Why Commercial Pet Food Is So Bad For Your Pet

September 8, 2009 by Diana
Filed under Commercial Pet Food

If you’re like most pet owners, you want to give your pet every opportunity for a long and healthy life. And living a long and healthy life means eating the right pet food and good nutrition. Good nutrition is a fundamental requirement to keep your pet in top physical shape, and improve his or her chances of resisting disease and other degenerative conditions. Unfortunately despite advertising claims most commercial pet food is not optimally healthy for your dog or cat.

Just as most processed, convenient “human food” is devoid of nutritional value, so is much of the dead, dry pet food sold commercially today. Much of the so-called “healthy pet foods” on the market contain inferior meat meals, cheap grains like corn and soy, fillers, by-products, food coloring, pesticides, preservatives, and other contaminants.

Case in point: the widespread contamination of melamine (a chemical used in the production of plastics, which imitates protein) rocked the pet food industry not so long ago, and led to thousands of deaths and illnesses. More than 5,600 products by dozens of pet food makers – everything from cheap supermarket brands to prescription-only food – were recalled in the process.

Commercial Pet Food Can Destroy Your Pet’s Health

Commercial “Pet” foods are actually a relatively new addition to the marketplace, only filling a consumer niche for the last 100 years or so. Many proactive, integrative and holistic veterinarians have long recognized the short falls of most commercial pet food.

Most widely available pet foods and even many of the brands conventional vets recommend do not contain clean, inspected ingredients, nor are they biologically balanced for your domesticated carnivore (cat) and scavenging carnivore (dog).

Common symptoms associated with regular consumption of commercial pet food includes:

Diarrhea
Increased flatulence
Dull coat
Intermittent vomiting
Prolonged scratching

During the 1980’s and early 1990’s, frustration with low quality food led to the emergence of improved dry pet foods. This higher quality kibble was baked rather than extruded, and contained more diverse ingredients and USDA inspected meats. During this time pet owners also began to realize the benefits of home cooked diets, where they could control the quantity and quality of ingredients added to their pets’ meals.

However, although these changes addressed some of the quality control issues, and began to address the biological appropriateness of pet food ingredients, it did not address the fact that companion animals were still consuming an entirely dead diet, devoid of all the benefits living foods have to offer.

Dogs and cats evolved to consume living, unprocessed foods, and once you remove the raw food, you disrupt nearly every important biochemical pathway in their body. This is a prescription for disaster, and maintaining your pet on completely cooked and refined foods can clearly impact their organ health. In fact, a growing number of veterinarians state that processed pet food (kibbled and canned food) is the number one cause of illness and premature death in modern dogs and cats.

In December 1995, the British Journal of Small Animal Practice published a paper contending that processed pet food suppresses animals’ immune systems, and causes:

Liver disease
Kidney disease
Heart disease
Other diseases

Another case in point: In one animal study, performed by Dr. Kollath of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, young animals that were fed cooked and processed foods initially appeared to be healthy. But once they reached adulthood, they began aging quicker than normal and developed degenerative disease symptoms. A control group raised on raw foods aged less quickly and did not develop any degenerative diseases!

Why The Raw Pet Food Diet?

Knowledgeable veterinarians have wisely abandoned the idea that cats can become trendy, healthy vegetarians and that dogs can thrive on an entirely grain-based diet. Most of us have the desire to match, as closely as possible, our companions’ current diet to their ancestral diet. This should be common sense.

Feeding your dog or cat raw food is the most biologically appropriate way to raise your pet. To argue whether raw pet food diets are appropriate for dogs and cats is moot; they have thrived consuming a variety of small prey for thousands of years!

Some Raw Pet Food Products We Recommend

Stella & Chewy’s Frozen Chicken Diet – 1.2 lb For Cat And Felines

Primal Pet Foods Raw Dog Food Chicken Patties 8 lbs.

Northwest Naturals Raw Dog Food Bison Nuggets 6 lbs.