Cats and Dogs - What Do You Feed Them?


by Dr Karen Becker, Integrative Wellness Veterinarian

If you’re like most pet owners, your four-legged companion is a beloved member of your family. And just like the humans in your household, you want to give your pet every opportunity for a long and healthy life.
What you might not know is that despite advertising claims, the majority of commercial pet foods are not optimally healthy for your dog or cat. Just as most processed, convenient “people food” is devoid of nutritional value, so is much of the dead, dry pet food sold commercially today.

The pet nutrition industry is very similar to the human food industry – full of hype and false claims, peddling inferior nutritional choices. Much of the so-called “healthy pet foods” on the market contain inferior meat meals, cheap grains like corn and soy, fillers, by-products, food coloring, pesticides, preservatives, and other contaminations.

Case in point: the widespread contamination of melamine (a chemical used in the production of plastics, which imitates protein) rocked the pet food industry not so long ago, and led to thousands of deaths and illnesses. More than 5,600 products by dozens of pet food makers – everything from cheap supermarket brands to prescription-only food – were recalled in the process.

Good nutrition is a fundamental requirement to keep your pet in top physical shape, and improve his or her chances of resisting disease and other degenerative conditions. And when it comes to protein levels and organ health, the more we learn, the more we realize how little we knew before.

Many Commercially Available Pet Foods Can Destroy Your Pet’s Health

“Pet” foods are actually a relatively new addition to the marketplace, only filling a consumer niche for the last 100 years or so. Many proactive, integrative and holistic veterinarians have long recognized the short falls of many commercially available pet foods. Unfortunately, most widely available pet foods and even many of the brands conventional vets recommend do not contain clean, inspected ingredients, nor are they biologically balanced for your domesticated carnivore (cat) and scavenging carnivore (dog).

Common symptoms associated with regular consumption of commercial pet foods include:
  • Diarrhea
  • Increased flatulence
  • Dull coat
  • Intermittent vomiting
  • Prolonged scratching
During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, frustration with low quality food led to the emergence of improved dry pet foods. This higher quality kibble was baked rather than extruded, and contained more diverse ingredients and USDA inspected meats. During this time pet owners also began to realize the benefits of home cooked diets, where they could control the quantity and quality of ingredients added to their pets’ meals.

However, although these changes addressed some of the quality control issues, and began to address the biological appropriateness of pet food ingredients, it did not address the fact that companion animals were still consuming an entirely dead diet, devoid of all the benefits living foods have to offer. Dogs and cats evolved to consume living, unprocessed foods, and once you remove the raw food, you disrupt nearly every important biochemical pathway in their body. This is a prescription for disaster, and maintaining your pet on completely cooked and refined foods can clearly impact their organ health.

In fact, a growing number of veterinarians state that processed pet food (kibbled and canned food) is the number one cause of illness and premature death in modern dogs and cats. In December 1995, the British Journal of Small Animal Practice published a paper contending that processed pet food suppresses animals’ immune systems, and causes:
  • Liver disease
  • Kidney disease
  • Heart disease
  • Other diseases
Another case in point: In one animal study, performed by Dr. Kollath of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, young animals that were fed cooked and processed foods initially appeared to be healthy. But once they reached adulthood, they began aging quicker than normal and developed degenerative disease symptoms. A control group raised on raw foods aged less quickly and did not develop any degenerative diseases!

Why Your Pet Needs RAW Food

The introduction of commercially available raw food diets in the late ‘90’s offered tremendous additional health benefits to pets everywhere, because many varieties combined USDA inspected meats with human edible-quality vegetables and fewer grains, which is more biologically appropriate.

Several AAFCO approved homemade recipes also became available and contained options for living food additions. To argue whether raw food diets are appropriate for dogs and cats is moot; they have thrived consuming a variety of small prey for thousands of years!

Wild animals also avoid many of the degenerative health issues that plague our current domestic pet population. To suppose that your pet’s health would suffer any less than your own from consuming a highly processed diet, filled with corn and other denatured ingredients, would simply be foolhardy.

