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The Importance Of Dog Nutrition

The Early Years

Before the advent of commercial dog food, people fed their dogs scraps from the table and the dogs supplemented that food with other food found as they roamed throughout the day. In 1860, James Spratt invented the dog biscuit, which was made in England.

Over time, the dog’s range narrowed, leash laws enacted and eventually the family dog became limited to his immediate home area. The cereal companies, needing something to do with their scraps, decided to make the scraps into dog kibble.

Dog Food Choices

Owners can choose from a wide variety of dog foods, some better than others for your dog. Dry kibble, semi-moist and frozen are three of the choices. Dog food also comes canned. Canned dog food is broken down into different styles: ration, all-animal, chunk style and stew.

Canned dog food labeled ration is ground and cooked ingredients. All-animal canned dog food contains chunks of byproducts like arteries that are identifiable to the owner. Chunk style dog food is ground and then shaped into chunks so that the byproducts are not identifiable. Stew is dog food with added gravy. It is made primarily to appeal to the owner.

Chemicals Found In Dog Food

As a dog food is more processed it becomes necessary to add more chemicals to it. Foods with gravy contain food starch, coloring and gums. To make food more tasty to the dog and visually appealing to the owner flavor enhancers and coloring is added. To keep the semi-moist dog food moist, prophylene glycol is added. Preservatives such as mold inhibitor, ethoxyquin, BHT and BHA are added to improve shelf life.

A Dog’s Nutritional Needs

Like almost all living things, dogs need fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, water and calories to support its growth, repair and activity requirements. A dog food must contain ingredients that a dog can absorb easily. It does no good to be 100% complete nutrition if the ingredients are only partially absorbed. Proteins from plants must be processed in order for a dog to absorb the nutrients.

Picture yourself eating salad every meal for the rest of your life. Even if salad supposedly had all the nutrients you needed to live, you could not be totally healthy at the end of the month.

Animals are the same. Dogs need a variety of protein sources, fruits and vegetables from as close to the original as possible. An Australian man named Ian Billinghurst advocates the BARF diet. This diet has dogs eating raw bones and raw food. Chicken carcasses, yogurt, raw eggs, vegetables and fruits and the exclusion of all grains make up the BARF diet.

Anecdotal reports of dogs eating the BARF diet are of more energetic, healthy dogs. But, the BARF diet has its opponents who insist that it is a dangerous way to feed a dog. Whomever is correct really does not matter in this discussion; however, dogs and other animals should eat what they are biologically adapted to eat. Inferior nutrition will wreck havoc on the dog’s health, leading to degenerative diseases and shorter life span.

Choosing A High-Quality Dog Food

There are many high-quality dog foods on the market today that have no by-products, high levels of digestible protein and low or no grain that owners can choose from. Before selecting a food for your dog, it is important to take into consideration the age and activity level of your pet, as well as learn all you can about dog nutrition so that you can make an educated choice about what to feed your dog.

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