Category: Diet

Author: Sara Baxter

Tranquil Dog Owner, Dog Behavior Specialist/Trainer, Dog Foodie

 

Choosing the best food for your dog is no easy task.  There is so much confusion about what is good and what isn’t.  Even if you are diligent and read the ingredients list, many of them are confusing.  Names like Brewer’s Rice sound pretty cool, but are they?  Rice is good right?  What about Grain Free foods?  “ I heard that grain free kills dogs” is a common comment I hear. 

All excellent questions.  So, let’s start at the top.  The first thing I would like to say is that I wish all dogs could have manufactured dog food removed from their lives forever, no matter how much the bag costs.  It is highly processed using what I call vague ingredients.  Always remember that manufacturing dog food is a business and lowering overhead is important to any business, but what is the cost to the dog?  How high quality are the ingredients really?  After all, it is dog food.  What makes me wonder that?  The fact that some of them actually claim “human grade ingredients”, which must mean that the rest are not.  That is in fact the truth.  But in our everyday lives it is not realistic for most people to cook for their dogs, either because of the cost, the time or the research into the complete and balanced dietary needs of the dog.  And while I always advocate that whole nutritious foods be added to your dog’s life, this post is designed to help you choose a better bag of dog food.

In a previous post I talked about the fact that I am not against grains if they are healthy and not too prevalent in the food.  Most higher quality foods have good grains in them like brown rice, barley, oats and the like.  My issues are the quality of the grains and the amounts.  For example, white rice is so low in nutritive value that I will not purchase dog food that uses it, at least in the first 10 ingredients. Second example: Brewer’s rice.  This one really aggravates me.  Sounds cool, it’s not.  Should be named something like “highway robbery rice”.  Here’s the actual definition on Wikipedia and most other sites:

Brewers’ rice is the small milled fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from the larger kernels of milled rice.^[1]Brewers’ rice and second heads are two of the many byproducts that rice milling creates. Second heads are milled rice kernels that are one half to three quarters of the size of original kernel.^[2] Brewers’ rice is a milled rice kernel that is one quarter the size of a full kernel.^[2] Second heads, depending on their quality, are mostly used to make rice flour, whereas brewers’ rice is used in beermaking and production of other fermented products, and for pet food.^[2] “If the quality of the second heads are poor, they will be sold for pet food or dairy feed. Brewers rice is sold for pet food and dairy feed exclusively.”

The question is, is this a dangerous ingredient?  By itself it is not, but using a large quantity of it lowers the nutritive value of the food and how does that affect the dog in the long run?  Again, we’re talking big picture here.  At the very least I would choose a food that does not list a healthy grain until the third ingredient.  There are other low-quality grains and I have attached a link at the bottom for your review.

  Usually, grain inclusive foods have way too many carbs for a dog.  So, I choose a grain free diet for my dog and I add healthy grains to her diet.  What grains?  Brown, red, black rice and oatmeal usually.  The big giant question I get when I say this is the one about grain free dog food killing dogs.  Well, there is some truth to that in a very round about kind of way.  It is not about the lack of grains that became dangerous to the dogs, it was about what dog food companies replaced them with.  I want to remind you that dog food is a business so that is what usually drives the decisions in the board room.  It seems to me that sometimes common sense never even makes it through the door of that meeting!   Case in point, the addition of mass quantities of legumes in place of the more expensive grains.  See this ingredient list as an example:

Chicken Meal, Lentils, Duck Meal, Field Peas, Chickpeas, Chicken Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Tapioca, Salmon Meal, Menhaden Oil (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Flax Seed Meal, Canola Oil, Dried Apples, Natural Flavor, Marine Microalgae, Dried Chicory Root, Lecithin, Dried Blueberries, Dried Cranberries, Salt, DL Methionine, L-Lysine, Taurine, Calcium Carbonate, Lactobacillus Acidophilus Fermentation Product Dehydrated, Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Niacin Supplement, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate, L-Carnitine, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid,�Choline Chloride, Potassium Chloride, Zinc Proteinate, Betaine Anhydrous, Iron Proteinate, Selenium Yeast, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Calcium Iodate, Yucca Schidigera Extract.��

Three of the first five ingredients are legumes.  Think about that being fed to your dog every single day.  Lentils are not a bad ingredient, neither are chickpeas, but where is the moderation?  This dangerous trend gained a strong foothold somewhere around 2014 and  has held fast despite the scientific evidence denouncing it.  The problem specifically related to this is Dilated Cardiomyopathy.  DCM is essentially a reduced ability for the heart to circulate blood, a weakness if you will, to put it very simply.  The most common cause of this in dogs is a taurine deficiency.  Science is looking into legumes as a contributing factor in the deficiency.  While most dogs manufacture their own taurine in acceptable levels, legumes are highly suspected to be interrupting this process in some way with devastating results.  There is a link at the bottom of this post to read what the FDA has said about it, but it is really easy to look up info about this issue.

The bottom line is that the claim that grain free food kills dogs is not telling the whole story.  If you really wanted to tell the whole story about how a dog’s health is directly affected by diets then it would probably take a whole library of posts.  There are some pretty sketchy ingredients in dog food bags from colors to carcinogens and everything in between.

