Today more than ever, pet owners consider their pets to be members of the family. But are they so much a part of our families that we should be preparing their dinner plate side by side with our own? In recent years, personal stories have begun to circulate through the media over the advantages of feeding homemade diets. But do we, as pet owners, truly know how to balance our pets diets?
To start, let's think about our own diets. How well do we keep track of our own nutrient intake throughout the day? Let's look at my meals for today:
- Breakfast:
- Coffee with sugar free creamer
- Vanilla unsweetened almond milk
- Special K protein cereal
- Lunch:
- 2 Ground turkey tacos with fat free cheese and low carb, high fiber tortillas
- Corn and black beans
- Snack:
- Grapes
- Dinner
- Chicken and green pepper kabob
- Green beans
On first glance, this looks like a pretty well-balanced, healthy day. To really evaluate my meals, I plugged the my personal data as well as my meals into a popular app called "My Fitness Pal," and for the most part, I achieved my daily nutritional needs. According to the app, for a person of my age, height, and weight, trying to maintain their body weight, I should be consuming 1950 calories per day. My meals only add up to 967. While I met my needs for protein, I did not meet requirements for fat or carbohydrates, both of which play an important role in providing energy. I was also short of my goal for Potassium and Vitamin A. This is just a short list of the nutrients that are balanced out in pet foods.
Now let's take this one step further. What if I were to only eat one of these meals twice a day every day? Over time, the shortcomings of this meal in terms of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients are going to become more and more apparent, and start to affect my body. This is the challenge that goes into formulating a pet food diet. While our own diets tend to balance themselves out due to wide variety in our daily meals, our pets are typically fed the same meal for breakfast and dinner each day. So if your recipe for your pet's homemade meal is lacking in one essential nutrient, overtime they could begin to suffer from deficiencies.
While doing my research for this post, I found a lot of recipes online for homemade dog and cat foods. While none of the ingredients listed were particularly "bad" for the animal, what concerned me was the lack of nutrition information. Most of them provided no calorie information, no feeding guidelines based on the size of dogs, and no information about the protein, fat, vitamin or mineral content. A study done by Pedrinelli and coworkers in Brazil in 2017 evaluated 106 homemade pet food recipes and found that every single recipe was deficient in at least one nutrient. Similarly, a research team at UC Davis analyzed 200 diets and found that only 9 of them fulfilled the nutrient requirements of the animals. Furthermore, 92% of the recipes contained vague instructions that may leave pet owners left to "fill in the blanks" and guess amounts, cooking times, or quality of ingredients to use.
When discussing homemade pet foods, it only makes sense to also discuss the trends of raw pet food. In the last few years, raw pet foods have grown in popularity, claiming to be a much healthier option for pets. However, it is important to acknowledge the major shortcomings and risks of feeding raw foods, particularly meats.
Salmonella is a major point of concern when feeding raw meats to pets. Out of the 30 of the FDA's pet food recalls in 2018, a staggering 22 of them involved raw foods or treats, all for contamination with salmonella or listeria. This not only presents a risk to your pet, but to you as pet owners as well. Many animals can carry salmonella or listeria without showing any signs of illness. Imagine if your dog ate a meal contaminated with salmonella and then immediately started playing with your child, licking their faces.
Salmonella is a major point of concern when feeding raw meats to pets. Out of the 30 of the FDA's pet food recalls in 2018, a staggering 22 of them involved raw foods or treats, all for contamination with salmonella or listeria. This not only presents a risk to your pet, but to you as pet owners as well. Many animals can carry salmonella or listeria without showing any signs of illness. Imagine if your dog ate a meal contaminated with salmonella and then immediately started playing with your child, licking their faces.
Out of 30 of the FDA's recalls in 2018 that were for dog and cat foods (or treats) 22 of them involved raw pet foods or treats .
In addition to health concerns, many raw foods are actually less digestible than when they are cooked. Cooking proteins initiates a process called denaturation of the protein molecules which "untangles" the protein strands. This makes them more accessible by digestive enzymes and aids in digestibility.
Think of digesting protein like tying your shoes. Eating raw proteins is like trying to tie your shoes when your shoelaces are tangled up in a giant ball. Conversely, by cooking the protein, it would be like tying your shoes with laces that are laid out nice and neat, no tangles. Much easier to and faster to do right? Now, it is possible to overcook your proteins, and cause damage to the molecules. This would be like trying to tie your shoes with shoelaces that have been cut into multiple pieces. However, pet food companies measure and monitor this level of damage through research and digestibility studies, in which they can measure the amount of protein being absorbed by the animal.
In summary, if you are considering homemade or raw diets because you think they may be more nutritionally beneficial for you pet, reconsider. Always do your research and consult with your veterinarian before making any major dietary changes for your furry friend. Lastly, if you are really wanting to have more of a hands-on approach with your pets diet, consider starting with homemade treats. Fruits and vegetables like carrots or blueberries can be great snacks for your pet, and there are a wide variety of easy recipes for homemade biscuits available on the internet. This can be a great alternative to homemade diets, as treats are not responsible for the majority of your pets nutritional intake, and provide a fun way for you to care for and interact with your pet.
Until next time,
Spencer
References:
https://www.petfoodindustry.com/articles/3786-homemade-dog-food-may-not-meet-dogsa-nutrient-needs-study-finds
https://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/resourcesforyou/animalhealthliteracy/ucm373757.htm#recalls
https://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/resourcesforyou/animalhealthliteracy/ucm368730.htm
https://pettao.com/3-reasons-cooked-pet-food-diets-better-raw-pet-food-diets/
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