Is Raw Pet Food The Best Option?
Is Raw Pet Food The Best Option?
They fill our days and hearts with absolute joy and unconditional love. They are there for us when we wake in the morning, with a lick or a purr and you can often find them tucked into the warm spot on the bed in the evening, or even more likely hogging the blanket… Their little furry faces bring comfort and kindness, friendship and companionship. They are described with words that evoke love, cuddles and cuteness. Often, they are surrogates for children, companions for the elderly and active members of the family. There is no denying the importance of the pet cat or dog to the family. Psychological health is better, physical fitness is achieved and mental clarity is improved. There are few who would deny that the pet cat or dog holds an incredibly important place in the lives of the family.
So it is therefore paramount that we look after our pets to the best of our ability, and provide them with shelter, food, exercise, freedom from pain and fear, and appropriate medical treatment when needed. Few would disagree. But just how do we know what is the best when caring for our pets? Obviously the first profession to consult is the veterinary industry but there are now a plethora of allied industries all claiming to offer the best for our pets; pet shops, pet superstores, discount pharmacies, boutique pet stores, online pet pharmacies, pet naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists, physiotherapists, groomers, Dr Google, Facebook and now even Woolworths! The number of different opinions on feeding, parasite control, pet insurance, exercise, breeding, dentistry and grooming is overwhelming. It is very easy to get lost in this deluge of information.
So what is the best way to care for our best friends to ensure that they do stay fit, well and healthy for as long as possible? To answer this question, we need to take a virtual tour back through time to the place where dogs were evolving and adapting to live alongside human beings.
About 130,000 years ago, domestic dogs were evolving from their wild wolf cousins and were living in packs on the fringes of human dwellings. Their primary diet was prey that they hunted in packs; smaller mammals, birds, reptiles and insects, as well as grasses and some roots and fruits that they foraged for when the hunting was lean. Humans tended to throw their rubbish outside the village in dumps, which provided some convenient pickings for the dogs. Cats on the other hand remained solitary animals for much longer, existing on the hunt alone and in time came to view human dwellings as a convenient place to hunt the mice, rats and birds that gathered to eat the grain the humans were storing.
As confidence grew, humans brought the dogs in closer for companionship and help on the hunt. Cats later moved in closer to humans, which also suited us as they kept the pests down; it was a mutually beneficial arrangement for all. Dogs, cats and humans have coexisted quite happily like this for thousands of years with little change…. Until recently that is.
In more recent times, humans have taken control over the entirety of our pets’ lives. From rearing our pets, to overseeing their breeding, feeding, medical treatment and exercise, absolutely everything is now under our direct control. The biggest of these to impact on the health of our pet is the diet we choose for our carnivorous companions. Every pet owner has the responsibility of choosing the food for our pets, but how do we know what is the best diet for them?
All species on the planet thrive best when they eat the foods that nature intended them to eat. When the digestive system is receiving items that it evolved to eat, that animal, person, reptile or bird will be able to achieve optimal health. The whole body lives in a symbiotic arrangement with internal bacteria, yeasts and even parasites. The food that we introduce to this ecosystem has to benefit all of the organisms in order to maintain good health. This is what a natural or species appropriate diet does.
The fundamental basis of good health is a fresh and healthy diet. We all intuitively know that a fresh, wholefoods diet based on what is seasonal and locally available is best. We know we should eat food closest to what our ancestral parents ate; less refined and processed products and more fresh vegetables, fruit and whole meats – the hunter-gatherer or paleo approach. We also see that if we go for an extended period of time eating a highly processed diet (think cereals, pasta, muffins, cakes and cookies, sausages and burgers) we start to feel groggy, unfocussed and lethargic. We know we need to eat some salad and vegetables and start to feel better once we do make these different choices. Imagine for a moment how we would feel if we were unable to make these diet choices. Ever. And now consider your dog or cat eating that same processed diet every day. How do you think this makes them feel?
But what does a natural diet look like for our modern pets?
For cats and dogs, a diet that contains fresh meat, organs and bones, essential fats and oils and some green leafy vegetables and herbs is the closest to their wild type diet. This diet can be nutritionally balanced over time, not every meal needs to be the perfect mix. There are some proportion differences between cats and dogs; puppies, kittens and geriatrics and also some changes that should be made with pre-existing diseases or illnesses. But the baseline ingredients remain the same.
There are a multitude of bags of processed food in the pet stores claiming to be “natural”, “organic”, “grain-free” and “holistic”; but what do these labels really mean and how “natural” are they?
A dry food or kibble-based diet is actually the furthest from the natural diet of our small carnivores, as you can get. These foods are low in meat-based proteins, high in refined grain carbohydrates, devoid of any moisture and biologically removed from the natural meat and fat based diet of our pets. The more processing that a food goes through, the less healthy it is for that species. We know this. There is a huge amount of marketing around for our human health that encourages us to stay away from processed foods and to eat as much fresh, wholefoods as we can to stay healthy. The same is true of our pets’ diet.
How can we as animal lovers, think that feeding our pets a completely processed diet based on refined grains is the only way to feed our pets? We know that they evolved to be efficient carnivores. How can a dry biscuit based food give our furry friends what they really need to live well?
It can’t.
The ideal diet is one that is closest to nature and in the case of our cat and dog pets, this is a raw meat diet. If we want to do the best for our pets and keep them mentally and physically thriving, one cannot go past the mantra that “You just can’t improve on Mother Nature”. Evolution over thousands of years has occurred precisely and we must respect this when deciding how we should care for our pet family.
This article was written by Dr Kelly Halls