- About Pet Nutrition
- Orthomolecular Nutritional Medicine: Mega Nutrient Therapy
- Enzymes - The Fountain of Life
- Health Strengthening Feeding Concepts: How Meat Based Diets Are Superior
- Selecting the Healthiest Commercial Dog Food
- Healthy Ways to Feed Your Dog
- Questionnaire to Dog Food Manufacturers
We believe that proper nutrition is the cornerstone of good preventative medicine. We recommend you feed your pet the freshest, meat-based, chemically and by-product free pet food available. Furthermore, we recommend supplementing this commercial diet with freshly prepared vegetables and freshly ground meat. For those willing to prepare their pet's meals from scratch, we can provide highly nutritious recipes. We stock prescription diets to treat specific diseases and a unique line of avian nutritional products. Mega vitamin-mineral therapy, also known as "Orthomolecular Medicine", antioxidant therapy, phytochemical therapy and plant enzyme therapy are other very important aspects of our approach to disease prevention and eradication through clinical nutritional management.
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Orthomolecular Nutritional Medicine: Mega Nutrient Therapy
Orthomolecular Medicine is involved with the use of dietary measures including air, water, food, and nutritional supplements to maintain health and treat disease. Dr. Linus Pauling the founder of orthomolecular medicine defines it this way: "The preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentration in the human (and canine) body of substances that are normally present in the body and are required for health."
Veterinarians that practice orthomolecular medicine attempt to raise the levels of all essential nutrients in the animals body up to at least a minimum level for health maintenance and disease prevention but ideally far above that level into a range that will provide optimal health.
Orthomolecular medicine is also concerned with reducing the levels of food toxins and nutrients that may be in excess i.e. simple sugars, heavy metals, and artificial chemical additives.
Orthomolecular medicine involves itself with the use of bitters, enzymes, fiber, fatty acids, amino acids, anti-oxidants, beneficial bacterial, natural hormones and mega doses of vitamins and minerals in order to prevent and treat disease and promote optimal wellness.
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Enzymes - The Fountain of Life
Enzymes are special types of proteins which enable biochemical reactions to take place in our body. They are "biocatalysts", which means they either initiate a chemical reaction or cause the reaction to speed up. Since chemical reactions are generally slow, anything that speed them up is very important to the body's survival. For life to occur as we know it enzymes are essential. Enzymes are found in every cell of every living plant and animal, including humans. Our pets have roughly 3000 enzymes in their bodies and these affect over 7000 chemical reactions. Enzymes can not function without the help of specific coenzymes known as vitamins and minerals . The enzyme and coenzymes join together to form a very specific shaped molecule which has an active site that binds other molecules together and transform them into many different chemical substances.
Digestive Enzymes
There are two major categories of enzymes: 1) Digestive enzymes and 2) Systemic enzymes. Digestive enzymes are enzymes produced by the digestive tract which help the body break down their food into small molecules so they can be easily absorbed into the blood. Digestive enzymes supplements are made up of animal or plant derived enzyme which can be added to the diet as a pill or powder in order to replace enzymes that are deficient in the diet or that were not manufactured in adequate quantities by the GI tract. Digestive enzymes supplements reduce the stress placed on the pancreas to produce enzymes for digestion and allows it to produce more systemic enzymes. Digestive enzymes come as "proteases" for digesting protein, "amylases" for digesting starch, "lipases" for digesting fat, and "cellulase" for digesting cellulose.
Digestive enzymes are particularly important to dogs and cats that are fed a highly processed, cooked, grain based diet. The cooking process destroys the natural enzymes in the food. When these enzymes are not inactivated by cooking they help the food auto digest and by doing so reduce the demand for enzymes placed on the pancreas. Dogs and especially cats are carnivores and have digestive systems that evolved to digest primarily meat but are poorly adapted at breaking down vegetable matter, especially, grain protein. Because most cat and dog foods are made up primarily of grain, , dogs and cats need the help of digestive enzyme supplements to break down the grain protein molecules to a size small enough that they will not act as an inflammatory allergens or antigens. The presence of inflammatory grain protein allergens in the gut will eventually produce a leaky intestinal lining. This leaky barrier will no longer be able to prevent yeast, bad bacteria, bacterial toxins, and large grain protein molecules from getting into the blood stream where can they travel throughout the body and cause a variety of chronic inflammatory diseases including arthritis, allergic dermatitis, and glomerulosclerosis (kidney disease).
