Food as the basis of good health is my passion. I really do believe that food can be your medicine or at least it can help your body to mount a strong immune response to fight illness. We all know that eating fresh whole foods will make us healthier than eating processed, high sugar, high salt and high carbohydrate boxed foods. This is a given and accepted by the medical profession. Why then is feeding our dogs and cats a highly processed high carbohydrate, low moisture kibble any better? It is convenient and it is what has been done for over 80 years but does it make it right? Processed food will surely keep you alive but will it give you the best health possible? Is keeping our pets alive all we wish for them or do we want them to also thrive?
Before WWII, as does much or the rest of the world today, people cooked for their pets. Dogs evolved eating what we, their human companions, ate. Cats caught mice and birds and supplemented their diets with wild game. During WWII meat became scarce and women had to go into the workforce to support the troops so excess time to prepare meals and the scarcity of good ingredients lead to the development of dry extruded pet foods. In order to form these hard dry nuggets, grains and other carbohydrates had to be added to the meat and most of the moisture had to be removed. Preservatives had to be added so it could sit on a store shelf and not spoil. Artificial vitamins and minerals had to be sprayed on top as all the natural occurring vitamins and minerals were destroyed in the high heat processing. Finally artificial flavors or undisclosed animal digests, made from scraps procured from processing plants, were sprayed on to make the food palatable. Over time it became the standard of care to feed our pets these “complete and balanced” processed diets. Yes, it is inexpensive and easy but what price are we paying for feeding these high carbohydrate processed diets? The incidences of cancer, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases and allergies are mirroring the same rise in our human populations. As we humans and our pets stray further from eating good quality whole foods our bodies become overrun with pro inflammatory mediators and chemical contaminants and our immune systems are losing the ability to keep it all under control which leads to increased disease processes in the body.
I would argue that feeding our pets whole real foods that have undamaged proteins, vitamins, minerals and active enzymes intact in a symbiotic relationship as nature intended, will decrease inflammation in their bodies and give their bodies the building blocks to repair and fight disease. No, food cannot stop all disease processes and it cannot fix all that can go wrong in the body but good nutrition can certainly make their bodies and immune systems stronger giving them a better chance of becoming healthy again.
I am available to discuss ways to improve your pet’s diet by adding whole real foods, in cooked or raw form as meals or as toppers. Whole food nutrition can help every animal whether they are currently healthy or already showing signs of illness. Nutrition is one of the 5 fundamentals of TCVM (Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine) and I am a true believer in its benefits. It takes time to introduce new food, and homemade diets do need to be balanced properly to be healthy but that is what I am here to help you do.