Of course, this should also be our first choice for our patients, as veterinarians.

The Two Main Problems with a Dry Food Diet

The biggest concern I hear about not feeding dry food is, “But what about their teeth?”

Remember: eating crunchy granola doesn’t brush or clean your teeth. You have to brush your teeth. Likewise, eating crunchy kibble doesn’t brush or clean your pet’s teeth. You still have to brush your pet’s teeth. So please don’t use this rationale to feed your pet a diet of mainly dry foods.

There are the two major problems with an entirely dry food diet.
  • Protein quality
  • Moisture content
Protein quality -- For years, protein got a really bad rap. More recently, proactive veterinarians have tried to re-educate pet owners about protein, protein quality, and protein requirements. Contrary to popular belief, protein requirements actually increase as pets age to combat catabolic processes, which can lead to muscle wasting. We have also learned that the biological availability of certain protein sources actually determines how easy or difficult they are to metabolize. For example, snouts and feathers, although 100 percent protein, are not nearly as digestible as lean muscle meat.

The quality of protein your pet eats is critical to reduce organ stress over time. The scary truth is that the majority of commercial pet foods on the market today are using rendered meats that are not approved for human consumption. Because kibbled foods made with these poor quality meats are so difficult to digest and assimilate, they can actually cause organ disease.

Moisture content -- Moisture content is another problem inherent in a mainly dry food diet. Our carnivorous companions were designed to consume non-dehydrated foods. Species appropriate diets -- foods free of corn, wheat, rice and soy -- formulated in their biologically correct form, meaning raw or minimally processed, with non-denatured proteins, contain all of the moisture needed to process the food with minimum metabolic stress.

Did you know that the natural diet of dogs and cats is up to 70 percent water?

That’s right: rabbits and mice, like our bodies, are primarily composed of water. Our pet’s bodies have evolved to consume a diet that is rich with water, not dehydrated, and not cooked.

When food is cooked and dehydrated (which is how kibble is produced), several things happen, the most detrimental of which is that the food becomes dry. Far too dry to be healthy.

This requires your pet’s body to provide sufficient moisture to reconstitute the food in their digestive tract. Although some animals may make a noble effort to consume enough water, many animals, and most cats, don’t.

The Association of Feline Practitioners recommends owners feed cats a diet of primarily canned foods (vs. dry foods) for this very reason.

What are the most notable physiologic changes when our companion animals consume a dehydrated, poor quality protein diet?
  • Kidney stress
  • Liver stress
  • Metabolic stress
A lifetime of minor dehydration is stressful to multiple organ systems, but most notably the kidneys. It’s important to realize that this can easily be remedied by feeding canned or living food diets, and can easily be avoided by feeding foods that have not been dehydrated (dry food).

My Diet Recommendations

The convenient alternative to our pet’s ancestral diet looks great at first glance, but poses significant health risks if fed as a sole diet indefinitely. Remember, our pet’s bodies are resilient. They can eat a variety of suboptimal, metabolically stressful foods on occasion and be fine, but because it’s our goal to provide a diet that most closely fits our companion’s biological requirements, we don’t recommend a lifetime of kibble.

Our goal is to provide a diet that mimics our pets biological nutritional requirements as closely as possible…in this case it means rethinking the “lifetime of dry food” theory. Thankfully, we can make one healthy lifestyle change at a time, which optimizes our pet’s chances of achieving abundant health. Next time you go to your local organic butcher ask for some chicken thigh fillets, with or without bones. When you get home give your pet the whole thigh in its raw state without chopping it up. It may be easiest to give this to them outside so they can take their time to chew on it and get it down. The bones in their raw form are good for their teeth and the flesh in its raw form is easy to digest and moisture rich.

If you are unable or unwilling to feed your pet a species appropriate, nutritionally balanced, raw food diet, then I strongly recommend you compromise with the next best choice: USDA approved canned foods.

