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BARF
and the question of GRAIN
When I wrote "Give
Your Dog a Bone", I was highly suspicious of grains
as dog food, having observed that where grain is fed to dogs
(not necessarily as commercial dog food - but even as
'healthy' whole grain human type foods) there
is a high correlation with a range of degenerative diseases
including arthritis, pancreatic disease and even cancer.
My research had lead me to discover numerous
problems with grains, but at that time, I had not uncovered
material regarding grains that would lead me to completely
condemn them. In particular, there was insufficient evidence
to condemn these foods on the basis of their starch content.
However, it would now appear that the apparently
innocuous starch, widely regarded as a supremely safe, and
cheap source of energy, is not the sweet innocent food ingredient
it appears to be! It is the emerging information on the role
of starch in producing poor health which has for me, put the
last nail in the coffin holding the grain.
 Our
dogs, like ourselves should only eat those foods on which
they evolved if they are to gain and maintain maximum health.
Over the last several years I have revisited numerous theories
regarding the damaging role of soluble carbohydrates in the
mammalian body. This information blended perfectly with further
information regarding the parallel evolution of dog and man
and the association between grain eating and the development
of degenerative diseases in both species. By correlating and
considering all this information, I could only conclude that
the dog is not a grain eater. On that basis, it has become
clear to me that unless a particular breed has spent thousands
of years on a mostly grain diet, there is very little justification
in recommending grains for dogs, and every theoretical and
practical reason to condemn it.
The biochemical/physiological basis for problems
directly related to the ingestion of grains relates to blood
insulin levels in response to blood sugar levels. The ultimate
effects of high carbohydrate diets include swings in blood
sugar and insulin, insulin resistance and high blood sugar.
This in turn results in pathological alterations in eicosanoid
production which in turn leads to obesity, hypertension, fluid
retention, musculoskeltal, vascular, renal, hepatic, CNS and
cardiac disease, and finally in many instances cancer. That
is, the ingestion of grain and other starchy foods (including
simple sugars of course) produces or helps in a major way
to produce most if not all of the degenerative diseases. There
are other factors which are involved, particularly when it
comes to feeding commercial pet food, including a lack of
protective factors, abysmally poor protein quality, the presence
of toxins in abundance, and the almost complete absence of
healthy fats.
In an evolutionary sense, a wild dog's diet
contain almost no grains. They never eat cooked grain. In
eating the intestinal contents of their prey they will eat
some grain which is usually immature and green. Most certainly
they do not eat a totally grain based diet like the modern
dog, subjected to a lifetime of dried dog food. Even if their
prey had been eating mature seed heads, by the time the grain
is consumed, it has been ground to a paste and soaked in the
juices of the herbivores intestines. A totally different product
to the masses of cooked and processed grains fed to dogs today.
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