Why Most Dog Foods Are Like Donald Trump

Why Most Dog Foods Are Like Donald Trump

Commercial dog foods are like Donald Trump making empty, boastful statements. Whoa, do we want to make dog foods political? Yes, we should. As it is now, dog foods can boast that they are all natural, holistic, ancestral, evolutionary, premium, superpremium, biologically appropriate, healthy, human-grade, active, performance, sensitive, or completely natural and all these terms are without meaning according to the association of American Feed Control Officials (aafco).

Claim On The Dog Food Label

It’s the big claim on the front of the package that gives us confidence that the food is good for our pets. Why shouldn’t you believe the claims? The front of a package is for advertising. It’s the back of the package where you find useful information, so turn the package around and look at what’s in it. The truth about a pet food will be found in its list of ingredients.

The healthiest dog foods contain meat, fish, vegetables and fruit with limited amounts of grain or potatoes. Grain is a problem because it promotes obesity and may contain dangerous amounts of mold, such as Zearalenone and Fumoninsin,. Potatoes are a problem, especially with older dogs, because they promote arthritis. Unlike regular potatoes, sweet potatoes are not associated with arthritis.

The First Ingredient Is The Most Important

The ingredient in the food that weighs the most will be listed first, followed by ingredients of decreasing weight.

Some companies circumvent the requirement to list ingredients in order by weight by breaking an ingredient up into component parts, each part being listed separately. For example, if a 10 pound bag contains 3 pounds of chicken and 5 pounds of wheat, the company can put chicken first on the ingredient list if it buys its wheat as wheat flour, wheat gluten, wheat bran, each weighing less than the 3 pounds of chicken. This food will contain more wheat than chicken, but will legally list chicken first in the ingredient list and can boast of having chicken as the number one ingredient on the front of the food.

In addition to wheat, companies often split the components of corn, rice, and potatoes.

Unavailable Nutrients

Another liberty companies make with dog food labels is to list a high protein concentration even though dogs are not able to digest the ingredients that contain protein. For example, a food with corn as a major ingredient may claim to have 22% protein, but most dogs do not digest corn well and benefit from only 16-18% protein.

Available Protein

Unlike the protein in corn and grain, protein in meat and fish is easily digested by dog. For example, a food listing buffalo, lamb meal and chicken meal as the first three ingredients will contain more digestible meat protein than will a food listing corn, chicken and peas as the first three ingredients.

Probiotic Deterioration Often Makes Probiotics Unavailable
A similar effect occurs with probiotics, such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, which may be in the food, but generally does not survive storage and warehousing without refrigeration. How many dog food companies and distributors provide refrigeration in their factories and warehouses?

Breed-Specific and Size-Specific Dog Food Claims

The latest fad in dog foods is to claim the food benefits specific breeds or sizes of dogs. For example, companies can boast to have a food for sporting breeds, for toy breeds, for large breeds. These claims are often groundless. Why? One example is the whippet. A whippet is a small dog but it will generally fare better on a diet similar to that of the Greyhound as both evolved in the desert, than it will do with the diet of a Boston Terrier, Miniature Poodle or Pekingese.

Another boastful dog label claim is that hunting and sporting dogs benefit from some particular formula. This suggests the English Setter, Golden Retriever, Vizsla, and Weimaraner should benefit from the same ingredients as the Brittany Spaniel, Chesapeke Bay Retriever, Labrador Retriever, Irish Water Spaniel, Nova Scotia Duck Toller, and Portugese Water Dog. Not so. These two groups differ markedly, not the least of which difference is in their ability to flourish with fish as a primary source of fatty acids. All these are sporting, hunting dogs, but those in the first group did not evolve eating fish while dogs in the second group did. While individual characteristics are important, we should start with what each breed evolved eating when designing their diets.

What to Feed

Given the trumpeting of dog food label claims, how do we choose what to feed our pets? Start by investigating your dog breed’s background and evolutionary history. Don’t know—do some simple evaluation:

Is your dog one of the short-coated breeds? Then, it’s more likely from warm and hot locations. Was it hot and lush with fruit, such as the Chihuahua from Mexico that traditionally ate mango and avocado with poultry and wild boar. Or did your pet’s breed evolve in a hot, dry climate, such as the Whippet and Greyhound that traditionally ate low-fat diets including rabbit, chicken, goat and dates. None of these breeds evolved eating beef, soy or fish.

Is your dog a thick, double-coated breed which evolved in a cold climate full of fatty seal meat and fish like the Siberian Husky and Alaskan Malamute or a cold climate where it was feed grain like the Chow Chow.

Is your dog a thick, double-coated breed that evolved around water, such as the Labrador Retriever or Chesapeake Bay Retriever? These dogs evolved eating fish and thrive on fatty acids from fish rather than from flax seed.

Overwhelmed? There’s Help

If you’re accustomed to choosing your pet’s food by what’s on the label, figuring out what to feed may seem overwhelming. There’s help: ask a holistic veterinarian. You can find a holistic veterinarian by checking the American Holistic Veterinary Medicine website (www. Ahvma.org) or American Academy of Veterinary Acupuncture (www.aava.org). Canadian, British, and other nations have their own holistic vet websites.

These websites make it easy for you by listing veterinarian by location or telephone prefix.

In addition to helping you choose a commercial kibble for your pet, holistically trained veterinarians can provide nutritional advice for home-prepared diets. They will help you to feed appropriate meat, fish, poultry, and deeply pigmented fruits and vegetables full of antioxidants. They will help you evaluate what you’re feeding by looking at your dog: is it a good weight with ribs palpable? Does its coat shine? Both the weight and the coat are indicators of internal organ health.

Love Your Dog

There’s more to a healthy pet than nutrition—there’s love. Enjoy your dog, play with it, love it. That’s why it’s in your life. Love will always be as important to your dog’s health as what you feed. And boast about your dog. Trumpet to the world how wonderful it is. There’s no such thing as false advertising when bragging about your pet.

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