Food Therapy

1) Filter drinking water. Do not purchase bottled water as it typically is no better than most kitchen counter filtration systems can provide and contributes to waste and pollution.

2) Avoid kibble. Feed as little processed foods as possible. If you are unable to cook for your dog or cat, try feeding good quality freeze dried or dehydrated foods instead.

3) If you are inclined to feed a home-made diet, educate yourself on Wholesome nutrition and consult a medical professional before taking that leap. Consult a veterinary nutritionist when formulating long-term home-made diets for your pets and livestock. Don’t rely on recipes posted on the internet as most have been found to be deficient in essential nutrients.

4) Purchase ingredients from your local farmer or grow your own if you can.

5) Avoid GMO products as much as possible and use as much Organic products as you can afford.

Many dietary fads have come and gone and more continue to arise. Even the USDA has changed it’s view on nutrition and the Food Pyramid over time. Science is as much an Art as it is experimental.

Research is proving what many of us have known for decades: the modern western diet, consisting of highly processed ingredients and synthetic additives, contributes to myriad illness and dis-ease. This diet amounts to a state of biological starvation even in the presence of over-consumption. It also introduces pollutants and toxins into the body that contribute to inflammation, allergic reactions, and other dis-ease. Having knowledge of how food is produced, where it comes from, and methods for proper preparation is more important now than ever.

Commercial pet foods do not supply the required nutrients in healthful formulations due to extensive processing. Whole grains do not cause problems for most but the way in which they are commercially processed often does. Processing removes the most nutritious parts of the grain, leaving only the flour, which then requires “fortification” with nutrients that were just removed. How wasteful!!
More importantly, extensively processed diets have been shown to contain toxic chemicals such as acrylamide, a known carcinogen.

The latest fad diets for household pets are raw, ancestral, and grain-free. Raw diets are not appropriate for most dogs because they lack many of the enzymes needed to digest raw plant material and they are omnivores, meaning they need more than just meat. From a Chinese Medicine point-of-view, raw foods are Cold and difficult to digest and will eventually cause dis-ease. These diets also pose risk of exposure to pathogenic bacteria to human family members. Cats are obligate carnivores so lack even more of the enzymes necessary for plant digestion. In the wild, predators consume the organ meats of their prey first along with the nutritious pre-digested plant material from the gut. Modern commercial petfoods come nowhere near the true ancestral diets. Finally, grain-free diets are typically higher in carbohydrates and may contribute to higher rates of obesity and unhealthy weight gain than their grain containing counterparts. Recent research suggests that these diets may be a contributing factor in development of heart disease in dogs.

Prior to WWI, most of us and our animal wards, ate Wholesome, health-ful foods that came from local sources with minimal processing. The perceived need to conserve steel for the war effort during WWII led to a change from can pet food to development of dry diets sold in paper boxes.

The kibble processing- The ingredients are cooked together in a liquid form, pushed through a mechanical extruder, and then baked. The end product is larger and lighter than other methods, which gives the product a “more for your money” appeal. Convenience is the biggest marketing point. The foods must contain large amounts of starch for the extrusion process to work. Nutrients are added back in to make up for the loss due to being cooked twice at high temperatures. Fats and flavorings are sprayed on the end product to make them palatable.

Author and respected leader in pet nutrition, Dr. Donald Strombeck, DVM, PhD, shows concern, “Why are so many pets getting cancers, renal failures, hepatic diseases, multitudes of skin and coat problems? Diseases and illnesses we simply shouldn’t be seeing. Illness and poor nutrition affect each other.”

The awareness of the connection between health and our diet is driving a dramatic rise in sales of organic foods and beverages. The industry has grown from $1 Billion in 1990 to $62 Billion in 2020 (Organic Trade association – www.ota.com). It is not surprising to see the popularity of a diet rich in natural, whole foods for our dogs, growing too.

A note on multi-vitamin and mineral supplements from consumer reports: Food trumps multivitamin pills- For people who don’t get all the vitamins and minerals they need from a healthful diet (the majority of Americans), a multivitamin may seem like a cheap, easy way to reap the same benefits. Trouble is, getting your nutrients from pills isn’t the same as getting them from food. That’s because fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other plant foods contain thousands of beneficial plant substances called phytochemicals that interact with one another in myriad ways, some of which scientists may not even understand yet. The greater the food variety, the more numerous the potential beneficial interactions. Taking the vitamins and minerals out of food robs you of all those healthful interactions, not to mention fiber, a disease fighter in its own right. That may be why study after study of isolated, high doses of vitamins has found they failed to prevent cancer, dementia, heart disease, or type 2 diabetes, even though people who eat foods rich in those vitamins have lower rates of those diseases. Bottom line. It’s better to get your nutrients from food.

(RDA) for various food factors was first recognized in the USA with the publication of the first edition of the book on RDA requirements in 1946. A specific RDA for vitamin E was first recommended in the sixth edition (1964), in which the concept of the RDA was broadened and redefined from the 1946 idea – enough ‘to insure good nutrition’ – to an amount necessary ‘to permit full realization of … potential.’ Thus, in the 1964 edition, the concept was expressed that vitamins might have a pharmacological use beyond that necessary merely to prevent vitamin deficiency diseases. RDA is set by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council