With so much evidence pointing to the benefits of living naturally, a lot of us have started to wonder about how to best treat their pets. We try to avoid processed junk food and carefully read the labels of the boxes and bags we find at the grocery store. Shouldn’t we be giving the same consideration to the diets of our dogs?
The answer is yes. A diet of processed kibble and commercial food containing fillers and chemicals does the same thing to a dog as a diet of packaged chips and cookies would do to us. These are foods that are not found in nature, foods that bodies were not designed to digest.
What’s in commercial dog food?
The first clue about what’s really in commercial dog food is in the ownership of the dog food companies. Most dog food producers are subsidiaries of corporations that make human food, and many of the products we feed our pets are actually the cast-offs from the slaughterhouses and factories that these corporations run. Any food, from offal to grain, that is deemed unfit for human consumption can find its way into dog food.
Even if many of these ingredients were of good quality, the wisdom of feeding them to a dog remains to be seen. Many of the ingredients are ‘fillers’ used to bulk of the food at a low cost to the producer. These ingredients would never be consumed by a dog in the wild and cannot be properly digested.
Problems associated with the commercial diet
Every few years a commercial pet food recall is issued due to contamination of the food. Contamination occurs for a number of reasons, including bacteria in the low-quality meat, mould or fungi in the grain or chemical residue from pesticides on the grain. Pet food quality is not rigorously controlled; so many of these contaminants make their way into commercial dog food resulting in pet illness and even death.
In addition to the possibility of contamination, your pets’ health is at risk from the ingredients themselves. Dogs were not meant to digest the fillers that make up the bulk of many pet foods, such as corn, grain and cereal. The introduction of these foods has been seen to result in an increase in diseases such as obesity, periodontal disease and kidney disease
The solution to a commercial diet
The obvious solution to the problems associated with commercial dog food is to draw on the diets of your pets’ ancestors as a feeding guideline. Wild wolves are closely related to domesticated dogs, and we can reasonably assume that your dog’s natural diet would resemble that of the wild wolf.
Wolves are carnivores and consume a diet made up almost entirely of raw meat (including blood, organs and bones). Some fruit and vegetable matter is ingested from the stomachs of the prey and wolves also occasionally scavenge, eating eggs or fallen fruits.
Simply put, an ideal, natural diet for a domestic dog is high in protein and energy and very low in carbohydrates. The diet should be made up of uncooked meat, with a small percentage of fruits, vegetables and eggs added for balance.
How to provide a raw diet for your dog
Raw food for your dog can be made at home by following one of the many recipes that can be found online. The main disadvantage of making your own raw dog food is the time it takes to blend the ingredients, portion a week’s worth into plastic bags and freeze.
There are also several companies that sell raw, natural dog food. This food often comes frozen or freeze dried and is a quick and easy alternative to making your own. When shopping for a raw dog food, check the ingredient label to make sure that no fillers or preservatives are included and that the meat is of a quality acceptable for human consumption.
The benefits of a raw dog food diet
Just as a healthy, natural diet for humans results in improved health, a switch to a raw dog food diet can result in dramatic changes in your dogs health, appearance ad behaviour.
Pet owners who make the switch have noted improvements in the energy and alertness of their dogs. Muscle definition improves as does the quality of the coat and the skin. And of course, the presence of diseases associated with poor diets is all but eliminated. The changes are often dramatic and astounding and most pet owners who make the switch never even consider going back to the processed, commercial foods they used to buy.
About the Author: This article was written exclusively for RLROUSE.COM by Whitney Cox. Whitney is a blogger based in Christchurch, New Zealand who writes on a number of health and lifestyle topics, including the health benefits of raw dog food.
Credits: Photo courtesy of Phillip Stewart.