Plant derived digestion enzymes are much preferred over animal derived digestive enzymes because plant enzymes are much less sensitive to and less easily damaged by the acidic pH of the stomach. Animal enzymes are readily inactivated by stomach acids. Healthzymes is a very high potency, customized blend of plant derived digestive enzymes which when sprinkled over food will help the body predigest digest its meal while still in the stomach, consequently, it will greatly reduce the work load of the pancreas. When fed regularly, Healthzymes will reduce the pet's food requirements by as much as 20% due to more complete digestion. The pet's stools will become smaller, firmer, and less odiferous. The amount of intestinal gas produced will be significantly decreased. Healthzymes will enhance your pet's coat, helping to make it fuller and shinier. Healthzymes will also help stop dogs from eating their own stools (coprophagy). If digestive enzymes are given to the pet apart from food they are not used up in the process of digestion and are absorbed into the blood stream where they can function as anti inflammatory enzymes
Systemic Enzymes
Systemic enzymes are enzymes that differ from digestive enzymes in that they do their work in many places throughout the body other than the digestive system. To prevent these enzymes from being used up in the digestive process they must be given approximately an hour apart from meals. When we give our pets systemic enzymes we want these enzyme to be absorbed into the blood stream and carried throughout the body to where ever they are needed. Systemic enzymes work primarily through their "proteolytic" and "fibrinolytic" actions. These terms refer to their ability to break down protein and fibrin which may have accumulated in certain areas of the body and as a result are causing health issues.
Systemic enzymes have many functions. They are anti inflammatory, anti fibrotic, anti allergic, blood cleansing, immune modulating , virus fighting, and cancer preventing. Systemic enzymes are our pet's first line of defense against inflammation and pain. They are much safer than NSAIDs (Non Steroidal Anti inflammatory Drugs) like Ibuprofen, Rimidyl, Etogesic ,Celebrex, Viox, and acetaminophen which are anti inflammatory but which can be toxic to the animal's liver, kidneys and the GI tract. Systemic enzyme supplements, on the other hand, are perfectly safe and free of dangerous side effects. They are very effective in helping reduce the pain and discomfort of physical injury, sport trauma, arthritis, allergies, blood clots and auto immune disease. The anti inflammatory effect of systemic enzymes helps reduce healing time from injuries or surgery by as much as 50%. They are particularly helpful in preventing post traumatic swelling. bruising, and stiffness.
Systemic enzymes are also anti-fibrotic which means they prevent and remove fibrin or scar tissue from the body. Whereever scar tissue develops in the body it will eventually cause that tissue to shrink and cause the organ to work less effectively. As your pet ages his or her body's ability to produce enzymes decreases and less enzymes are available to prevent fibrin scar tissue formation. It is at this point that enzyme supplementation becomes even more important. Providing your pet with extra systemic enzymes will keep his or her organs from shrinking in size and will enable them to work at a much more youthful rate. Kidney scaring and shrinking, known as glomerulosclerosis, is just one example of a progressive disease that can be very effectively slowed down with systemic enzyme supplementation. Consequently, systemic enzyme supplementation will slow down the aging process and help keep your pet's internal organs large and highly functional.
