Russell Louie and Margaret Auld-Louie will be demonstrating the benefits
of our holistic whole food product for pets,
BioPreparation. For more information on the expo,
click
here.
Lisa Speaker of Dogma
and Margaret Auld-Louie of Optimum Choices are developing a local chapter of the
IAAMB, International Association of Animal Massage and Bodywork
(IAAMB). This will be a
Colorado state organization that meets quarterly to network, mentor, discuss and
affect state legislation and to work on advancing credibility for our
professions. We would like to have a speaker at each meeting so that it
will be an educational experience as well. We are calling this new
organization CAAMB - Colorado Association of Animal Massage and Bodywork.
We have now set a date and location for the first meeting as follows:
Lisa Speaker will talk about CAAMB, including how to get involved and how it
can benefit your practice.
Margaret
Auld-Louie will talk on
Why
All Dogs Need Massage, including demonstrations of common structural
imbalances that most dogs have. We will also have time for networking and
discussing the future of our organization. We will have information on the
International Association of Animal Massage & Bodywork, which CAAMB will be a
chapter of.
We believe that forming the CAAMB is a very important step in advancing the
credibility of our practice on a local level and hope all Colorado Animal Body
Workers will join us! If you are a Colorado animal body worker or energy worker and have an
interest, please fill out our online form or send e-mail
to Margaret@OptimumChoices.com
or call us at (303) 271-1649.
We think it is normal now for large dogs to die at 10–12 years of age but
before the advent of commercial pet foods, when they ate table scraps and raw
bones from the butcher, they would often live to 20 years of age or more. The
claims of commercial pet foods to be "complete and balanced" are based on short
feeding trials and limited research. Perhaps pet foods are not as healthy as the
ads proclaim.
When determining the best food to feed our pets, it makes sense to look at
what their bodies were designed to eat by Mother Nature. Dogs and cats are
carnivorous (meat-eating) animals. The diet that they have thrived on for
thousands of years is primarily raw meat and bones. Dogs are naturally predators
and carrion (dead meat) eaters. The natural diet of wolves and wild dogs is game, rodents,
birds, eggs, fruit, root vegetables, berries, seeds and nuts. Dogs can survive
as vegetarians though this is not their natural diet. In nature they eat 60 to
80% meat and minimal grains. The grains they do eat are fermented in the stomach
of their prey and wolves will often pass on eating the stomach, preferring other
parts of the animal.
Cats
are “obligate carnivores”, meaning they must have meat to survive. They need 70
to 95% meat in their diet and cannot survive as vegetarians. Domestic cats are
descended from the African wild cat, whose natural diet includes rodents, birds,
eggs, reptiles and insects. They got their moisture from their food and not
drinking water, as they lived in the desert. So the ideal meal for a cat would
be a mouse or lizard. This wild cat was domesticated by the Egyptians 4,000
years ago to protect their granaries from rodents. The cat was ideally suited to
this task, since it did not eat grains. Yet today, we feed our cats kibbles that
contain more grains than meat.
Another way to determine what nature designed our pets to eat is to look at
their teeth and digestive tract. This is how biologists determine what an animal
is designed to eat. Nature gives herbivores grinding teeth for mashing up plant
foods, a multi-chambered stomach for fermenting plants over time and a long
intestinal tract for breaking down plant foods. Also, they have the enzyme
cellulase which breaks down the walls of plant cells. Carnivores get sharp
pointy teeth for killing their prey and then tearing the meat off the bone. They
may have some molars for crushing bones but they don't have flat surfaces for
grinding plant material. They have a single stomach with a high acid level for
breaking down meat and bones quickly and a short intestinal tract to quickly
digest the meat while giving bacteria and parasites minimal time to set up
housekeeping. They lack the enzyme cellulase because most of the plant material
they get is from the digestive tract of their prey so it is already broken down.
Omnivores, like humans, have something in between these two extremes and humans
also lack the enzyme cellulase. Dogs and cats have the teeth and digestive tract
of carnivores--cats more extreme than dogs.
Unfortunately,
commercial pet foods are not even close to what dogs and cats are designed by
nature to eat. Although kibble (dry food) may be meat flavored and colored, it
must contain a high percentage of starch (usually grains), otherwise the meat
clogs up the kibble-making machinery. So it is really more like meat-flavored
cookies. Most kibbles have only 18-25% protein. The super premium brands of
kibble have a higher percentage, typically ranging from 30-40%, but still high
in grains. One brand, Evo, is created on custom-made kibble machinery and their
cat kibble contains 50% protein, however, the starch used is white potato, which
may aggravate arthritis in older animals.
