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Processed
Pet Food - Why you should avoid it
“Let medicine
be your food and food your medicine
has been the catch cry of dedicated healers down the ages".
On that basis it is hard to believe that
dedicated animal healers – veterinary surgeons - will
recommend commercial pet food. I find this hard to believe
because as a practicing veterinary surgeon, I constantly
see the enormous difference in health between pets raised
on commercial pet food compared to those raised on a biologically
appropriate raw food diet. I see the enormous change for
good in the health of pets switched from cooked to a raw
whole food diet. Despite that very obvious connection between
commercial pet food and the poor health of the animals consuming
it, commercial pet food has become the accepted way to feed
pets throughout the civilized world! There are of course
reasons. Much of it has to do with the way vets are trained
in small animal nutrition.
 An
alarming fact of life is that vets receive very little worthwhile
training in nutrition. No training in the use of raw whole
foods and a biased approach to our understanding of commercially
produced pet foods. It is relevant to ask what do many veterinarians
really know about pet foods? Unfortunately the answer translates
as - not very much. Regrettably, a lack of knowledge concerning
nutrition has become the basis for recommending processed
pet food!
Most people and that includes vets who are
interested in their own health, will acknowledge raw whole
foods as basic in the formulation of their own healthy diet.
Why then do we insist on feeding our pets processed pet foods?
Sadly we have been hoodwinked into accepting the hype regarding
commercial processed food. We are prepared to believe the
highly improbable theory that two species of animal, the
dog and the cat, will do better on a diet for which their
bodies are totally unsuited rather than their evolutionary
diet!
"Unfortunately,
many of the people who realize that commercially produced
dog food does not produce worthwhile results, devise and
cook up something which is in essence not very different
from the processed food they were worried about. As a consequence,
the results in terms of the health of their dog is not a
whole lot better"
Processed pet foods do not produce the lifetime
of health promised by the pet food companies. They do not
produce the lifetime of health seen when a properly formulated
raw whole food diet is employed. Most degenerative disease
processes in pet animals are the direct result of a lifetime
being fed cooked and/or processed foods. This includes those
so called "super premium" foods that have their
own set of unique nutritional problems.
The super premium processed foods have most
of the drawbacks commonly associated with “ordinary” pet
foods, chief among which is the fact they are based on cooked
grain. However, they have an additional problem. In their
attempt to remedy another common problem associated with
dry foods - a lack of essential fatty acids, both omega 3’s
and omega 6’s - they contain a very high level of cooked
polyunsaturated fats. This makes the coats of the creatures
that consume these products look good in the short term,
but in the long term, the inclusion of high levels of heat
damaged essential fatty acids will produce an enormous range
of degenerative diseases including many of the auto immune
diseases.
A lot of people use the expression “natural
diet” when referring to the evolutionary diet of pet
animals. Forget the word natural. When we approach this way
of feeding from a scientific standpoint we speak about feeding
our domestic pets a biologically appropriate diet. It is
important to realize that processed foods are biologically
inappropriate. That is why they cause problems. They are
not up to the standard the ‘manufacturer’ of our
pets requires for optimal performance. I believe that when
we vets recommend any form of cooked and processed food we
fail our clients and their pets in a major way.
The sad truth is that
prepared pet foods help provide patients for vets
Prior to the mid 1960’s, most Australians
fed their pets on home produced food. On the down side, the
worst we did was to produce a few simple and very obvious
nutritional excesses or deficiency problems. Mostly calcium
deficiencies, with the odd vitamin B1 deficiency, vitamin
A excess and the very occasional vitamin E deficiency. These
were simple uncomplicated nutritional problems that are (and
were) easily remedied. As our pets moved onto a steady diet
of processed foods, we swapped these limited number of easily
remedied straightforward nutritional problems for the vast
array of complex and insidious degenerative diseases which
now afflict our pets and fill our textbooks and waiting rooms.
Problems with difficult medical and surgical solutions. Problems
that are not usually associated with their true cause, the
biologically inappropriate foods that spawned them.
The question we must ask, has the swap been
worth it? For pet owners, has the convenience of feeding
their pets with pet foods been worth the increase in degenerative
disease? As vets, has our relinquishing of the right to be
the experts on nutrition been worth the tremendous increase
in the suffering of our patients? We must educate ourselves
about the enormous dangers inherent in cooked and processed
foods. We must realize that they cannot and do not promote
health.
