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The Key To A Healthy Pet
A Superior Diet
Dogs and cats are carnivores, meaning that their dietary needs cannot be fully met without fresh raw meat in their diets. Almost all commercial pet foods, however, contain grains as their first and second ingredients, meaning that the majority of the product comes from grains.
If you are buying a generic dog food that costs $9.95 for a 40 pound bag, there is no way that this food can contain quality protein, or even quality grains. The cost of such ingredients would cost more than the purchase price.
Where do pet food manufacturers get the ingredients for their foods?
After the carcasses of animals have the lean meat trimmed away to be used for human consumption, this leaves approximately 50% by weight of the animal carcass to be used for pet food. What is left is bones, blood, intestines, lungs, ligaments and all other parts not consumed by humans. This is what is "processed" into animal by-products for pet food. It may be called meat or poultry meal, by-product meal, or or meat-and-bone meal. The word "meal" means that the ingredients are not fresh, but have been "rendered", a process in which the ingredients are heated or melted down so as to extract the fat. It's kind of like what happens when you cook a chicken, then let the broth cool. The fat rises to the top, so the the fat-soluble and water-soluble parts are separated. In this process, many of the natural enzymes and proteins are destroyed. According to the Animal Protection Institute, veterinarians claim that feeding slaughterhouse wastes to animals increases their risk of getting cancer and other degenerative diseases (1).
When you open a new bag of pet food, have you ever smelled a slightly pungent odor? That is rendered animal fat, restaurant grease, or other oils deemed too inedible to be eaten by humans. These oils are often rancid and have to "cleaned up" using powerful antioxidants so that they will not degrade any further. These oils are often sprayed directly on the food pellets to make a bland and tasteless food palatable so that animals will even eat them. It's the same trick that is played on humans when the food industry adds monosodium glutamate to a food which otherwise humans would not eat. It enhances the taste, or should I say, fools the brain into thinking that the food tastes good. It bypasses our natural instincts which cause us to avoid foods with certain smells because those smells indicate that the food is unsafe to eat. Pet food manufacturers have learned that animals love the taste of these sprayed fats, so they manipulate the animal's palate to get them to eat substandard, unhealthy, non-nutritional foods.
Even though dogs and cats need substantial amounts of protein, the amount of grain in pet foods has steadily risen over the years. The amount of nutrition in these products depends upon how well digested the grains are. Dogs and cats can almost completely absorb the protein from white rice. However, the nutritional availability for wheat, beans and oats is poor, and the availability of nutrition from potatoes and corn is extremely low. But what is the main ingredient in most pet foods? Corn.
Even canned foods which say on the label "with real chicken" or other such designations only need have 3% of that ingredient by weight in order to be able to make that claim.
Most people find one pet food that they or their pets like, and use it all the time. However, the idea that any one food product can provide for all the nutritional needs of an animal is ludicrous. That's like saying that humans will be healthy if they just eat corn all the time. Both we and animals require a varied diet in order to get the vitamins and minerals we need. In the wild, animals that hunt their own food would naturally partake of a variety of different nutrients. We should realize that our pets require variety just as we do.
The Pottenger Cats study, done by Dr. Francis Marion Pottenger, Jr. between 1932 and 1942, clearly showed the superiority of a raw food diet. Pottenger was feeding his laboratory cats cooked meat scraps such as liver, tripe, sweetbreads, brains, heart and muscle. These portions were considered to be rich in all important nutrients. He fed them this diet in order to try and improve the pre-operative health of these animals. He was perplexed, however, to find that these animals showed signs of deficiency and turned out to be poor operative risks. People began to donate more and more cats to his laboratory, and since there was not an abundance of cooked meat scraps, Dr. Pottenger placed an order for raw meat scraps from the local meat processing plant. He fed these scraps to a segregated group of cats and over a period of time saw a marked improvement in their overall health, as well as the fact that their operative mortality increased, meaning that fewer cats died during or after surgery (2).
We should understand from this information that the healthiest food for our dogs and cats is fresh, raw food. In our home, we offer our cats fresh ground beef, chicken breasts, tuna and other fish, fresh uncooked eggs beaten with raw milk, and occasionally, any vegetables they find palatable and will eat. We were prompted to stop feeding dry food when one of our cats began vomiting after every meal in which dry food was fed.
Also, in order to make our pet's nutrition complete, we use a supplement called Green Miracle for Pets from a company called Ultimate Living. This nutritional supplement is the only supplement for pets EVER to be approved for animal use by the SPCA. If for some reason you still choose to feed canned dog or cat food, this supplement MUST be a part of the daily pet diet. Green Miracle for pets:
Contains over 20 ORGANIC Ingredients
100% Organically Grown
Highest Quality Protein
Contains Goat Whey and Chia Seed
Strongest Antioxidant / Immune Booster
Promotes Circulation
Complete Joint Support
Aids in Nutrient Assimilation
And if you would like to join your pets
in maintaining optimum health, there is also a Green Miracle for humans
as well, which contains over 80 organically grown ingredients. If
you would like information about any of these products, we would be
happy
to provide this information via email.
References:
(1) The Animal Protection
Institute.
(2001). "What's Really In Pet Food?" Available Online:
[http://www.api4animals.org/doc.asp?ID=79].
(2) Price-Pottenger Nutrition
Foundation.
(1999). "Pottenger's Cats - A Study in Nutrition."
Available
online:
[http://www.price-pottenger.org/Articles/PottsCats.html].
Copyright 2006-8 Judie C. Rall and The Center for Unhindered
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