Can Dogs Eat Doritos: Everything You Need to Know

Most pet parents share most things with their dogs. This includes everything from their time and attention to the many tasty human foods they love. Sometimes, that human food happens to be Cool Ranch Doritos, Black Doritos, Doritos Dinamita, or any other chip variety.

But as a responsible dog parent, there’s one crucial question you should ask before throwing bits of junk food like Doritos Nacho Cheese your pet’s way. That question is – can dogs eat Doritos?

Getting definitive answers to this will help you know whether you’re helping or injuring the health of your furry friend by feeding them these tasty treats.

So, let’s get into it!

Can Dogs Eat Doritos?

Yes, dogs can eat Doritos. These tortilla chips are one of the many human tasty snacks that canines seem to enjoy a lot. However, just because they can eat it (and love to do so) doesn’t mean that you should feed junk food to them.

To be clear, most regular and spicy flavors of this treat aren’t severely toxic to your canine companion. The worst thing they do in most cases is trigger minor digestive issues in dogs.

As these pets can’t process the corn-based snack as efficiently as they should, it usually leaves your canine friend with an upset stomach for a few days. Since these spicy foods put your canine buddy ill at ease, it’s always a smart play to keep the two of them apart.

Doritos: What They’re Made of and Why That’s Important to Your Canine’s Health

Aside from a corn base, these tortilla chips also feature sunflower oil, canola oil, salt content, and antioxidants. We can call these the basic ingredients of these salty snacks. On the surface, this ingredient list doesn’t seem too bad. But reality paints a different picture.

The Effects of the Basic Ingredients in Doritos on Your Canine Buddy

To start with, the corn is genetically modified. Over the years, genetically modified crops have been directly linked with several health issues in humans. These include but aren’t limited to allergies, gastrointestinal issues, and unhealthy weight gain.

That aside, consider that these treats are fried in oil. Frying foods has been known to increase the presence of free radical particles. This in turn can lead to health issues like heart disease and obesity.

There’s also the fact that, even though salt is necessary for a dog’s balanced diet, the amount of salt in a black corn tortilla chip is usually too much for their digestive tract to handle.

And, when canines consume high levels of salt this way, there are considerably higher chances of sodium poisoning (or salt poisoning) happening.

This alone should be enough motivation to keep snacks of this nature as far from your dog as possible.

But, so you can fully understand the gravity of feeding this popular snack to your pet, let’s also look at what some artificial ingredients do to your furry friend.

The Effects of Artificial Ingredients in Doritos on Your Canine Companion

Can dogs eat Doritos?

Yes, they can eat cheese-flavored tortilla chips, Cool Ranch Doritos, Doritos Dinamita, and other items from the chip aisle.

When your furry buddy eats something like Dorito Cheese in moderation, they can usually get away with only a stomach upset, at worst.

But should you feed them these chunky chips in large quantities regularly, you’re essentially opening the door for additional health concerns.

Now, apart from the havoc that the basic ingredients in these snacks can wreak on your furry buddy, there’s also the effect of artificial ingredients to consider. Some of the most notable ones include:

Monosodium Glutamate

More popularly known as MSG, the effects of monosodium glutamate are well-documented. The intake of MSG has been confirmed to cause a lot of health issues in humans. This includes high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, high cholesterol, and liver toxicity, to mention a few.

These effects can also be expected in dogs as well if you let them eat MSG-flavored rawhide chips on a regular basis.

For humans, when Doritos are eaten with a balanced diet, there’s a significantly lesser chance that any of the long-term effects described above will occur. But, for your furry buddy, it’s probably best that you have them steer clear completely.

Onion Seasoning

This is arguably one of the most toxic ingredients for dogs in junk food. The main reason for this is that to make the delicious snack more flavorful, most seasonings used to produce these treats have a higher level of concentration than real onions.

And, before you ask: no, dogs can’t eat onions. So, if your pet gets into the onion dip or eats chips with a high amount of onion powder, suffice it to say you have a serious canine concern on your hands.

Depending on the amount of onion eaten, you may need to visit the emergency vet clinic as quickly as possible.

Garlic Seasoning

Another member of the allium family, garlic seasoning also ranks as one of the most toxic ingredients in the food that you can expose your furry friend to. Just like with onions, garlic seasoning is several times more concentrated than the real deal.

As a result, even in small amounts, these substances can cause adverse negative effects on the gastrointestinal tract of your furry buddy and hurt their red blood cells.

Common signs of garlic poisoning in canines include vomiting, lethargy, depression, and diarrhea.

Considering the lasting harm that Doritos that contain this ingredient can do to your beloved pet, you should do all you can to prevent your dog from consuming these foods.

So far, you’ve only gotten a blanket answer as to whether your dog can eat Doritos or not. Moving forward, we’ll be providing definitive answers on what to expect when you feed specific varieties of these chips to your canine companion.

These knowledgeable answers will help you make a final decision on whether you can still use these foods as an occasional treat for your canine buddy or finally close the door on them once and for all.

Dogs and Cool Ranch Doritos: Final Verdict

No, your canine buddy cannot stomach Cool Ranch Doritos. Apart from the basic ingredients that this chip variety contains, it also comes with buttermilk, corn syrup, cheese, garlic powder, and onion powder.

We’ve explored the dangers of onion powder and garlic powder. But corn syrup can be just as deadly because it’s bad for the teeth of your canine buddy and can cause high blood pressure and obesity.

Also, as many dogs are lactose-intolerant, you’re only compromising the digestive health of your pooch if you feed them these snacks.

Independently, these toxic ingredients are bad enough. Together, they can trigger even more significant health concerns.

Dogs and Doritos Nacho Cheese: Final Verdict

No, dogs shouldn’t eat Dorito Nacho Cheese either.

As we mentioned earlier, your canine buddy isn’t built to process milk products. Not only is this chip variety heavy on the cheese factor, but it also comes with considerable amounts of lactic acid.

To further worsen things, Dorito Nacho Cheese contains many of the additional ingredients that your dog is better off avoiding. These include MSG, a high salt content, garlic powder, brown sugar, and onion powder.

Again, your dog eating a few of these chips once in a while wouldn’t be the end of the world. But if you’ve been feeding your pooch items like sweet potato chips, fried chicken, and other fried food scraps as well, this will inevitably add up.

Eventually, you could leave your furry friend in severely poor health.

Dogs and Doritos Dinamita: Final Verdict

Again, this is another no-go area when it comes to feeding your dog.

If you aren’t aware, Doritos Dinamita is rolled tortilla chips that are coated with several very spicy flavors.

The other ingredients aside, you should know that the taste buds of dogs aren’t equipped to deal with spicy foods. So, not only could you be potentially harming the health of your dog by letting them have these treats, but you’d also essentially be torturing them as well.

True, some dog breeds might seem fine with eating spicy foods. You might even know someone who feeds their dog hot chilis and says it’s fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’d be messing up their digestive tract and processes with such meals.

Considering that there are tons of other great dog treats and food preferences that you could explore, is there really a reason to compulsorily feed your dog Doritos Dinamita? We don’t think so.

Conclusion