April/May2015
RAWPET DIGEST IN THIS ISSUE: - Feed your pet the right w ay - The healing response - The pet food industry - Dogs: omnivores or carnivores? - Animals: mirrors of us - The eight law s of health
Raw Pet Digest Editor-in-chief: Kristin Clark Technical editor: Dr. Jeannie (Jeannette) Thomason
For subscription inquiries or for comments/ questions, send an email to: kristin@rawpetdigest.com
Letters become the property of Raw Pet Digest and may be reprinted in future issues.
Our goal at Raw Pet Digest is to share this information to a broad audience to help improve the lives of our companion animals. Therefore, we are offering a special introduction: the first issue of Raw Pet Digest is free! Yearly subscriptions (6 issues) or individual issues are available at a low price. We sincerely hope that the information presented in this magazine will be of use to you and your pets. Thank you, and enjoy!
FEATURESAND COLUMNS Letter from the Editor - page 4 The Carnivore Question - page 5 Nature Knows Best - page 8 The Eight Laws of Health - page 12 Animals Naturopaths - page 17 Food as Medicine: Starting a SARF Diet - page 19 Fears About Feeding Raw - page 24 The Healing Response - page 27 The Mirrors of Us - page 29
Letter fromtheEditor: WelcometoRawPet Digest! We all love our pets. Without question, that is a fact. They share our homes, our lives, and our hearts. And all of us want the very best for them. We want them to have the greatest quality of life and, of course, the longest life possible. But sometimes it can get a little confusing to figure out how to achieve this. And so, I started Raw Pet Digest with one simple goal: to help empower you with the knowledge and information you need to give your pets the highest quality and longest life possible.
This magazine aims to provide you with clear, concise information about how to feed your dog or cat what they need to thrive, how to help them feel their best naturally, and how to support them in maintaining optimal health of mind, soundness of body, and fulfillment of spirit. In each issue, we will strive to bring you valuable information ranging from (among other things) nutrition, to herbs and essential oils, to stories about the mind/ body/ spirit connection and the role it plays in health.
Raw Pet Digest aims to deliver clear explanations for all of the facts presented within. And through your letters and comments, it will offer you a chance to participate in the journey of the magazine. If you have a particular topic you would like to see covered, let us know! It may show up in a future issue, and we may thank you in writing for participating in the direction of the magazine. If you want more information on something we covered inside, tell us! We want this to be a magazine that gives you the facts and information you need to help your dog or cat have a happy, fulfilling life.
Kristin with Elle, Barkley, and Cleo. Photo credit: Adam T. Gilbert
This inaugural issue of Raw Pet Digest focuses a lot on other kinds of "starts": starting your pet on a species-appropriate raw food diet, why it's important to do so, starting down the path of natural health care, and so on. Later issues will dive more deeply into other topics of interest to you, such as flea and tick prevention, interviews with raw food experts, specific information on various diseases, etc. But for now, whether you've been feeding raw for a long time or have yet to make the switch, welcome! I hope you will find valuable information in these pages. This is a labor of love, and I am so glad you are part of it.
Thank you for reading!
Kristin Clark Editor-in-Chief kristin@rawpetdigest.com
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THECARNIVORE QUESTION
Everyone, human or animal, needs the right nutrients and foods to survive and thrive. Herbivores, like horses and deer, eat grasses and other foliage. Ominvores, like bears, live on plants and meat. And carnivores, such as wolves and lions, fulfill their nutrient requirements from the meat, bones, organs, and glands of other animals. Science has shown that our dogs and cats are? you guessed it? carnivores. And so, they need to eat a carnivore diet, not a diet that?s appropriate for herbivores and omnivores. And yet, processed dog and cat food often includes vegetables, grains, and fruits.
Why is this? Well, while most people accept that cats are carnivores (and obligate carnivores at that, meaning that they rely on flesh and bone for their nutritional requirements), one of the most prevalent myths about our dogs is that they are something other than obligate carnivores. Some people would have you believe that they are omnivores. Some say that dogs are facultative carnivores (very similar to omnivores, in that both are defined as relying on animal and non-animal food to fulfill their nutritional requirements). The truth is, our dogs are obligate
carnivores; their bodies must have the nutrients they get from raw meat, bones, and organs to thrive.