The proof concerning these products is found
in the long term results of feeding them and the degenerative
diseases they produce. The reason these diseases occur is
very simple. These processed pet foods are BIOLOGICALLY INAPPROPRIATE.
Those two words are the heart of the matter.
In What Way are These
Foods Biologically Inappropriate?
The philosophy behind the production of even
the so called “best” of these awful products is
flawed. It is based on the requirements of the manufacturer,
not the needs of the consumer. That is, cost and availability
of basic ingredients combined with what is currently known
and legally determined as the minimum nutrient requirements
for a pet animal. To the recipes formulated using these principles
is added whatever the manufacturer deems necessary to ensure
the animal eats it (flavor enhancers), and whatever chemicals
will prevent it from autolysing or becoming rancid, together
with colored dyes to attract the purchaser. The result is
a cooked “complete and balanced at every meal” product
which does not promote long term health, and although “legally
complete,” is not biologically complete - there is a
vast difference.
Processed pet foods contain barely adequate
levels of the known vitamins. As a result, pet foods do not
cater for stressful periods when vitamin needs increase or
the individual needs of certain animals whose requirements
are higher than average. Pet foods are full of indigestible
and inappropriate grain based fibers that are used as cheap
fillers. These fibers bind and make unavailable essential
nutrients. They have an almost complete absence of biologically
appropriate fiber. Note that the fiber - sourced and used
by modern pet food manufacturers who have only just discovered
the importance of fiber - is not biologically appropriate
in the way that raw fiber produced from a wide range of in-season
whole fruit and vegetables is.
Many contain biologically inappropriate antioxidants,
enormous levels of refined sugars and masses of salt together
with other chemicals used as colorings and flavorings. This
chemical cocktail is a lethal brew which is a major factor
in producing the epidemic of degenerative disease leading
to the early death and suffering we see in pet animals fed
such rubbish, including cancer, arthritis and a range of
allergies and auto immune diseases.
 Cooking
renders these products biologically inappropriate in a fundamental
way. It is now widely recognized that cooked food has had
much of its nutritional value lost. Cooked foods are devoid
of enzymes and biologically active essential fatty acids
due to heat denaturation. Once denatured, enzymes are no
longer biologically active. They are simply cooked proteins.
Denatured essential fatty acids which should be the backbone
of health become slow poisons, doing irreparable damage.
In fact all processed pet foods are disease producing simply
because all of them lack biologically appropriate essential
fatty acids. They are either not added in the first place,
or have been denatured by heat during processing.
Cooking causes complexes to form between
proteins and starches, between vitamins and trace minerals,
and between minerals and minerals. By this method carcinogens
and anti-immunogens are formed and many minerals, essential
amino acids and vitamins are lost to the animal by becoming
indigestible.
Processed and cooked foods are biologically
inappropriate because they lack nutrients which are only
present in fresh whole raw foods. These are the nutrients
the body requires for healthy longevity. They include biologically
appropriate antioxidants - substances present in the species
diet until the present era. They include the phytochemicals
which to date number in excess of 100, 000 isolated, with
many more being discovered daily. Unfortunately typical processed
pet foods do not contain these health promoting degeneration
reducing factors. Such factors are present only in raw whole
foods.
It takes many years for the loss of such
nutrients to be noticed. Even then, the degenerative diseases
which develop are generally assumed to be part of the “normal” aging
process, and are rarely if ever linked to these foods which
caused them.
The vast majority of these products are based
on cooked grains. This makes them biologically inappropriate.
At no time in their evolutionary history (except in the last
50 to 150 years) have cats and dogs been subjected to cooked
grain in any amount, and certainly not as the basis of their
diet. Our pets in Australia have only suffered eating this
way for a relatively short period of time. About thirty years.
However, in that relatively short period of time we have
seen a population of pet animals exchange a few simple deficiency
diseases for a whole range of complex degenerative diseases
largely unknown prior to that time.
Biologically inappropriate pet foods attempt
to be balanced at every meal rather than producing a situation
where the diet is balanced over time. This, approach where
added vitamins and minerals are mixed with a combination
of chemicals, starches, proteins and rendered fats and then
mixed and subjected to heat, makes many nutrients unavailable.
It also produces toxic and carcinogenic chemicals.
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