My last choice would be a dry food (kibble), made from human-grade ingredients with little to no grains, and LOTS OF WATER.

I’m not anti-kibble. But it’s important to recognize why you choose to feed kibble. Most pet owners feed kibble for convenience, or because your pets like it. But the truth is, it’s frequently not species appropriate, and can seriously damage your pet’s health.

Fortunately, once you recognize it’s not the healthiest choice for your companion it makes it easier to gently begin transitioning to a more biologically optimal food.

Source: www.healthypets.mercola.com/sites...

The Pottenger Cat Experiments

In the 1940's Francis M. Pottenger (not Pottinger) M.D. began a ten year study using 900 cats to determine what effects processed foods have on the body, and to examine the genetic propensity of passing degenerative disease traits from generation to generation. The cats were divided into five groups with two of the groups fed raw whole foods and the other three groups cooked enzymeless foods. The cats were observed over a four generation period and the following results were documented by Doctor Pottenger:

POTTENGER CAT EXPERIMENT SUMMARY

GROUP A B C D E
FOOD FED Raw meat Raw milk Pasteurized milk Evaporated milk Condensed milk
1st Generation Remained healthy Remained healthy Developed diseases and illnesses near end of life
2nd Generation Remained healthy Remained healthy Developed diseases and illnesses in middle of life
3rd Generation Remained healthy Remained healthy Developed diseases and illnesses in beginning of life; many died before six months of age;
4th Generation Remained healthy Remained healthy No fourth generation was produced: either third generation parents were sterile, or fourth generation cats were aborted before birth
Source: Pottenger's Cats, a Study in Nutrition

Pottenger's cats study gives insight into why children today are getting degenerative diseases that used to only show up in humans at an age of 50 years or older.

What's alarming about this study is that the levels of health get progressively worse with each generation. The four generations of cats were observed over ten years. It takes approximately 20 years to beget a generation of humans so the same study would take over 80 years in people . Of course no such study is being done, but it's easy to observe that there is a tremendouse increase in heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and autoimmune diseases over the last eighty years. There is however a decrease in infectious disease so we may be living slightly longer. Let's look a little closer.

GENETIC POTENTIAL
Diseases are not inherited; rather only the tendency or potential of a disease is passed on from parents to offspring. The disease tendency is transferred by way of the genetic code. A genetic tendency is only a potential disease though. A genetic weakness does not have to manifest as a disease unless there are factors that exploit that weakness (poor diet, for example).

These genetic weaknesses will get worse with each succeeding generation if they continue in a enzymeless nutrient poor diet. The study proved that genetic weakness becomes more evident with each generation, but more importantly, that there comes a point when it becomes totally out of control. This is evident in the fourth generation.

Here's what Dr. Pottenger said, "While no attempt will be made to correlate the changes in the animals studied with malformations found in humans, the similarity is so obvious that parallel pictures will suggest themselves."

Source: www.nutritionreallyworks.net/Pottengers...
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Previous Comments