Evidence for this can be seen in dogs?bodies and physical makeup. Science has found that our dogs? stomachs have 10 times the amount of hydrochloric acid that ours do. Their stomachs have a pH of about 1, whereas (for comparison) our stomach pH can be as high as 4-5, and our small intestine pH can be as high as 8.
Their teeth, from the canines to the molars, are sharp. In contrast, omnivores and herbivores have flat molars that allow them to grind their food. Take a look at your own teeth? you have sharp canines that let you eat meat, but flat molars that let you grind plant matter. Or look at the teeth of a horse? every tooth is flat, enabling them to powerfully grind plant matter. The skulls on the next page show a dog's skull vs. a boar's skull. The boar is an omnivore, and as you can see, the majority of the teeth are flat. Now look at your dog or cat?s mouth. Those pointy teeth are designed to handle meat and bone, not plants. And look at the picture of the dog skull on the next page. The teeth? even the molars? are sharp and jagged, allowing the dog to rip the meat off of the carcass. And it doesn?t end there. Dogs, like other carnivores, are unique in that they have carnassial teeth; these are used to slice meat and cut through sinew. The carnassials are formed by the fourth upper premolar and first lower molar.
Our dogs and cats are able to regurgitate food that did not get mashed up appropriately the first time around and then eat it again. Their intestines are shorter to allow their food to digest and pass through quickly and to help prevent ?bad? bacteria from gaining a foothold. In addition, the large intestine in a carnivore has a relatively smooth, straight passage. This means that fatty wastes high in cholesterol can slide through before they start to putrefy. Omnivores and herbivores, on the other hand, have large intestines that are puckered and run in three different directions; it takes material much longer to make its way through the large intestine of an omnivore or herbivore, which gives their systems time to break down the plant matter and extract and digest all the available nutrients from it.
Carnivores, including our pet dogs and cats, do not have amylase in their saliva and their pancreases do not produce cellulase. This means they are much less able than omnivores and herbivores to break down the cellulose in plant matter and extract the simple sugars (and therefore energy) from it. In other words, unlike herbivores and omnivores, the energy in plant matter is not bioavailable to carnivores? they cannot use it.
Some people assert that wolves and other carnivores end up eating plant matter when they
Our carnivore pets have powerful jaws that are designed to move in a scissor-like motion, which assists them in ripping, shredding, tearing, and finally gulping their meals. Unlike omnivores and herbivores, carnivores, including our pet dogs, cannot move their jaws from side-to-side to chew and pulverize plant and grain matter. 6
eat the stomach contents of whatever animal they have brought down. However, researchers have actually observed carnivores shaking out the stomach of an animal before eating it. Their bodies cannot effectively digest the plant nutrients, so they don?t consume them. Other people point to dogs and cats eating grasses as a sign that they need plant nutrients. In actuality, what they are working on getting is the soil-based organisms that come along with the plant matter. And if you look at their feces, you'll see that the plants came out the same way they went in. This is because, as we discussed, they cannot break down and digest the plant matter. Wolves and other canines have been observed eating berries out in the wild, but this tends to be when food is scarce, and the berries still only make up a fraction (20% or less) of their total diet. They are opportunistic and will eat anything to stay alive, but this does not necessarily mean it?s optimal for them (case in point? think of the number of dogs that are taken to the vet each year for eating chocolate. It's not good for them, but they will eat it!).
understand what our dogs should be eating: raw meat, bones, and organs, just as their wild brethren, such as wolves, do. It also makes it easy to see that our dogs, just like our pet cats, are obligate, not facultative carnivores. In essence, although dogs may eat fruits, vegetables, grains, trash, fecal matter, and any other thing they can get their mouths on (they are opportunistic scavengers, after all), they must have raw meat, bones, organs, and glands in order to gain the nutrients their bodies need to live a true normal lifespan and to thrive. -By Kristin Clark
Dog skull. Notice that all the teeth, even molars, are sharp.
