Feeding Your Dog Real, Fresh Food

Selecting the food that goes in your dog’s dish means making some of the same choices that apply when we select our own foods. In today’s canine nutrition tip, expert Tracie Hotchner compares buying fresh versus powdered drinks for ourselves and the importance of applying those same principles to our dog’s diet:

If you had to choose between a glass of Tang (the synthetic juice powder that is rumored to have gone to the moon with the astronauts) and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, you would pick the real fresh orange juice every time. The reason you would choose the real thing is because of the better flavor and because you know there’s real food value from the whole fruit. You might also choose real O.J. to avoid the chemicals and artificial colorings and flavorings which make Tang what it is. The same rule should apply in how you choose what to feed your dog: feeding him real fresh food means better nutrition and the health that goes with it.

It’s obvious why real orange juice is better for you than a powdered synthetic “juice drink” made in a food science laboratory, and we want to apply that logic to feeding our dogs. Common sense tells you that adding real whole foods to a dog’s diet is healthier and tastier for him than feeding only highly processed dry food. We all know that we should reduce carbohydrate heavy food in our diets and increase whole food, whether for our human family or the dog in our bed. Yup, I did say the dog “in our bed” because most of us consider our dogs to be family members. Sadly, many people who really love their dogs are feeding their four-legged family members a diet of nothing but highly processed, low-cost carbohydrates in the form of bagged dog food because they haven’t stopped to apply logic to their dog’s dinner bowl: real meats and vegetables means quality nutrition.

We know from human nutrition that whole foods are more nutrient-rich and more readily usable by the body (bio-available), and contribute to overall health through this “bioavailability.” When we talk about whole foods as ingredients with less processing, more of the nutritional value is retained and available to the body to extract from it during digestion. You want to supply whole foods in a much less processed state. First there’s the protein source called by its name: chicken, beef, lamb, etc. Then vegetables and fruits, which supply complex carbohydrates and vitamins and minerals, unlike highly processed foods which lose much of their food value and pose a challenge to the digestive system to extract whatever nutrients may still remain.

If you believe that “you are what you eat,” and that good nutrition is a cornerstone of good health, then you need to reconsider your dog’s diet and start feeding him some real, whole food the way you do the rest of the family. It should be pretty straightforward to understand the reasons that whole food (the less-processed the better) is a far superior way to gain nourishment than a chemical-laden, scientifically manipulated creation made by food scientists in a laboratory. Many popular dry dog foods are made of bottom-of-the-bucket ingredients which means they contain the kind of chemically manipulated elements that you would not want to make for your dog’s diet. However, any all kibble diet contains too many highly processed carbohydrates to keep your dog healthy – what you want for your dog is not just to survive, you want him to thrive, and only by adding quality whole foods can you achieve that. It’s really very simple: use the freshest ingredients you can, as close to their natural state as possible. Surely our dogs deserve no less than that?

This Canine Nutrition Tip is from Tracie Hotchner, author of The Dog Bible and award-winning host of Dog Talk® on NPR station WLIU. Canine Nutrition Tips are sponsored by Proportions, the whole food custom nutrition program for your dog. Visit www.Proportions.com to get a custom 2-meal trial for your dog, or to learn more about canine nutrition from the full Canine Nutrition University classes written by Tracie.

Author photo courtesy www.traciehotchner.com; photo © Ling Li

About Paris Permenter and John Bigley

DogTipper publishers Paris Permenter and John Bigley are a husband-wife team of full-time writers. The couple has authored over two dozen books and 2,500+ magazine articles.

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