How does one reward the "good guys" when one can't tell the difference between a gamed metric and an honest one?
I can't speak to dog food, I haven't researched that -- just the multiple sugar types. And also that when ice cream lists skim milk as an ingredient along with heavy cream, this isn't to make it appear healthier either -- it's to control the overall milkfat levels.
But if you're looking for nutritional information, that's literally on the label next to the ingredients. If you want to judge the protein or the sugar, then just look at that. If you're trying to judge those amounts by looking at the order of ingredients, that's your mistake to begin with.
If you think the second item there does not get consideration by these companies, you are dead wrong.
To add to this, I recall an actual marketing campaign from one of the big US cereal manufacturers (I forget which) about the first listed ingredient in some of their cereals being whole grain, explicitly selling their product on the fact that the plurality ingredient of it is healthy.
Granted, that by itself doesn't mean much, but if they also split sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, their claim of "more whole grain than any other ingredient" could easily fall under technically-correct-but-misleading. Of course, a shopper can get more useful information from the nutritional facts but most people shop by the pretty picture on the front of the box (and the friendly message on their screen) rather than the technical label on the back.
Right, it's "just" an "honest" list of ingredients, how could a list of ingredients be a scam?
... but if splitting an unhealthy ingredient into 3 different obfuscated line items made you an extra pile of cash every year... would you do it?