Welcome And Why Food Matters

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Welcome to the Animal Naturopathic Medicine Educatum podcast, specializing in canine, feline, and equine, animal health from a biological perspective. To maintain a dog's health from the inside out, this is where we do need to be looking at the dog from the whole perspective. Food has an extremely important job in the body and mind of every dog. What a dog eats can affect their general well-being, health and welfare. Inappropriate dog food can cause undesirous behavior in dogs and long-term health problems.

The Rise Of Commercial Pet Food

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When humans became completely responsible for feeding their dogs, as dogs were no longer hunting for themselves or allowed to hunt due to domestication, the dog food market exploded. Over the decades, pet food has become such a big profit for so many manufacturers. Currently on the market, there is such a huge reliance on pet commercial foods to be fed to dogs, offering information on the packaging that promises the dog will receive all their nutritional requirements, even other little aspects that the dog may run a bit faster, look better, and be more vibrant. But not all products are created equal or are of a high nutritional value.

Processing, Additives, And Low-Value Meat

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The dog food that we buy in this packaging, it usually needs to have a long shelf life. The food barely resembles what food a dog is designed to eat and is far removed from the original whole food source that it once was. Dog food may include certain vitamins and pertain to cover the nutritional needs, as most canine convenience foods do market their products in that way. But it could also contain chemicals that inhibits the creation or absorption of nutrients that are required for the dog to then, you know, flourish from eating it. Most products house synthetic nutrients and mould inhibitors for that longer shelf life aspect and therefore often fall short on the nutritious claims. The result is a diseased dog after only a few short years of eating such hollow and partially toxic food when fed in excess. The meat quality used in commercial food may be so low that the dog gets very little nutritional value from it whatsoever.

What Dogs Are Designed To Eat

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Dogs have been evolving for 40 million years, existing on a seasonal species-specific diet of a scavenger. A wild dog's diet can include up to 60 different ingredients in one day, and this will include things like live prey, grass, nuts, rotted fruits, insects, bark, soil, clay, decaying vegetable matter, and other animal excretions. The breakdown process of these wonderful raw ingredients in the intestinal tract is critical for the normal assimilation of all vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and other metabolic factors that are essential for growth and function. It is what they were designed to eat. When we look at modern food processing methods, yes, cooking preserves the food, but it destroys the enzymes and the microbial content, which therefore then prevents the natural decay. It also destroys natural vitamins, the essential fatty acids, and the amino acids, which are the building blocks of protein. Essentially then inhibiting the nutrients to be absorbed through the body via the gut. In earlier tin foods, vitamin deficiencies were vitamin A, D, E, B, iron and amino acids. These were all noted, but then they were all added as synthetic versions. Modern processed dog foods have improved from this, but yet again cooking the food does not provide all requirements and in fact will render the food nutritionally useless.

Deficiencies And Modern Canine Disease

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Modern canine research is focused on immediate effects of nutrition rather than long-term health. Deficiencies that create an immediate problem have been addressed, but the non-life-threatening deficiencies have not had as much attention. Therefore, the dog's lifespan and its altered absorbative capabilities, especially for older dogs, and the accumulation of the years of being on a low grade deficiency diet, have not been addressed by nutritional research at all. Modern dogs are experiencing skin diseases, allergies, osteoarthritis, dental problems, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, heart disease, organ failure and cancer, which are all documented signs of long term nutritional deficiency. Often when major symptoms appear, the dog already has poor inner health. As dog owners we then look towards the vet to treat the symptoms and help our dog get back to some sort of good health. When we should be looking closer to home and much, much sooner to these causes of poor inner health. Good and bad health both begin in a dog's food bowl. An average dog will maintain reasonable health on commercial pet foods for about five to six years, but it is in the next stage of their life when the conditions start to emerge. However, many of these diseases could have been prevented or at least slowed down, especially when we know their existence, is for the dog to live as a misocarnivore. The lack of adequate vitamins also causes deficiencies and may lead to disease as well. Vitamins are needed for enzymes which are protein catalysts of a specific biochemical reaction in the body. Only small amounts of vitamins are needed to maintain a healthy level in the body. Vitamins do not supply energy but help the body to process macronutrients such as the proteins, the fats and the carbohydrates found in raw whole foods. So in summary, the majority of modern canine disease is due to the poor modern

Vitamins, Gut Flora, And Absorption

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diet, and pet owners unfortunately not being educated on the biological nutritional requirements for their dog. The natural species-specific canine gut flora and digestive processes are then altered when on a modern diet. They destroy much of the needed enzymes and bacteria already present in the stomach and digestive tract. The natural breakdown and absorption of nutrients to efficiently supply the dog with all the nutritional qualities are largely then void within the modern diet. Supplementation then is often required, but at times it's too late. Pet owners need to be referred to a qualified and preferably a biologically trained canine nutritionist to ensure they are feeding correctly and become well versed in reading ingredient lists of the products that they are feeding their dogs.

Choosing Help From A Canine Nutritionist

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And understand all of those ill effects and side effects of feeding nutrient void foods. It's also recommended that the canine nutritionist has done a canine related nutrition course, not a human nutritionist just transferring human knowledge to a carnivore. Must honor the carnivore, the miso carnivore that the dog is, and bring the best about for that dog and its longevity.

Key Takeaways And Farewell

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Thanks again everybody for listening, and I will catch you next time. Bye for now.