Anonymous commented on 07-Jul-2011 06:26 PM1 out of 5 stars
Can't read black on black. Had to copy and paste into a doc. But thanks
James commented on 08-Jul-2011 01:26 AM5 out of 5 stars
Hmmm I'm not denying the points made in the article but we had a cat who died recently who was almost 20 and was fed IAMS dry food her whole life? She had Kidney failure at the end so the vet said there was no choice but to put her down (I have since found
out there were actually other options we could have tried outside convetional Vet protocol) My point is that would our Cat have lived much longer then 20 years if we had not fed her Kibble her whole life? It just seems strange to me as the Vet that put our
Cat down said she had never dealt with a Cat as old as ours before? So what is the lifespan of a cat who is felt a more natural diet?
Christobel Say commented on 08-Jul-2011 11:10 PM1 out of 5 stars
What a pity the article did not explain the reason why the protein in the cooked diet is damaging to the cats health - it is because cooking destroys the essential amino acid Taurine, and cats cannot synthesise their own Taurine, just as we cannot synthesise
our own vitamin C. Fortunately, most brands of cat food, canned and dry, supplement with Taurine, which is why generations of healthy cats have now been breed on commercial diets. Once again, just wish you guys would produce more balanced content, not just
continuing internet half truths.
Karen commented on 10-Jul-2011 10:27 PM1 out of 5 stars
I'm rather disappointed with this article. It seems rather one sided & not the whole truth. As a Certified Veterinary Technician, it is not only our goal to educate but our duty to educate our clients on the best optimal care for our four-legged friends.
While RAW diets are ok for some I really wished this article at least gave a foundation on what the populace needs to at least look for in dry kibble as well as canned (with this economy, not everybody is fortunate enough to buy organic meat from the grocer
or directly from the farmer). Our four-legged friends have become more than just pets, they are our family. And yes, we want the best quality of life for them. What this article failed to mention is that PREMIUM (not holistic or organic) dry including canned
dog/cat food are just as an optimal & best of a choice as RAW diets are too. And labeling including the content on guaranteed analysis is everything (ingredients not very important), people have the right to know what they are reading when trying to decide
if one brand is just as good as the other. There is so much much more to the nutritional values you can offer your four-legged friend & this article only barely scratched the surface. Bottom line is, people should speak directly with their Veterinarian especially
if they have concerns that the food they are giving isn't an optimal choice. Again, rather disappointed in this article. I do hope there will be another article that at least isn't so one sided & truly tries to educate not scare people.
Crystal Rzepecki commented on 10-Jul-2011 11:58 PM5 out of 5 stars
MY dogs have never liked dry food. I had to assume then that something in them tells them it's not what they need or it's not even food! So i feed them a lot of people food, but that's not always healthy either so I'm really glad this article is out there!
i was nervous about giving them raw food even though i figured evolutionarily speaking it should be fine. so now i can't wait to try it! Dogs know what they want.
Crystal Rzepecki commented on 10-Jul-2011 11:58 PM5 out of 5 stars
MY dogs have never liked dry food. I had to assume then that something in them tells them it's not what they need or it's not even food! So i feed them a lot of people food, but that's not always healthy either so I'm really glad this article is out there!
i was nervous about giving them raw food even though i figured evolutionarily speaking it should be fine. so now i can't wait to try it! Dogs know what they want.
kRiZ commented on 11-Jul-2011 02:20 AM5 out of 5 stars
Christobel, do more research.. Taurine is not the only issue. Moisture, digestive enzymes, natural micro nutrients destroyed through cooking. You are wrong.
Anonymous commented on 11-Jul-2011 05:33 AM5 out of 5 stars
What about doggie detoxing? I have wormwood, black walnut hull herb tincture, powdered greens and other suggestions?
Anonymous commented on 15-Jul-2011 10:20 AM3 out of 5 stars
I take offense to the tone of this article and feel like it looks down upon people who can not afford to feed their pets premium raw meat. I also do not appreciate how commercially available pet food is lumped together as bad. The meat in my cat's food
is easily identifiable, has no grains, and the fish is not farm raised and is sourced from areas of the ocean with the least amount of pollutants. If you shop around on the internet you can get top quality brands for much cheaper than the usual vet recommended
diets. In the US almost all vets have one short class on nutrition and guess who sponsors those classes? Science Diet. It's no different than drug reps and doctors. Check out Weruva's BFF line, doggiefood.com has the best price I've been able to find.
Doglover commented on 22-Sep-2011 04:49 AM4 out of 5 stars
Kare, I disagree with you. I fed my dogs a premium high quality holistic kibble and they still got UIT's and Bladder Stones and a slew of other "mysterious" ailments. In the 3.5 yrs they've been raw fed they've had none of those issues. Not a one. No more
UTI's, no more Bladder Stones, no more skin rashes, hot spots, or colds, or anything else that I used to take them to the vet for. Now they go for an annual check up and that's it.
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