Systemic enzymes also serve as blood cleansers and help to reduce the detoxification work load placed on the liver. Blood is not only the river of life; it is also the river through which the cells and organs dispose of their waste. All this waste is suppose to be cleansed by the liver as the blood passes through, but due to the toxic environment we and our pets live in, the liver is usually not able to adequately clean the blood the first time it passes through. Consequently, the blood gets thicker with waste and circulates more slowly. When systemic enzymes supplements are taken, they stand ready in the blood to take the strain off of the liver by:
- Cleaning excess fibrin from the blood and reducing the stickiness of blood cells. These two actions minimize the leading cause of stroke, heart attacks and blood clots
- Breaking down dead material into small enough particles that can immediately pass into the bowel
- Cleansing the receptor sites on the white blood cells thereby improving their function and availability to fight infection
Finally, systemic enzymes help the body fight viruses. Viruses harm us by replicating in our body's cells. To do this the virus particles must bond themselves to the cells DNA with specialized protein substances. Systemic enzymes are able to recognize this foreign protein and eat away at it, thus preventing viruses from attaching to the cell.
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Health Strengthening Feeding Concepts
Although the following deals with canine nutrition, almost 100% of what is described is also valid for the feline.
The Meat Based Diets Are Superior to Grain Based Diets
First lets take a look at the dog's basic dietary history. The domestic dog, Canis familiaris, evolved from wolf ancestors as a primarily carnivorous animal consuming the prey it caught. Both the wolf and the domestic dog have relatively simple, short digestive tracts far better suited for digesting meat than grain or plant material. Wolves and domestic dogs have identical dentition with teeth shaped to tear and pull off flesh, and to crack and pulverize bones but not to grind grain and vegetable matter. They also lack the enzymes necessary to digest plant material and liberate the nutrients within.
The majority of animals killed by wolves and wild dogs are herbivores. Since canines eat the entire carcass (including the stomach and intestines, and all of their contents) they end up eating pre-digested plant material on a regular basis. Because the plant material has already been broken down by the victim's digestive juices, the nutrients from pre-digested grain and other vegetation can be processed by the short canine digestive tract. So even though dogs and cats are primarily carnivores they should not be fed meat exclusively but should be provided with a small amount of plant material that has been sufficiently juiced, grated, or steamed in order to allow the nutrients to be more easily digested and absorbed by the dog's simple digestive system.
The more grain present in a dogs diet (even when cooked) the more undigested or partially digested grain protein will be found in their upper small intestine. Because the grain protein is poorly digested, these oversized plant protein molecules are viewed by the body as a foreign substance that should be destroyed. Consequently, the immune tissue in the wall of the intestine is stimulated in order to remove the undigested grain protein. Chronic immune system stimulation, resulting from a grain based diet, leads to a damaged digestive tract and to a "leaky gut" which in turn may be the origin of many of our dogs' skin allergies, arthritis, and auto immune diseases.
Meat provides your dog with a nearly complete essential amino acid profile. To come close to such an amino acid profile with plants would require careful combining of 2 or more complementary grains, vegetables or legumes. As a supplementary source of nutrients, cooked grain is beneficial but if the percentages of grain get too high and meat is asked to play a lesser role then nutritional deficiencies and allergies could be the result.
Home prepared natural/raw meat-raw vegetable diets are far superior to commercial diets.
Over the last 50 years there has been a growing epidemic of chronic health problems that has coincided with a proliferation of improperly designed commercial pet foods . Typically, these foods are filled with inappropriate and poor quality ingredients that lack bio-available meat protein, nutrients, enzymes, and essential minerals. These so-called premium foods are loaded with inexpensive grains that make them a better food for poultry than for dogs or cats. After all, we must always keep in mind that we are feeding carnivores. Almost all commercial dog foods are made predominantly of difficult to digest cereal grains and relatively small amounts of meat and inferior meat by-products.
The body's intolerance for these unsuitable ingredients has shown up as a wide variety of health problems and immune diseases ranging from simple food allergies and skin problems to organ impairment and dysfunction. As a result of the above concerns holistic veterinarians across the country have become more and more advocates of pet owners feeding a natural-raw meat diet in place of commercial dog food. The dog food industry is only 60-70 years old and every dog alive today can trace in lineage back to dogs who were raised on homemade natural diets. In the beginning dog foods were meant to supplement homemade foods, now unfortunately, the reverse is often true.
