Dog Lovers Newsletter

 

Many pet owners have their own way of feeding their treasured companions. Some feed biscuits, some feed pet roll, others make up their own concoctions with added rice and veges, others cook the meat first and some just feed solely raw meat and bones. To provide our companion animals with the best possible diet, we should take our cues from nature. Cats and dogs, if left to their own devices, would hunt and consume small prey. The food they consume is therefore raw with a little added dirt for good measure. For many people this seems a little hard to stomach (pun intended) because we don’t consume food in this way. To us, catching a rabbit and biting off a leg seems a little gross, but for all other carnivores on this planet, this is the food chain in action. We humans are the odd ones out, we are the only species in the world that cook food (we are also the only animal that wipe our bums, but that’s another matter entirely…)

 

Nature is a finely balanced mechanism, full of many wide and varied complexities. Our bodies require many vitamins, minerals and other nutrients in order to function and survive. However, many of these structures alter when we add heat and can become deficient. Damaged or altered bio chemicals are not as ‘bio available’ to use when heated. For example, the B group of vitamins are particularly sensitive to heating and a great many micronutrients, including anti oxidants are destroyed¹.

 

Heated proteins coagulate and many of the amino acids are destroyed. Many of you will have seen how eggs coagulate when heat is added to make them hard boiled, poached or scrambled. The chemical bonds within proteins are altered to such an extent that the process is irreversible.

 

Absence of vital amino acids can be fatal, as was discovered when heat treated cat foods were found to be deficient in taurine¹. In addition, proteins are the main source of allergens, with a change in the proteins chemical structure through heating the food, there is a causal affect in the allergic profiles. In an experiment in 1921, Heinz Kustner found he was allergic to cooked fish, but not raw fish. This may help explain why some pets fed on pet roll or biscuits have a higher level of allergies due to the extreme temperatures inflicted on proteins during the manufacturing process of petfoods. Cooked fats also become significantly altered at the biochemical level when cooked, even to the extent of becoming toxic¹.

 

This all sounds a little scientific for most people, but nature is a very complex beast. Science has done its best to explain many of the intricacies of this world, but still falls a long way short. However, it need not be this complex if you use a little commonsense and take your cues from the world around you. Many of us think we are doing the best for our animals by cooking their food, making it more palatable and appealing. This is our view and not that of our pets. They have been raw feeding for thousands of years and their bodies are engineered to make the most of bio chemicals extracted from the captured prey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Lonsdale T (2001) Raw Meaty Bones. Rivetco P/L