It's
not in the Bag!
by
the
Urban Carnivore
reproduced with permission
There's
a lot of contradictory advice regarding raw foods for dogs.
Some people fear that it will make their dog aggressive
and others think they have to feed dry, canned or cooked
food to prevent their dog from getting parasites or dangerous
bacteria. Then there are those that just can't believe their
"best friend" is actually a meat-eating carnivore...
or is that omnivore? Some people feel that handling raw
food for their pet is just plain repulsive.
Many
people never consider exactly what their dog is really eating
or look at the back of the package when they are deciding
what to feed their pet. They may have seen an advertisement
on television or in a magazine that has influenced their
choice. Nutritional guidelines for pet foods have been defined
and are displayed on the products but for the most part
this doesn't really tell anyone about the actual quality
of the food itself.
The
guaranteed analysis on any pet food label lists the minimum
level of crude protein and fat as well as maximum amounts
of water and crude fiber on a dry matter basis. The analysis
does not guarantee the actual amount of protein, fat, water
and fiber. Rather, it indicates legal minimums of protein
and fat and the legal maximums of water and crude fiber
content. Ingredients are usually listed in descending order
of weight but some companies may list them alphabetically
or may display an incomplete ingredient list. No reference
to quality of an ingredient is listed. Therefore, it is
difficult to evaluate a product solely on the basis of the
ingredient list.
The
statement "complete and balanced" indicates that
the product contains all nutrients presently known to be
required and that they are balanced to the energy density
of the diet, but that doesn't mean it's balanced for a dog's
individual needs. Feeding trials must substantiate the "complete
and balanced" claims, or the food must contain at least
the minimum amount of each nutrient recommended according
to present guidelines. That doesn't mean that it actually
contains every nutrient your dog needs to thrive. It merely
means the food contains those nutrients that will keep a
dog alive.
Imagine
going to the grocery store to shop for your family
and every shelf contains bags of 100% "complete and
balanced"
dry, processed human food, guaranteed to meet the nutritional
needs of all humans... you have no idea what's in the bag.
You never get to eat any fresh food. Ever.
You eat this food day after day for your entire life.
Dry
dog foods, being the top selling convenience product, contain
either 'meals' i.e. 'meat meals', 'by-product meals' or
'digests'. The poorest grade meat comes from animals not
fit for human consumption and they are rendered into meat
meal. This rendered product comes from "mammal"
tissues, and does not contain hair, blood, hoof, hide, trimmings,
manure, stomach and rumen contents "except in such
amounts as may occur unavoidably in good processing practices".
Meat by-products by definition, consist of the non-rendered,
clean parts, other than meat derived from slaughtered 'mammals'.
It includes, but is not limited to lungs, spleen, kidney,
brain, liver, blood, bone, low temperature fatty tissue,
stomachs and intestines without their contents. Digests
are dried material resulting from chemical and/or enzymatic
hydrolysis of clean and undecomposed animal tissue. The
animal tissue used does not contain remnants of hair, horns,
teeth, hooves and feathers, "except in such trace amounts
as might occur unavoidably in good factory practice".
You
might be thinking "just a minute, this all sounds like
good food for a carnivore, doesn't it?" While many
of these ingredients may be acceptable foods for a carnivore,
the problem is none of these descriptions ever mention where
these food sources come from.
Just
about anything unfit for humans or animals finds its way
into rendering plants. This material is then denatured,
preventing its return into the human food chain. Machines
grind the material and then it is cooked at high temperatures.
The grease is extracted and becomes a source of animal fat
in many dog foods. These unstabilized fats undergo oxidation,
become rancid and they also contain high levels of extremely
harmful peroxide-free radicals. Did you know that rancid
fat can legally be used in dog food?
Because
conventional dog foods contain fats, a stabilizer is needed
to maintain the quality of the food. Common preservatives
include ethoxyquin, BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT
(butylated hydroxytoluene) and vitamins E and C. Ethoxyquin
was first used as a rubber stabilizer and an insecticide
and pesticide. It is probably one of the most powerful preservatives
available. BHA and BHT are used in human food as well as
dog foods and have a long history of suspected carcinogenesis.
Companies that buy ingredients, such as fat, that have already
been preserved with a chemical like ethoxyquin do not by
law have to list ethoxyquin as an ingredient of the food.
Even vitamin E could have the potential to cause problems
as only 'alpha' tocopherol acts as a preservative. The tocopherols
often used in dog foods may be other types such as gamma,
beta and delta. In short, foods containing these antioxidants
have longer shelf lives, but the continued feeding of them
may cause long-term health problems for dogs.
The
main ingredient in the majority of dog foods is grains,
rather than meat. If grains are not listed as the first
ingredient they are usually the second or third and more
often than not, comprise a good portion of the protein source
in the product. Grains not suitable for human consumption
may be used and can include broken grains, crop and weed
seeds, hulls, chaff, joints, straw, elevator or mill dust,
sand and dirt. Worse yet, they may contain herbicides, fungicides
and pesticides. Dog food manufacturers often manipulate
the order of the ingredients listed in several ways. Grain
ingredients are listed as separate fractions, rather than
together as a single grain, in order to increase the likelihood
that the meat ingredients are closer to the top of the list.
Essential
Fatty Acids are virtually non-existent in commercial food
as they are destroyed by heat during manufacturing. Some
companies add essential fatty acids to the food after processing,
but they are so fragile that they become rancid when exposed
to light and air. That means that once the bag of food is
opened, the fatty acids are destroyed and they become dangerous
to the dog's health.
Nutrients
in food are depleted, destroyed, and altered by cooking
or heat processing. The degree of alteration is only a matter
of temperature, cooking method, and time. High temperatures
create cross-links in protein. Cross-linked proteins are
implicated as a factor in the acceleration of the aging
process as toxic substances and "by-products"
are created. The higher the cooking temperature, the more
toxins are created. Studies have concluded that cooking
meat at high temperatures, to the well-done stage, produces
chemicals called heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that can cause
mutations (genetic damage) to cells, a first step in cancer.
Most,
if not all enzymes present in raw foods are destroyed at
temperatures as low as 117 degrees Fahrenheit. Digestion
of cooked food is much more energetically demanding than
the digestion of raw food. In general, raw food is so much
more easily digested that it passes through the digestive
tract in half to a third of the time it takes for cooked
food to digest. Beneficial intestinal flora becomes dominated
by bacteria, particularly from cooked meat, which may result
in intestinal dysfunction, allowing the absorption of toxins
from the bowel. This phenomenon is called dysbiosis, or
intestinal toxemia.
As cooked
animal foods are generally lower in nutrient value, individual
cells in a dog's body may not receive enough of the nutrients
they need. The immune system, having to handle the daily
invasion of toxins and toxic by-products, eventually becomes
overwhelmed and weakened. The wastes, toxins, mutagens,
and carcinogens that build up within cells, as well as the
daily onslaught of excess free radicals, may eventually
cause some cells to become cancerous. In other words, cooking
food doesn't make it as healthy or safe as we would like
to believe.
For
additional information on dog care, please visit the
Urban Carnivore site.