The natural / raw meat diet is far superior to every commercial diet because it uses fresh uncooked meat, lightly steamed vegetables, raw fruit and table scraps. The use of raw ingredients, especially raw meat, provides amino acids in their unaltered (uncooked) state, live beneficial bacteria (probiotics) , active enzymes, fatty acids in their unaltered (uncooked state), natural vitamins, and easily absorbed minerals, none of which are found in cooked food. Feeding a natural / raw meat diet even once a week will help keep the bowels healthy by providing natural digestive enzymes and beneficial bacterial flora. This allows a weakened or imbalanced immune system to be revitalized.
Shopping for and preparing a natural raw meat diet allows the pet owner to see smell and touch the raw ingredients going into his dogs food. It allows the pet owner to feed a variety of fresh human grade foods. Such freshness and variety are huge benefits that can be provided only in a home prepared diet.
If available and affordable, organic meat and vegetables would be the ideal choice because they contain more nutrients and far fewer toxins than non organic foods. Home preparing your dog's diet insures his food is fresh, free of rancid fat, moldy grain, mycotoxins, animal excrement, food by-products, artificial chemical preservatives, flavoring agents, coloring agents, and fillers. It is important to clearly understand that the more toxins, chemicals and contaminants consumed by your dogs body over time, the greater will be the body's effort to expel them and the greater will be the loss of anti-oxidants, enzymes, vitamins and minerals that are used up in the detoxification process.
Eventually your dog's reserves of these antioxidants are severely depleted and the normal detoxification process in the liver becomes overwhelmed and clinical disease and degeneration inevitably follow.
Of course preparing an all natural/ raw meat diet is not for everyone and requires more time and effort than simply feeding a commercial diet. Also the idea of feeding raw meat is a turn-off to many people both from an aesthetic sense and from a concern about unintentionally feeding their dog toxic bacteria that they fear may be on the raw meat. I understand these concerns and therefore, later on, will be giving some alternatives to using this raw meat diet. However, let me quiet some of your fears by saying that in talking with dozens of veterinarians, all of which have been recommending a raw food diet for years, none have had any client complaints that their dog was poisoned by the raw meat. If you purchase fresh, high quality raw meat (venison, buffalo, lamb, beef, turkey, chicken) that is ground in front of you as you wait, and is refrigerated and frozen soon after you arrive home, the likelihood of ever having a bacterial related food intoxication is highly unlikely. If for aesthetic reasons you prefer not watching your dog eat raw meat, then lightly brown the outside leaving the inside of the meat very rare.
One of the biggest liabilities in feeding an all natural diet is the fact that most people don't follow the recipe and start taking short cuts which could end up in creating a nutritional deficiency.
If you major concern about feeding a home prepared diet is the time for shopping and preparation, let me suggest that if you simply replaced about 10-15% of your dogs commercial diet with raw meat you would be making a major step in improving his health and extending his longevity. This approach requires no cooking at all and if you purchase a large supply of meat and freeze the bulk of it after dividing it into small daily portions, shopping and preparation would be at a minimum.
If time is not so much a problem but you are absolutely opposed to feeding raw meat then cook the meat to the minimal extent that allows you to feel comfortable and feed it that way. Even though you loose many of the benefits of feeding raw "live" food you still are reducing the proportion of cereal grain your dog must digest and converting your commercial diet from a grain based diet to a more meat based diet (the benefits of which have already been discussed).
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How to Select the Healthiest Commercial Dog Food
There are many commercial outlets for dog food. Dog food is sold at grocery stores, pet stores, health food stores, veterinary clinics, and by phoning your food order directly to the manufacture. Where you buy the food is not the point, as any of the aforementioned sources could carry both relatively inferior and superior commercial brands of dog food. Pet stores usually carry all the popular grocery store lines and grocery stores carry a few higher quality foods that compare favorably with many of the better pet store lines. So don't choose your food simply by where or how it is sold. Secondly, don't for a minute get sucked in by the marketing hype which uses the terms Premium, Super Premium, and All natural. These terms are misused. They are often deceiving and misleading. Also the fact that a food is sold at a veterinary clinic does not make it the best food for you dog to eat. Please understand that some veterinarians are very well versed in animal nutrition while others have not taken the time to go beyond the minimal nutritional training they received in veterinary school. The point I am making is that a dog food must be selected on its own merits and not based on marketing slogans or on where it is sold.
