Down With Dry Food
Dry food is, well... dry!
Dogs and cats are designed to eat carcasses and other fresh food, which contain a great deal of moisture, at least 70%. Compare this to packaged dry food which averages 8% moisture. So imagine what the animal has to make up by drinking water! Processing dry proteins puts a greater burden on their system, especially the kidneys. I think we can all agree that our pets are definitely not designed to eat dry nuggets of processed food. You don't eat this way, so why should your pet?
Do Cookies Clean your teeth?
Many people believe that dry food helps keep their pet's teeth clean. Chewing will help keep your pet's teeth and gums healthy, so offer raw bones or natural dried chews (not rawhide, but dried muscle or tendon). Or, do regular brushing with pet toothpaste (it tastes good, and, most importantly, doesn't foam up).
What Else is Missing in Dry Food?
To put it simply - LIVE food! Dry food doesn't have the enzymes that fresh food naturally contains. This forces the body to provide those missing enzymes itself, which can put stress on the system, especially the pancreas. Naturally occurring vitamins derived from food are always preferable to synthetic vitamins. Naturally derived nutrition is by design more balanced and usable by the body, and offers many trace elements that work together in the body.
The Bare Essentials
We know it's convenient to feed plain dry food, but I urge you to add a couple of things. Number one, add moisture, at least in the form of water poured over the food (healthy water, that means natural or filtered). You can add nutrition along with moisture if you add fish oil and canned food. Digestive enzymes are also a good addition for animals that aren't eating fresh food, who suffer from chronic illness, or are elderly.
"All-In-One" Supplements
Pets eating dry food don't need additional synthetic vitamins. They need naturally occurring vitamins from real food. One good way to optimize your pet's dry food diet is by adding a plant-based "all-in-one" supplement. The supplements will vary in their ingredients so be careful. The idea is to use highly nutritious foods to boost the processed food. Most of these supplements contain kelp and alfalfa, two very nutritious plants. They may also contain things like bee pollen, flax seed, garlic, nettle, and dandelion. Some are aimed toward boosting the immune system, while others are more of a spring tonic to help cleanse the blood and boost liver function. Some of the companies that make good ones are: Animal Essentials, The Wholistic Pet, The Honest Kitchen, and The Missing Link.
Any fresh food you can add is a good thing. You can add up to 25% additional fresh food to a dry diet without throwing off the balance too much. This really means fresh food from your own kitchen. The key is feeding healthy fresh food. This means avoiding most of the stuff you should avoid and sticking to natural, mainly RAW food. If you really look at the list below of items to add, you nearly have a healthy diet - without the dry food!
-Raw egg (from a reputable source)
-Raw or cooked meat or organ meats
-Yogurt, Kefir, or raw milk
-Soaked (if rolled) or cooked whole grains (millet, quinoa, oats, buckwheat, barley, rye)
-A few berries
-Assorted veggies (ground or grated is best if they're raw), NO ONIONS
-Aloe Juice, Apple Cider Vinegar
-Sweet Potatoes (cooked or out of a can) **Cats especially LOVE these in their diet!**
-Alfalfa, kelp, garlic (small to moderate amount)
New Option For Shelf-Stable Food:
If you rely on dry food because it's shelf-stable (doesn't need to be refridgerated/frozen), there are new dehydrated foods on the market that you can store on the shelf for just as many months, but are less processed. Some are dehydrated or freeze-dried versions of a companies' raw food diet (Nature's Variety, Bravo). Others are designed as their own unique diet. The Honest Kitchen has a food that is human-grade dehydrated food that looks powdery when dry, with a few recognizable chunks of banana and coconut. You just add warm water and let it sit for a bit (approx 10 min). They make 3 dog foods (2 without grains, one with), a cat food, and a veggie/vitamin mix that you can add meat to. One great thing about this food is that it mixes easily with dry, canned or raw, so this is another way to upgrade a dry food diet. It's not cheap, but you get a really good product. It's a good thing to have up on the shelf in case it is needed.
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