Did you know that most pet food companies, even many premium ones, are owned
by large conglomerates such as Colgate-Palmolive (Hill's Science Diet) and
Procter & Gamble (Iams & Eukanuba)? Commercial pet food was created years
ago not only to provide convenience for pet owners but to make a profit by
taking the waste from the human food industry, food unfit for human consumption,
and turning it into pet food. So it makes sense for companies that produce
human food to also produce pet food. The waste from human food found in many
pets foods includes 4D meat (diseased, disabled, dying and dead) and meat
by-products, which includes indigestible materials such as beaks, feet, feathers
and hair. Pet food has even been found to contain the remains of euthanized
animals from animal shelters (for evidence, see the book
Food Pets Die For). Leftover fat from restaurants, that has been fried so
many times that it is rancid and toxic, is sold to pet food companies to be
sprayed on the kibble to make it more palatable. Grains are used heavily in pet
foods as filler, to make it cheaper. But these grains are difficult for
carnivores to digest, since they are not fermented, and they may also contain
toxic molds that make it unfit for human consumption. If you wonder why that new
bag of pet food made your pet sick when he's been eating that brand for years,
maybe this bag had some toxic molds in it. Or the pet food company may have
changed the ingredients without changing the label, to buy whatever is cheapest
on the market at the time. They have 6 months before they have to change the
label, after changing ingredients. Another problem with the grains in pet food
is that companies can count the protein in it toward the total protein of the
food, even if our pets can't digest it.
Even the best commercial pet foods have one drawback in common with all
commercial pet foods: they are cooked and therefore lacking in enzymes. You
don't see wolves cooking their deer over a campfire--all their food is raw. Most
enzymes in food are destroyed at the relatively low temperature of 118 degrees.
All canned and dry pet food is cooked at a higher temperature than this. Enzymes
are important because they make it possible for chemical reactions to occur in
our cells that are required for life--digestion of food and repair and building
of tissues. Without enzymes, we and our pets would die. When food lacks enzymes,
the animal has to draw on the store of enzymes in its own body, which over time
will become depleted. After years of depletion, this leads to organ
degeneration, resulting in kidney and liver disease, diabetes, thyroid problems,
etc. Cooking also denatures the proteins in pet food, making them less
digestible. So the label may state that it has 40% protein but can your pet
absorb it if it's cooked at a high temperature?
Additional damage is done to our pets’ health by the preservatives used in
pet foods such as BHA, BHT and ethoxyquine. Some brands have now removed
ethoxyquine due to concerns that it may cause cancer. However, if a pet food
manufacturer receives raw ingredients that already contain ethoxyquine or other
preservatives, they are not required by law to list it on the label. Propylene
glycol is used in treats and foil packages of pet food (semi-moist food), to
make it soft. While less toxic than ethylene glycol (antifreeze), it has been
found to affect red blood cells in kittens.
Unfortunately, your veterinarian may not be aware of the best nutrition for
your pet. The basic information above is unknown to most vets since their
nutritional education in school was probably limited to a few hours
sponsored by a major pet food manufacturer. The major pet food companies donate
money to every veterinary school in the US and woo vet students with free food
and goodies, just as pharmaceutical companies woo doctors.
There
are some holistically-oriented veterinarians who understand the nutritional
needs of pets and teach this to their clients. Many holistic vets are now
recommending a diet of raw meat, organs and bones for dogs and cats. This diet
approximates what the animal was designed to eat by Mother Nature and provides
the necessary enzymes to digest their food and create healthy bodies. These vets
state that a raw diet results in a healthy, glossy coat and many health problems
disappear that conventional veterinary medicine was unable to help. They feel
that a raw food diet helps prevent the degenerative diseases that plague so many
of our pets these days, like cancer, diabetes, liver and kidney disease. Our
pets are also facing an epidemic of gum disease, which can lead to kidney, heart
and other diseases. Holistic vets state that feeding whole raw bones to clean
our pets teeth will greatly reduce the incidence of gum disease and the need for
professional teeth cleaning. Make sure you are giving them raw and not cooked
bones, which can splinter. Kibble is not appropriate for cleaning cat's teeth,
according to most holistic vets, such as Dr. Jean Hofve, DVM (click
here for article).