At this point I am sure you are asking yourself the question "Okay, then how do I determine what commercial diet is really best for my pet?" The answer is to educate yourself, as you are doing right now, on animal nutrition and commercial dog foods. Then, research the companies that appear to come the closest to providing the healthiest food. To make your job easier, I will give you some basic rules and guidelines so that you can hopefully narrow the huge choice of dog foods down to 2 or 3 possibilities. I will also provide a questionnaire that you can use when you interview a food company either in person or by mail.
By the way, evaluating a dog food is in no way an easy job, even for a veterinarian with an extensive science background. The reason for this is that much important information that is necessary for evaluation is not found on the bag of food. In addition much of what is found on the bag can be very misleading to the uneducated consumer and even to the well educated veterinarian. So don't think this stuff is easy because its not.
So what are the major issues we are considering when evaluating a commercial food. We are looking for often subtle clues that tell us that one food is more nutritious than another. We are also, unfortunately, looking for clues that tell us which dog food is the least toxic. Okay lets begin...
Is the dog food a meat based or grain based diet?
The ingredient on the dog food package are listed in order by weight, from highest to lowest, The first three ingredients on this list usually make up the great bulk of the food. Generally speaking, a meat based diet is one where 2 out of the first 3 ingredients are meat and not grain. Unfortunately through creative labeling this list can easily be manipulated to read in such a way that the uneducated consumer is mislead into thinking there is more meat in the product than their actually is. Specific questions need to be asked to insure that an apparent meat based diet truly is just that. If we define a meat based diet as one where over 40% of its weight is made up of meat then it may be very hard to find and feed a commercial meat based diet unless you plan on uping the meat portion of the diet by adding either raw or cooked meat of your own.
What is the quality of the meat that is present in the food?
What we want to know is how close the meat is to human grade meat. Did the meat come from a rendering plant or from a USDA inspected slaughtering house and was the meat that is used healthy or was it rejected as human grade food because it was damaged or diseased. The worst type of meat that could be present comes from rendering plants. Animals that are destroyed at rendering plants are almost, without a doubt, the most sickly animals in existence and that is why they are classified as being one of the 4D's "dead, diseased, dying and disabled". The source of animal meat in a dog food is rarely printed on the bag, sometimes found in their literature, and may be difficult to ascertain over the phone. Of course, the optimal source of meat would be from healthy animals raised organically. This source is often too expensive for any pet food manufacture to consider. The next best source would be meat coming from USDA inspected carcasses that were okayed for human consumption.
Are animal by products used to supply the animal protein needs?
By products can be very unpredictable and inconsistent sources of meat protein. For example when the term poultry by-products appears on the ingredient list one load may consists of liver and gizzards and the next load of poultry by products used to make another batch of the same food may come from heads and intestines, and the next form hearts and feet. Some by products are actually very nutritious and would be a plus in the formulation of a commercial food but because the labeling does not allow us to distinguish the good from the bad we want to stay away from foods that use meat and poultry by-products.
Is the cereal portion of the food made up of cooked whole grains or does it contain mostly highly processed grain fractions where the most nutritious portion of the grain has been removed to be used in human food ?
Common grain fractions you may find in dog food bag ingredient lists include:
- Middlings - Rice mill run, wheat middlings
- Bran - Corn bran, rice bran, wheat bran
- Peanut hulls
- Flour - rice flour, wheat flour
- Gluten
- Germ
Are the grains used in the food those that are commonly allergenic?
Just as with people most dogs are not allergic to common allergens. Only certain people and dogs are genetically predisposed to becoming allergic and only those animals with a genetic weakness will develop an allergy to a specific allergen. However, since we don't know whether a dog is likely to develop allergies why not avoid the most common allergens. Soy and wheat are the worst, so look out for and avoid them by feeding a commercial diet that contains other types of grain.
