The trend to feeding adult foods to puppies is no "new" trend. Many breeders have been doing this for decades and with good results.The problem with the puppy kibbles at that time was that they DID supply too many minerals to growing large breed puppies (I'll have to run a search for it but there was an excellent study done by the Great Dane people about 10 years ago that documented a developmental syndrome in Dane puppies that was directed linked to feeding puppy food instead of adult food (roach back was one of the things......)
The kibble companies took this research very seriously (note that the impetus came from the breeders and NOT from the company) and started to develop the specific size formulation puppy kibbles which hit the market 5 years ago. The last few years is when this controversy over feeding a specific large breed puppy food vs. adult kibble is really heating up......cus no one really is sure yet....and many older/more experienced breeders hear "puppy food" and run screaming in the opposite direction
My breeder (30+ years in Rotts) and her 2 mentors (60+ years in Rotts, both of them) highly recommend against feeding puppy foods, but this could be based on the "old" prejudices. I convinced my breeder to let me raise one male on Large Breed Euk.(it was the first large breed formulation available and came on the market when this pup was 3 months old).....we don't like the result.....but that is just one dog, so it doesn't count for anything.
I have gone back to feeding a premium adult food to my new pup (Innova) and I like what I am seeing.....so I'll side with WorkingDogz on this one....I just haven't seen or looked for other's experiences with the "new generation" puppy foods. Would be interesting!! Anyone know a website??