07/04/2021
Repost from
Real food or processed food?
Would would YOU rather feed your fur baby?
You may not notice a difference in your pet's health from the food you're currently feeding. But nutrition is the long-term preventative care plan. If you put poor-quality food into your pet, it will lead to degenerative changes and disease down the road. Just because your pet seems fine today, doesn't mean it's not causing an issue for their body.
Putting good stuff in will help optimize your pet's immune system, reduce inflammation and ultimately help them.
This is a big piece of the puzzle so don't skimp on this area of your pet's health, even if they seem like they're doing "fine" with lesser quality food.You will end up spending less in vet bills long-term.
Many pet parents are realizing that we can do and should be doing better for our pets and what we're putting in their bodies. It can be hard to change a fixed mindset when we're taught that kibble is the best in veterinary school. Not every pet is the same, and not every food is the same.
But as a veterinarian, we should be looking at biologically appropriate diets for pets. Cats and dogs are carnivores. They are made for high protein diets, not high carbohydrate diets.
Neither the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) nor the European Pet Food Industry Federation (FEDIAF) stipulate a requirement for carbohydrates. It's because dogs and cats have no nutritional requirement for carbohydrates.But yet, kibble is being pushed as the best diet for our pets.
If you'd like to see peer-reviewed research on how kibble may be creating inflammation in our pet's body, just follow Dr. Anna Hielm-Björkman at the veterinary school in Helsinki, Finland.
Dr. Hielm-Björkman has been doing research on raw diets and pet foods for over 20 years. One of her most eye-opening studies showed dogs that were fed kibble diets had higher levels of homocysteine (a marker of inflammation) in their blood compared to pets on a raw food diet.
But here's the best part of that study, when those dogs on kibble were switched to a raw food diet, their homocysteine levels decreased dramati