Are there any chemical preservatives, flavoring agents, coloring agents, or texturizers present in the food?
It is often hard to tell from reading the package ingredients list which are chemical additives and which are not. Below are listed the most commonly listed:
| Fat preservatives | Ethoxyquin, BHT, BHA, propyl gallate |
| Moisturizers | These chemicals help maintain the proper amount of moisture Propylene glycol, calcium silicate, and sorbitol |
| Sequestrants | These chemicals are stabilizers of the odor, color, flavor and overall appearance of the dog food: tataric acid, citric acid, and salts of potassium, sodium and calcium |
| Texturizers | Chemicals which are used to maintain texture. Sodium nitrate and nitrite |
| Mold retardants | Chemicals which retard growth of mold in grain: Calcium proprionate, sodium proprionate potassium salts, lactic acid, sorbic acid and sodium diacetate |
| Coloring dyes | Grouped in a single catagory - food coloring or dyes (Only reason for their presence is to make food more appealing to the pet owner) |
Chemicals in dog food have been associated with both physical and behavioral problems. Behavioral problems such as over shyness, aggressiveness, reduction in learning ability, and obsessive and compulsive disorders have been shown to be related to improper feeding. Cancer and reproductive problems are just two of the physical illnesses that are associated with food chemicals. The most common healthy natural fat preservatives are vitamin E and C, however, these foods do have a shorter shelf life than those chemically preserved so check the package for an expiration date or date of manufacturing.
What is the source of the fat used in the making the diet? Does it contain chemical or natural vitamin preservatives? Does it contain the essential omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids?
Inferior fat can cause health problems in several ways. Fat that is not fresh and /or properly preserved will become rancid. Rancidity reduces palatability and leads to many a health problems. Fat is also a depot for many of the toxins that poultry, cattle, and sheep are exposed to. Therefore, it is best to get our fat from animals or plants that have been exposed to the fewest toxins (ie, those organically raised). The best type of fat should ideally be a combination of both animal and vegetable fat. The animal fat provides most of the energy whereas the vegetable fat provides most of the essential omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids. Fat should be preserved naturally with vitamin E and vitamin C and not with chemicals such as Ethoxyquin and BHA and BHT.
How fresh is the food?
Freshness is a very important criteria for picking a particular brand of food and even for picking an individual bag. Some dog food companies produce large quantities of dog food all at once. Much of this food is warehoused for extended periods. Other companies manufacture their food in smaller quantities on an "as needed" basis. Furthermore some companies will ship food directly to your house further reducing storage time.
Every bag of dog food you buy should have on it either the date of manufacturing or a recommended expiration date. These dates may be coded so you may have to call the company for help in interpretation. Buying your food from an outlet with a high turnover will also reduce the likelihood that the food is stale. If you see a bag of food that is grease stained do not buy it.
If after you open the bag there is a peculiar odor such as that of rancid fat or mold return the bag for a fresher food. If you see mold growing on the food or if the food looks in any way different from its normal appearance return the food.
Is it stated on the bag that the dog food is "complete and balance" or "nutritionally complete"?
To say this on the bag guarantees the food has been evaluated either by feeding trials or laboratory testing and meets certain AAFCO requirement. A quality dog food will always have an AAFCO statement of testing on it.
Have any beneficial food supplements been added directly to the food during the manufacturing process?
Chelated minerals are much more easily absorbed than non chelated minerals and therefore a statement on the package that chelated minerals have been added is definitely a plus when evaluating dog food. The addition of probiotics, antioxidants, and enzymes are other valuable supplements that add to a dog foods nutritive state.
Which is the best form to buy food in --- dry, canned, semi-moist or frozen?
Commercially frozen meat or frozen meat and vegetation is as close to a prepared, fresh, all natural food as you can get. It is made up of fresh, raw ingredients which are then sold and distributed. Frozen dog food is not widely distributed at this time so it may not be available in your area. It is highly digestible.