Since a carnivore?s system is not equipped to digest plant matter, when we feed vegetables and grains to them, they cannot process it and it ends up, at best, passing through with no benefit. At worst, it ferments in the stomach and over time, when fed repetitively, causes major issues. In a nutshell, just as you would never try to feed a horse a piece of steak, it doesn?t make physiological sense to feed your dog or cat vegetables and grains. They get all the nutrients they need when fed a species-appropriate diet. For tips on how to get started feeding them a species-appropriate raw food diet, see the article Food as Medicine: Starting a SARF diet on page 19.
In the face of overwhelming, common-sense and scientific evidence, it is difficult to assert that our dogs are omnivores. This makes it very easy to
Photo credit: Š Gavran333 | Dreamstime.com - Dog Skull Photo
Boar skull. Notice the molars are flat and canines are pointed. Photo credit: Š Kornilovdream | Dreamstime.com - Boar Skull Photo
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NATUREKNOWSBEST The fact that our dogs and cats are carnivores has been scientifically proven. Their wild forbearers? wolves and small hunting cats? hunt for their meals, consuming the raw meat, bones, and organs of their prey. Regardless of what they look like on the outside, our dogs and cats are virtually identical to their wild brethren and require the same types of food to thrive. But somehow, in the last hundred years or so, we have stopped feeding our cats and dogs the raw meat and bones they require and crave. How has that happened? Is processed pet food like kibble really better for them than raw meat and bones? And what did they eat before kibble? Lolo enjoying a raw meaty bone. Photo credit: Erin O'Connor
Before the rise of the modern-day pet food industry, dogs and cats ate a variety of things depending on when and where in history they were located; often, they ate scraps and whatever they hunted on their own. Many pets that belonged to wealthy people were fed meat, while others, particularly those that belonged to poorer people, ate whatever their owners had available, such as bread and milk. And of course, as I mentioned, animals supplemented whatever their humans gave them with whatever they could catch on their own. However, once people realized that there was money to be made selling dog and cat food, a new, multi-billion dollar industry? the pet food industry? was born.
The Pet Food Industry According to PetProductNews.com, retail pet food sales in 2013 were estimated at $28 billion dollars. This was an increase of 3.7% over 2012.
Š Adogslifephoto | Dreamstime.com - Labrador Dog Looking Down At Food Bowl Photo
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One of the factors that industry experts feel contributes to the growth of the pet food industry (expected to reach $33 billion by 2018) is the rise of so-called ?premium foods,? especially premium dog food. Clearly, the pet food industry makes companies a lot of money. But how good is the food they?re selling? even the premium foods? for our pets?
Processed pet food, whether it is ?premium? or just regular old kibble, often is made by companies that are affiliated with (often by being owned by the same parent company) companies that also manufacture human food. This lets them use the waste products from human food production to make pet food (especially kibble). Whether someone is purchasing what they believe to be a high quality pet food or not, it all boils down to the same thing? as Drs. Jeannie Thomason and Kim Bloomer so succinctly put it: ?kibble is kibble is still kibble.?
To make kibble and canned pet food, companies use raw carcasses, many of which are considered to be ?4D meat? (meat from dead, dying, disabled, or diseased animals). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is fully aware of this practice, stating on their website: CVM [FDA?s Center for Veterinary Medicine] is aware of the sale of 9
dead, dying, disabled, or diseased (4-D) animals to salvagers for use as animal food. Meat from these carcasses is boned and the meat is packaged or frozen without heat processing. The raw, frozen meat is shipped for use by several industries, including pet food manufacturers, zoos, greyhound kennels, and mink ranches. This meat may present a potential health hazard to the animals that consume it and to the people who handle it.
4D carcasses are not the only things that go into the food; other waste products, such as supermarket rejects of meat (for example, expired or spoiled meat), are also included.