If you choose to feed raw food, make sure to learn how to do this properly so
your pet receives a completely balanced diet. Raw meat alone does not provide
all the nutrients your pet needs and your pet will develop deficiencies if you
only feed raw muscle meat, such as ground beef or turkey. Muscle meat by itself
is high in phosphorus and low in calcium. Since calcium is critical for cellular
reactions, an animal with insufficient calcium in its diet will be forced to
pull calcium out of its bones to stay alive. Over time this can lead to
osteoporosis. So raw muscle meat must have supplements added to it, including a
calcium source and organs. Animals in the wild eat the organs preferentially
because they are so high in the vitamins and fats essential to health.
We suggest making raw food diets with organic meats, due to the high level of
disease present in most factory-farmed meats commonly sold in supermarkets. Feeding organic
also avoids the hormones and antibiotics found in some meats that could compromise our pets’ health.
If you don’t have time to prepare raw food from scratch, there are several
companies that offer prepared raw food in frozen or freeze-dried form. These
are rather expensive but well worth it if you can afford it. Over the long-run,
even prepared raw food may be cheaper than vet bills for degenerative diseases
later in your pet's life.
There are some risks of feeding raw food, so it is up to you to decide if the
health benefits outweigh the risks. There is greater risk of disease from
parasites and bacteria in the raw meat—this risk can be lessened by freezing the
meat to kill some microorganisms, feeding probiotics (good bacteria) with the
meals and not feeding kibble together with raw meat. Raw meat moves through the
system much quicker than kibble, thus giving the bad bacteria less chance to
take up housekeeping. Dogs and cats can tolerate much higher levels of bacteria
than humans, due to their short digestive tracts.
Another risk of raw feeding is choking or impaction from the bones, which can
kill pets. While this is rare with raw vs. cooked bones, there have been reports
of this happening to some pets. This risk can be eliminated by grinding up the
bones first or feeding pre-made raw food with ground bones. The downside is that
your pet will miss the teeth-cleaning benefits of chewing on whole bones.
If
your pet is a young animal that properly chews up bones, then there is less risk
of problems. Also, there is less risk when feeding non-weight bearing bones,
like backs, necks and wings. Make sure to feed a size appropriate for your pet's
size. With our cats and Chihuahua-mix dog, we feed whole quail, which is small
enough for them to easily crunch up the bones. We would not feel comfortable
feeding them chicken bones, though many people do this with cats and tiny dogs.
You must judge for yourself what is safe after watching how your pets handle
their food.
If your dog or cat is elderly and has been on commercial food its whole life,
it may have difficult adjusting to raw food. Its digestive tract may have been
altered by years of eating kibble and canned food, making it hard to adapt to
raw food. In this case, you may have to feed mostly cooked foods, to which you
can add enzymes, such as
BioPreparation (which contains over 4,000 enzymes). For cats, canned food is always preferable to dry kibble (click
here for article by Dr. Hofve on Why Cats Need Canned Food).
The Pottenger Cat studies are often quoted by advocates of feeding raw
food to dogs and cats. Though these studies were conducted in the
1930's, their results are still thought-provoking and informative today.
Unfortunately, no one has done a similar study since then, probably
because no one would want to fund it. What pet food company or
veterinary school (which receives large amounts of money from pet food
companies) would want to fund a study showing that raw food is superior
to cooked? Fortunately, the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation
compiled the papers of Francis Pottenger into this small book to make
them available to the public. The book is easiest to find on the website of
Radiant Life, who stocks it and sells it inexpensively. It has to be special ordered from other
sources, such as Amazon.com.
Since the Pottenger studies have created a lot of controversy and are
often misquoted, it is worthwhile to obtain this book to read the
original studies. Francis Pottenger was a doctor at his family's
tuberculosis sanatorium in California. He also produced adrenal
extracts, which in those days were standardized by testing them on
animals, such as cats. He was puzzled by the high mortality rate he
experienced in his laboratory cats when they underwent surgery to remove
their adrenal glands (to prepare them for testing the adrenal extract).
The cats were fed the standard diet of that time, of cooked meat scraps
from the sanatorium, raw milk and cod liver oil. As his cat population
grew, he could no longer get enough cooked meat scraps for them and was
forced to feed some of them raw meat scraps from the local meat packing
plant. He was astonished to discover that the cats fed raw meat were in
so much better health, with much healthier kittens and much better
survival of the adrenal operation. This prompted his 10-year study of
the effects of cooked food on cats.