Dry dog food has the advantage of being the most concentrated, least expensive most convenient and most widely distributed. Canned dog food is more expensive and less concentrated than dry dog food but has the advantage of being more palatable, and of not requiring any chemical preservatives. Mixing a quality canned and dry food together to add some pizazz to the dry food is quite okay. Semi moist food is easy for the consumer to use and is very well accepted by the dog but contains so many chemicals especially salt, sugar, preservatives and coloring agents that in my opinion it is very unhealthy for the dog to eat it.
If you want to compare the guaranteed analysis of dry, semi-moist and canned, you must convert the percentages of all to a dry matter basis and then proceed with the comparison. For example, dry food is 10% water, semi moist food is 25% moisture, and canned food is 90% moisture.
Is the food package information misleading?
Unfortunately, much of the information we need in order to make an intelligent decision about which commercial dog food to buy is not available on the label. To make matters worse much of what is on the label is highly misleading. Below are some things to watch out for when looking at a bag of dog food.
If the label states that the food is "complete and balanced" or "nutritionally complete that means that the food has passed certain tests or feeding trials establish and monitored by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). However this does not mean that the food can not be improved on nor that it provides the best nutrition. It simply is criteria for insuring that the minimal standards have been met (MDR or minimal daily requirement) and that dogs can grow and survive on it without developing obvious disease. It is not criteria for insuring that the food provides adequate nutrition for building a strong and resilient body with an immune system that can effectively handle most stress and disease threats it may encounter.
The guaranteed analysis on a pet food bag provides very minimal information when evaluating the health value of a dog food. The analysis percentages are based solely on the quantity of the crude protein, fat, fiber, carbohydrate, and moisture present in the food and it says nothing about how much of the food truly usable, that is digestible and absorbable. The guaranteed analysis simply gives minimums for the amount of protein and fat in the diet and maximums for fiber and water. Therefore a food with a high percent crude protein analysis could (because of poor digestibility) actually have less digestible protein than a food with a lower percent crude protein analysis.
Furthermore, the protein source or combination of sources (ie rice, meat, corn) determines the type of amino acids (amino acid profile) present in the ration. A food could have a high % crude protein and a high digestibility but because of a poor choice of protein sources the actual amino acids that were absorbed did not satisfy the animals essential amino acid requirements. A high protein (or fat) content is not necessarily an assurance of quality. The fiber in a dog food can comes from beneficial fiber that originates from whole grains and vegetables or it can mean filler that has been added such as peanut hulls or newspaper.
Dog food manufactures can manipulate the order of the listed ingredients on the package label in several ways. In order to move meat ingredients up on the list, it is legal to weigh the meat before the water is removed. Another way to move meat ingredients to the top of the list is to list the grain fractions separately rather than listing them in one spot under the grain that they come from. Finally manufacture can assay their food for their ingredient list before or after production. Of course assaying the food after production is a much more honest approach because heating and processing removes vitamins, minerals, and fatty acids.
Foods that claim to be all natural and free of chemical preservatives may in in fact still be preserved with chemicals. If the manufacturer buys fat already preserved with ethoxyquin from a supplier but does not add any additional ethoxyquin himself then the manufacture is not required to list the ethoxyquin on the label and can claim it naturally preserved.
The terms premium, super premium, and all natural can be very misleading. First of all there is no universally accepted definition for these terms and most manufactures use the term very loosely to the benefit of their marketing campaign. A number of supposedly "all natural" foods state that they do not add chemical preservatives to their food when in fact ethoxyquin has already been added to the fat before they purchase it. My advice is to disregard such terms and evaluate the food using the tools I have provided.
Finally remember it is unfair to compare the guaranteed analysis of a canned food with a dry food or semi-moist because of the differences in water content. The only way to compare apples to apples is to convert the guaranteed analysis percentages to "dry matter basis". Here is how to convert the nutrient percentages on the guaranteed analysis to a "dry matter basis"
1. Subtract the stated % moisture from 100%
2. Take this figure and multiply it by the % crude protein, crude fat, crude fiber or crude carbohydrate as listed in the guaranteed analysis
3. The percentage you obtain from your multiplication is the percent of crude protein or crude fat or crude fiber or crude carbohydrate when converted to a "dry matter basis.