Making the pet food The process to make the pet food that eventually winds up in the bag or can at the grocery store or your local pet store is fairly similar among most companies. First, the whole conglomerate (carcasses and, in many instances, supermarket rejects) is put together and loaded into a hopper (essentially, a stainless-steel pit) that has an auger-grinder. There, it is chopped into small pieces. Those pieces are then taken to another grinder and shredded. The shredded material is cooked at 280°F for 60 minutes (in the USA? the exact time and temperature varies by country). The cooking process causes the meat to melt off the bones, producing a soup-like slurry. The fat, or tallow, rises to the top and is skimmed off. Once the tallow has been removed, the cooked meat and bone are put into a press which squeezes out any remaining moisture and then pulverizes the remaining product into a gritty powder. This powder is sifted to remove excess hair and large bone chips. Once the processes are complete, the final products are the tallow, the meat slurry, and the bone meal. The pet food manufacturers buy either the meat slurry or the dried meal for use in their pet food.
It is important to remember that canned food and kibble contain similar ingredients. What varies is the
amount of fat, protein, and fiber. The quality and type of meat also varies across batches, so it is next to impossible to guarantee any kind of consistency.
Leaving aside the question of what 4D meat (the carcasses of which, in some pet foods, may also include our own euthanized companion animals as well as things like medicines and antibiotics that were used to treat whatever diseases the animal in question might have had) does to our pets, it is critical to understand the effect that cooking has on protein. This is especially important because many owners feel it is safer to prepare home-cooked meals for their dogs and cats than feed them raw. This, of course, is because they think of their dogs and cats as little humans. We do not have the ability to eat and digest raw meat and bone safely, so we assume our pets cannot. However, they are carnivores, and so are equipped with all the tools they need to survive and thrive on raw meat and bones. Cooking denatures the protein. Put another way, cooking modifies the molecular structure of protein, which destroys or diminishes the protein?s original properties and biological activity. This means that it is unusable, or much less usable, by your dog or cat?s body. Essentially, denatured protein has had the secondary bonds that hold the amino acid chains in place broken, which causes the molecule to become a jumbled mass bereft of biological function. When protein is denatured by heat (and it takes very little heat, relatively speaking, to do this? cooking the meat at 117°F for just three minutes is enough), your cat or dog's body does not have the ability to rebuild the damaged amino acids usable protein molecules. This is because the amino acid chains form enzyme-resistant links when cooking takes place. Because the body cannot separate the amino acids and use them, it eliminates them. The unusable protein becomes a source of toxicity rather than a source of health and 10
energy because it is, in essence, dead organic waste material. And this toxicity eventually presents as many of the diseases and ailments we see cropping up in younger and younger animals today, from obesity to pancreatitis, from liver and kidney disease to cancer.
We are seeing a rise in ?raw? dog and cat food today being sold by pet food companies, often under the guise of being labeled ?holistic? or ?balanced.? While these products are not cooked (definitely a step in the right direction!), they do contain varying amounts of vegetables and fruits? which our carnivore pets do not need and are unable to properly digest. These products are expensive as well, and it is often difficult to know the quality of the meat they are using. Plus, because they are ground, the dogs and cats that are eating them do not get the teeth-cleaning benefits of crunching through bone, nor do they get the visceral satisfaction that comes with gnawing on meat and bones. Finally, no matter what marketing claims are made, these products are not, in and of themselves, balanced. Balance is achieved over time, and it is only by eating a variety of protein sources, organs, and bones that carnivores get all the nutrients they need, in the proper amounts and ratios they need.
The bottom line? Processed, cooked pet food, such as kibble and canned food, is not a good source of nutrition for your pet. And raw pet food from companies contains food materials that are not suitable to a carnivore diet, as well as lacking in appropriate forms of bone. The best food, and the foundation for your dog or cat?s health, is a diet of raw meat, bones, organs, and and glands, preferably from animals that are hormone- and antibiotic-free, pasture-raised, and fed a species-appropriate, organic diet of their own. Once you begin feeding your pets this way, you will go a long way towards ensuring them the longest and highest quality life possible. -By Kristin Clark Cleo, a 17-year-old Canaan dog, eating lamb Photo credit: Kristin Clark
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