying keeps the natural enzymes in raw food, and freeze-dried raw has measured as highly digestible in controlled testing. This makes Loyal Saints a powerful option for dogs with sensitivities, IBD, or a history of digestive issues.
Freeze-dried vs. everything else
| Loyal SaintsFreeze-Dried | Kibble | Fresh / Raw Frozen | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nutrients preserved | Yes | No — heat-destroyed | Yes |
| No refrigeration needed | Yes | Yes | No |
| No ice packs to ship | Yes | Yes | No |
| No artificial preservatives | Yes | Most brands — No | Yes |
| Grain-free, no fillers | Yes | Most brands — No | Yes |
| Shelf life 12+ months | Up to 24 months | Yes | No |
| Use as topper or full meal | Yes | No | Yes |
| AAFCO complete & balanced | Yes | Most brands | Varies |
Ready to make the switch?
Start as a topper — just 20% over her existing food. You’ll see the difference in weeks. Use code KING40 for 40% off your first order.
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The water is what we take out. Everything worth feeding her is what stays.
See how it comparesA cup measures space. Not nourishment.
When you switch from kibble, the first thing you notice is the scoop. It looks like more. It isn't — and here is exactly why.
A scoop is not a fair test. So here is every other one.
Four ways to compare the same two foods. We lose the first — and that is exactly the point.
What that actually means A cup is a container, not an amount. Theirs is packed tight, ours is airy — so their cup weighs twice as much before you have compared a single thing. They win this one, and it tells you nothing useful.
What that actually means Put 101 g of each on a kitchen scale — same weight of food, no cups involved. Ours carries 28% more energy.
What that actually means To put the same 355 calories in her bowl, you pour 22% less food of ours. Less filler doing the same job.
What that actually means Every food holds some water, and water is not protein. Take the water out of both first — the way a vet would — and ours has 38% more protein. That is 39% at 8% moisture against 27% at 12%.
Measure by volume and you are measuring air. Measure by weight, by calories, or by protein — the three that actually reach her — and it stops being close.
Loyal Saints figures from our Beef formula: 39% crude protein, 8% moisture, 4500 kcal/kg. Kibble figures from the back of an 18 lb bag of Purina Pro Plan Adult Weight Management Chicken & Rice: 27% crude protein, 12% moisture, 3,516 kcal/kg, and a standard 8 oz cup holding approximately 101 g. Weight management formulas carry deliberately reduced fat, so this comparison is drawn on protein and energy rather than fat.
Fill one cup with popcorn and another with almonds. Both are honestly "one cup." Pick them up and you feel the difference instantly. Freeze-dried food and kibble compare the same way.
We took the water out. Water is heavy.
- All dog food is really two things: food, and water.
- Kibble gets pressed into hard little pellets. They are small and heavy, so a lot of them fit in a cup.
- We take the water out instead. What is left is light and puffy — so it fills the cup up faster.
- You are scooping more space. She is eating the same amount of actual food.
A bigger scoop is not a bigger meal. It is just less water.
Light by nature
Freeze-drying removes moisture from real ingredients, leaving pieces that are porous and remarkably light. The volume stays. The weight does not.
Dense by design
Less water in the bag means more of what actually feeds her per ounce. A cup of Loyal Saints carries roughly 200–230 calories of real food, depending on the recipe.
Judge it by weight
Cups measure space. Calories and grams measure nourishment. Our feeding guide is built on the second one, which is why it is worth following over the scoop.
Worth more, because more goes into it
What the price actually buys
$25.08
per 1,000 calories
That is Loyal Saints Beef — $20.07 as a Halo Club member. Compare any food the same way: bag price ÷ calories on the bag. A cup-for-cup or bag-for-bag test compares air with density.
94% vs 82%
protein digested
In a 2024 controlled feeding study, dogs digested 94% of the protein in a freeze-dried raw diet against 82% in an extruded kibble — with less than half the stool. (Geary et al., 2024; a freeze-dried raw diet, not ours.)
~48 hrs
slow freeze-dry, never cooked
Meat and organs from U.S. farms and wild-caught Alaskan salmon, ground once and dried slowly. The high-heat extrusion behind kibble damages some protein: in extruded dry foods about 13% of the lysine was damaged, up to 23%.
¼ bowl
is all a big dog needs from us
Swap in at least 20–25% of the bowl. For an 80 lb dog that is about 1¼ cups a day — $7.21, or $5.77 as a Halo member — with the rest of the bowl unchanged.
What a day costs, by dog size
| Dog | Quarter bowl (topper) | Full bowl (complete meal) |
|---|---|---|
| 6 lb | $1.08$0.87 Halo | $4.33$3.46 Halo |
| 12 lb | $1.80$1.44 Halo | $7.21$5.77 Halo |
| 18 lb | $2.40$1.92 Halo | $9.61$7.69 Halo |
| 25 lb | $2.88$2.31 Halo | $11.54$9.23 Halo |
Beef, 14 oz bag. Daily amounts are the feeding panel printed on the bag; Chicken and Turkey with Salmon differ slightly — see every weight and formula. Small dogs eat little — which is why so many of them can have the whole bowl.
Why freeze-dried costs more What the research shows Where every ingredient comes from
You are not comparing cup to cup. You are comparing two fundamentally different kinds of food.
Know the bowl
The cup, the calories and the cost — in thirty seconds.
Shop Loyal Saints 40% off your first order with code KING40 at checkout — first orders only.
Freeze-dried costs more. Here is exactly why.
We would rather explain it than pretend it isn't true. You are not paying for the size of the bag. You are paying for what is inside it.
Water
Freeze-drying removes the moisture from real ingredients. What is left in the bag is food, not weight you would have poured away.
The ingredients
Real meat, organs, fruits and vegetables you can recognize by name — sourced from U.S. farms rather than selected on cost per ton.
The process
Freeze-drying is slow and specialized. It preserves what heat-based cooking destroys, and it costs considerably more to run than extrusion.
The formulation
A complete and balanced meal is not meat in a bag. Every recipe is formulated to meet AAFCO standards for the nutrition she actually needs.
Loyal Saints was never created to make the cheapest bowl. It was created to make a bowl we would be proud to feed our own.
There is a place for better ingredients in every bowl.
Feeding 100% freeze-dried is not realistic for every household, and it does not have to be — especially with a large dog. Used as a topper over her current food, Loyal Saints brings real, human-grade ingredients into her bowl at a fraction of the cost of a full switch.
See what a topper costs for her weightRaw, made safe on purpose.
Drying food slows bacteria down. It does not make food safe on its own — so we do not rely on it. Our manufacturing partner describes three controls between their kitchen and her bowl.
High pressure processing
Before freeze-drying, the raw food is held under intense cold-water pressure — high pressure processing (HPP), a recognized pathogen-reduction step that works without cooking.
In plain terms Pressure does the job heat normally does, so the food stays raw.
Test and hold
Our partner holds each batch back for testing before it is released, so nothing ships while a result is pending.
In plain terms No batch ships while its test is still pending.
Tested to a written standard
Finished product is tested for Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli O157:H7 against a signed specification. Our first production lots of all six bags all tested negative.
In plain terms A pass/fail standard in writing, with the results on file.
Plenty of raw brands imply that because the food is dry, it must be safe. That is not how it works. We are compiling our partner’s documentation — certificates and test records — to publish the full specification in our Science Center. Until then we describe these controls as our partner describes them. And because it is raw, handle it as you would raw meat: wash hands, bowls and scoops after serving.