If you perform the above math on a canned dog food and then on a dry dog food you can use the figures derived to fairly compare the various percentages of nutrients.
Here's what your dog can tell you about the quality and freshness of the food you are feeding. Do not feed you dog any food that causes him or her to consistently develop diarrhea, a semi-solid stool, a voluminous stool or an unusually odiferous stool. The ideal dog food should cause your dog to eliminate at least 2 relatively small, firm stools a day. If your dog won't eat a new dog food or suddenly rejects a food that he has regularly been eating take this as a sign that there may be something wrong with the brand of food or with that particular bag. Of course it could be possible that your dog is not feeling well that day and just does not want to eat anything so try some table scraps and see how he responds. Any food that requires large amounts to be fed in order to maintain a normal weight should also be suspect of lacking quality. Finally, feed only dog foods that promotes a thick, lustrous, coat and healthy looking skin which produces a minimal amount of dander, odor, and itching.
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Healthy Ways to Feed Your Dog
Now that the pros and cons of feeding an all natural meat based diet and a good commercial diet have been discussed, what is a pet owner to do? Here is what I think your healthy choices consist of, starting from the most nutritious and least toxic to the least nutritious and most toxic:
- Feeding exclusively a fresh all natural, raw meat, raw vegetable diet as described in the above. Cooked rare meat can be used in place of raw meat but nutrients are definitely lost in the cooking. It is very important to use a carefully calculated recipe that assures your home made diet will be complete.
- Feeding a commercial, fresh, very high quality, meat based, whole grain, chemically free diet, supplemented with 25 to 30 raw meat and raw vegetables enzymes, probiotics, vitamins and chelated minerals.
- Feeding a commercial, fresh, very high quality, meat based, whole grain, chemically free diet, supplemented with enzymes, probiotics, vitamins and chelated minerals. However, no fresh meat or vegetables are added.
- Feeding a commercial, grained based food that contains alot of grain fractions/ by-products in place of whole grain, and does not use the best sources of animal protein. It probably contains chemical additives such as artificial preservatives, coloring agents, and taste enhancers.
- Feeding inexpensive off brand generic dog food that is loaded with the chemical additives and which uses as a meat source animals from rendering plants.
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Questionnaire that You Can Send to a Dog Food Manufacturer
(You should specify the full name of the dog food you are interested in.)
- Are there any organically produced ingredients in your food? If so then which?
- Describe the grade of meat used in your food. Where are the animals slaughtered? (USDA inspected plant or rendering plant?)
- Are the carcasses used, those that passed inspection for human consumption?
- What is the country where the animals were grown?
- Are any meat or poultry by-products used in the production of this food ? If so list specifically what these by-products consist of.
- Do you use only whole grains or are there grain fractions in this food?
- If there are grain fractions please list. Are the whole grains present, of a grade fit for human consumption ?
- With regard to the raw ingredients that go into this food--are they fresh or are they preprocessed, dried and rendered by-products?
- How long before processing are the grains ground?
- Do you mass produce your food or is it fresh batched on an "as needed" basis in order to provide maximum freshness?
- Are there any artificial chemical additives in the food? Please list.
- How is the fat preserved ?
- Do you add enzymes, essential fatty acids, probiotics and certain vitamins and minerals? If so which?
- And are they added before or after the food is heat processed?
- Are the minerals chelated?
- What is the source of the fiber used in the food and what is its specific purpose?
- What antioxidants are naturally in the food and which have you added?
- Do you test the food for molds and mycotoxins?
- Do you use any special packaging techniques to help reduce rancidification and mold formation?
Our Veterinary Care: Alternative Medicine | Holistic Philosophy | Nutrition | Acupuncture | Chiropractic | Bioresonance | Bio-Oxidative Therapy | Homotoxicology | Essential Oil Therapy | Bach Flower Remedies | Detoxification | Cryotherapy | Prolotherapy | Conventional Veterinary Care | Avian & Exotic
© 2006 Dr. John Simon, Woodside Animal Clinic
