The Four Bs: What’s Holding You Back from Feeding a Healthy Raw Food Diet?
When considering a fresh foods diet for their animals, people often struggle with what I call the Four Bs: balance, budget, bacteria, and bones. I’ll be examining each of these concerns in a series of articles for Bay Woof to help you feel more confident about making the transition from highly processed commercial pet foods to a healthy fresh foods diet, putting your dog on a path to increased longevity and resistance to disease.
This month, let’s take a look at balance.
The idea of a “complete and balanced diet” that you often see on commercial pet food packages sounds reassuring, doesn’t it? However, the current consensus among pet food nutrition experts has revealed this concept as a myth. Meanwhile, pet food companies maintain a significant financial interest in continuing to perpetuate the “complete and balanced” fiction.
Nutritional guidelines for dogs and cats are established by the National Research Council (NRC) and recommended by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). These provide us with important information regarding known nutritional minimum needs for our dogs and cats. Still, there are a tremendous number of issues related to this topic, the details of which go far beyond the scope of this article (for an in-depth book on the subject, I recommend Feeding Dogs Dry Or Raw? The Science Behind The Debate by Dr. Conor Brady).
AAFCO food trials are considered the gold standard for determining whether a pet food meets the “complete and balanced” designation criteria. Unfortunately, these trials are short - just 26 weeks - and not anywhere near rigorous enough to use as the highest standard possible for long-term feeding. Only six dogs involved in an eight-dog trial need to survive to pass, and pet food manufacturers may also claim to meet AAFCO nutrient criteria without having passed a trial because AAFCO doesn’t actually regulate production of the food itself. So even though AAFCO trials may find major short-term issues with a food, they are unlikely to reveal nutritional problems that would compound over time resulting in illness and disease. Clearly, this calls into question the reliability of many commercial pet food statements.
The notion of “complete and balanced” may also provide a false sense of confidence in a diet that may not be ideally suited to your individual animal's needs. In addition, the entire paradigm behind commercial pet foods was developed by the modern, industrialized food industry looking for ways to utilize (and monetize) poor quality byproducts, mainly cereals and unhealthy highly processed fat/waste. Unfortunately, few considered which foods constitute a biologically appropriate diet befitting dogs as a species, namely animal protein foods of meat, bone, organs, seafood, and eggs, with small amounts of insoluble fiber. Understanding a dog’s natural diet opens us to the possibility that there are better ways to feed our dogs that are safer and healthier for them over the course of their lifetimes.
When it comes to balance over the long-term, there are a few key nutritional criteria. These include providing adequate protein, calcium (stay tuned for my upcoming article on bones), and essential vitamins and minerals present in organs such as liver, heart, and kidney. In fact, these criteria - espoused and verified by the NRC/AAFCO - have been known to us all along, if we only look at how the canine species has been eating and thriving for thousands of years, before modern commercially available pet foods were developed. And the great news is you can easily provide these foods to your animals, just as you provide healthy foods for yourself and your family.
In making the switch to a complete and balanced fresh food diet, rest assured that not every bite or meal needs to be balanced. That’s not how humans or any other animals, including dogs, are meant to eat. Unless you’re a bodybuilder or athlete, I bet you don’t calculate everything you eat for balance, and this is not required for your dog either. Feeding a variety of healthy whole foods that are suitable for an individual’s unique biological needs over time is a key component to providing safe long-term nutrition to dogs.
You may choose to start by purchasing a high-quality commercially prepared fresh food diet while learning more about which foods your dogs should and can eat to be as healthy as possible. Or jump right in with all four paws by following a well-established DIY program (for examples, check out perfectlyrawsome.com). Alternatively, you can hire a consultant - you’ll find a large directory here: freshfoodconsultants.org. Better yet, pair up with an experienced mentor to guide you step-by-step (sfraw.com has a successful free mentoring program for members).
The important thing is to not let the fear of “balance” stop you from feeding fresh, healthy foods to your dogs. The sooner you do, the better off they’ll be.