He studied numerous combinations of food, all with cod liver oil,
including:
2/3 raw meat, 1/3 raw milk vs. 2/3 cooked meat, 1/3 raw milk
2/3 raw milk, 1/3 raw meat vs. 2/3 pasteurized milk, 1/3 raw meat
2/3 raw milk, 1/3 raw meat vs. 2/3 evaporated milk, 1/3 raw meat
2/3 raw milk, 1/3 raw meat vs. 2/3 condensed sweetened milk, 1/3 raw
meat
In all cases, the cats on the all-raw diets were much healthier than the cats
eating cooked food, even though their diet included some raw food. The cats on
all-raw food had strong, thick bones, broad dental arches and good teeth, glossy
coats, no allergies, good resistance to infections and parasites and good
reproductive ability with large, healthy kittens. They were gregarious, friendly
and predictable in their personalities. They died of old age or injuries
suffered in fighting. The cats on cooked food had longer, thinner, weaker bones,
smaller dental arches, misaligned teeth, heart problems, poor eyesight,
glandular problems, infections and inflammations, smaller thoracic and abdominal
cavities, poor development of organs, muscles and ligaments and difficulty
reproducing. By the third generation, they all died by the sixth month so there
was no reproduction. They were much more irritable, sometimes even dangerous.
There were also role reversals with the males becoming docile, unaggressive and
lacking interest in sex while the females became aggressive. Internal and
external parasites were common, as well as allergies. The mortality of kittens
was high and their birth weights lower than raw-fed cats. Some cats had their
diets switched temporarily and a startling discovery was that "once a female cat
is subjected to a deficient diet for a period of 12 to 18 months, her
reproductive efficiency is so reduced that she is never again able to give birth
to normal kittens. Even after three or four years of eating an optimum diet, her
kittens still show signs of deficiency in skeletal and dental development."
Dr. Pottenger also did some studies in human nutrition, such as measuring the
width of the dental arch and taking x-rays showing bone density/thickness, in
breast-fed vs. bottle-fed babies. The breast-fed babies had broader dental
arches, resulting in better development of the jaw, facial muscles, teeth and
sinuses, as well as thicker bones. He made the observation that humans on a poor
diet showed some of the same problems as cats--narrow dental arches, crowded
teeth, poor bone density, longer, thinner bones in legs, shorter thorax, poor
ligaments (resulting in weak, hyperextending joints), fatigue and irritability.
That section of the book really hit home for me, as it was like reading a
description of my own body. For the first time I understood why I have weak,
hyperextending joints (poor nutrition in childhood). I also have to wonder if
there is any correlation between diet and the current epidemic of cruciate
ligament tears in dogs.
Dr. Pottenger's findings of poor dental arches and teeth in the cats on
cooked food also parallels the findings of Dr. Weston Price in humans. Dr.
Price, a dentist, studied 14 isolated traditional cultures around the world and
found that people on traditional diets had broad dental arches and cavity-free,
uncrowded teeth while the same people when they adopted a Western diet
containing white flour, sugar, canned foods and condensed milk had narrow dental
arches and crowded, cavity-prone teeth. (For more information, see our article
on
Traditional Diets Promote Health).
While it may be true that we now have commercial pet foods that can keep cats
alive, unlike in Dr. Pottenger's time, his studies are very thought provoking
about the benefits of raw vs. cooked foods.
Cats
are “obligate carnivores”, meaning they must have meat to survive. They need 70
to 95% meat in their diet and cannot survive as vegetarians. Domestic cats are
descended from the African wild cat, whose natural diet includes rodents, birds,
eggs, reptiles and insects. They got their moisture from their food and not
drinking water, as they lived in the desert. So the ideal meal for a cat would
be a mouse or lizard. This wild cat was domesticated by the Egyptians 4,000
years ago to protect their granaries from rodents. The cat was ideally suited to
this task, since it did not eat grains. Yet today, we feed our cats kibbles that
contain more grains than meat. 
There
are some holistically-oriented veterinarians who understand the nutritional
needs of pets and teach this to their clients. Many holistic vets are now
recommending a diet of raw meat, organs and bones for dogs and cats. This diet
approximates what the animal was designed to eat by Mother Nature and provides
the necessary enzymes to digest their food and create healthy bodies. These vets
state that a raw diet results in a healthy, glossy coat and many health problems
disappear that conventional veterinary medicine was unable to help. They feel
that a raw food diet helps prevent the degenerative diseases that plague so many
of our pets these days, like cancer, diabetes, liver and kidney disease. Our
pets are also facing an epidemic of gum disease, which can lead to kidney, heart
and other diseases. Holistic vets state that feeding whole raw bones to clean
our pets teeth will greatly reduce the incidence of gum disease and the need for
professional teeth cleaning. Make sure you are giving them raw and not cooked
bones, which can splinter. Kibble is not appropriate for cleaning cat's teeth,
according to most holistic vets, such as Dr. Jean Hofve, DVM (