Incidentally, the bag of dog food that I took the ingredients from costs about $69 for a 25lb bag.  Price doesn’t necessarily tell you much. 

I have said it before and I will say it again, I am not a veterinary nutritionist, nor am I some kind of genius.  The good news is that you don’t have to be to make decent choices for your dog.  My advice to you is to not just assume that a bag of dog food is good for your dog.  There have been some very irresponsible choices made by the pet food industry so it’s up to you to be your dog’s advocate.  These companies know that few people hold a magnifying glass to the ingredients list so they get away with a lot.  It is my hope that the research I do will help you make better decisions for your dogs to keep them happy and healthy for a long time.  After all, we love them with our whole hearts!

 

Here are a couple of links for you to read further on this subject:

https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/outbreaks-and-advisories/fda-investigation-potential-link-between-certain-diets-and-canine-dilated-cardiomyopathy

 

https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/choosing-dog-food/dog-food-grain-by-products/

 

 

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Author: Sara Baxter

Tranquil Dog Owner, Dog Behavior Specialist/Trainer, Dog Foodie

You have been hearing this your whole life.  So, why then is it not the very first place vets and doctors explore to diagnose medical problems?

You can speculate about drug companies “encouraging” the vet to dispense their meds, or think that some vets just want to keep experimenting to make money. Perhaps they sell a line of food that is notorious for causing “allergic” reactions in dogs, so how could they bring that up?  Well, that may happen sometimes, but I don’t think that is normally the case. I think it just never occurs to some of them.  I have heard plenty of stories about how much testing a person went through just to find out it was a dairy allergy or celiac disease. I am pretty sure I am making some vets out there pretty mad, and I am sorry for that, it really isn’t my intention.  My goal is to have our dogs live LONG and healthy lives because we love them more than almost anything.  

What you eat, which things you eat together and how often you consume certain foods can have a profound effect on your health especially long term.  It is no different for your dog.  I am hoping that through a series of posts I can share some of the research in canine nutrition that I have been working on since early 2006 when my Boxer, Gretel, suffered with food sensitivities.  Back then, my vet did not believe me when I told him that I thought it was the food.  There were very few choices for “natural” dog foods back then, but I can tell you that a diet change pretty much saved her life.  I will tell you that it is an ever changing culture and, sadly, I am not sure it has gotten better over the years.

So, let’s compare people diet to dog diet.  Think about what you eat during the week.  You may not want to do that since perhaps you don’t eat the way you should, but look at all of the different things you eat regularly.  Either way, you do get most of what you need.  Does your dog have such diversity in his or her diet?  It is just as important for them as it is for us to be sure they are getting everything they need and not just the minimum required by law.

During my behavior sessions I cover diet and I hear this all the time: “Oh no, I do not give him people food.”  My response to that is: “Please do.”  Now, to answer your next question; No, it does not cause begging.  Begging is a lack of understanding and respect for authority, basically a leadership issue.  Food aggression runs along those same lines, but all of that cannot be adequately addressed in a blog post for sure.

If you didn’t know already, the ingredients in dog food are listed on the package by weight.  I won’t get into the breakdown of ingredients here, that will be for another post, but you should look at the label realistically.  Let’s use one popular, quality food as an example and I will not say which one so I don’t get myself into trouble. I just included the first 10 to 12 ingredients or so to make this point.

Ingredients

New Formula: Chicken, Chicken Meal, Whole Brown Rice, Brewers Rice, Barley, Chicken Fat (Preserved With Mixed Tocopherols), Rice Bran, Whole Grain Sorghum, Sweet Potato, Lamb Meal, Natural Flavor

Original Formula: Chicken, Chicken Meal, Whole Brown Rice, Brewers Rice, Split Peas, Rice Bran, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Barley, Lamb Meal, Dried Sweet Potato, Natural Flavor, Dried Plain Beet Pulp

If you think of these ingredients in terms of weight, and count the first seven ingredients as the bulk of the diet, what do you see?  I notice that four of the first seven are some sort of grain, or carbohydrate.  None of those are bad ingredients, but that is the reason I struggle with grain inclusive dog foods.  Add up the weight of the grains and it seems that there is too much.  You must remember that many people feed one kind of dog food, day in and day out for the dog’s entire life.  How can that possibly be good for the dog, no matter what is in the food? 

As a side note, this food obviously has removed the legumes from the top of the list, and that is good to see.  It looks like that trend is finally ending, more on that later too.

Anyway, my advice to you is to add a variety of foods to your dog’s diet. Whole, healthy foods will beat any highly processed dog food in the long run.  At this point I would not advise anyone to completely replace dog food altogether since we are not veterinary nutritionists and cannot assure the complete balance of vital nutrients.  But the occasional chicken dinner with veggies and a fruit dessert will only help your dog.  Sometimes I don’t cook, so my dog Frieda will have a dinner that looks something like this:  Rotisserie chicken, oatmeal, Gerber baby food like sweet potato, mango and kale, fish oil, probiotics.  Be creative but be careful not to feed the wrong things.  Here are some helpful links to get you on your way.

www.dogfoodadvisor.com

https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/people-foods-avoid-feeding-your-pets

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Watch for more posts to help you choose the best diet for your best friend!