What’s Wrong with Regular Dog Food?

Dog food manufacturers do their best to provide a nutritionally sound meal for your dog. But grab your dog food bag right now and read the ingredients. If the first two ingredients are meat (protein), you’re doing better than most people at buying quality food for your dog.

However, take a closer look. Do you even recognize some of the ingredients? Do you think your dog will look and feel his best if he eats this sort of food every day?

Probably not!

In addition, proponents of natural and raw food diets suggest that commercially prepared food is inadequate for a variety of other reasons, including:

• Some of the ingredients can be less than desirable, such as poor quality meat or restaurant grease.
• Fats added to the product can go rancid before it ever gets to your dog’s bowl.
• The method of creating commercial dog food (e.g., using high heat) may destroy some of the nutrients in the food.

Perhaps the best thing you can do for your dog’s diet (and for your diet, for that matter) is to make it as close to nature as possible. That means fresh food, no preservatives. It means doing your best to mimic your dog’s natural diet if he was out in the woods fending for himself. He’d very likely be eating bones, vital organs, raw meats and some vegetation. By eating a raw food diet versus a commercially processed diet, dogs can be introduced to various beneficial enzymes and the good types of bacteria.

So does this mean that you can just start feeding your dog table scraps and it will be healthier than feeding commercially processed food?

Absolutely not! In fact, that would most likely be even more detrimental to your dog’s health.

Dogs require a different balance of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients than you do. If you do not get this balance correct, you are putting your dog at risk for various ailments.

Indeed, the American and British Veterinary Associations are opposed to raw food diets. Part of their disapproval is due to their concerns about food-borne illnesses and parasites.

Some skeptics believe that the vets have monetary reasons to dissuade you from feeding a raw diet, simply because a vet office often supplements their practice by carrying a line of commercially processed dog food.

However, I suspect that part of their concern also stems from the fact that most people will not take the time to learn the correct way to feed a raw or natural diet (which again is detrimental to the dog).

Let me use the analogy of jumping from airplanes. If you take the time to learn how your parachute works and learn all the safety features, your skydiving experiences can be safe and enjoyable. On the other hand, if you get all gung-ho and jump out of the plane before you learn how to pull the rip-cord on your chute, you’re likely in for a nasty landing.

What I’m trying to say is this: if you start feeding your dog a raw food or natural diet BEFORE you learn how to do it safely, it’s like jumping out of a plane before learning how the parachute works.

For example, many times humans have a tendency to want to feed their dogs foods that they themselves would eat. If you wanted chicken perhaps you’d choose the white breast meat.

However, in order for dogs to get their required nutrients, they usually have to eat the whole food just as they would in the wild. So instead of a chicken breast, they get the whole chicken so they can eat everything including the vital organs. Instead of just meat, they get the entire bone. Instead of an egg, they get the shells and all. Instead of a fish fillet, they eat the whole fish, head, eyeballs and all.