6 Dog Food Stereotypes That You Believe In

I discovered similar irrational theses, cyclical blunders, and beliefs shared by many dog lovers by reading every comment under my YouTube videos. In this post, I will highlight the most common prejudices and rationally explain “why” these stereotypes are not only unfounded, but also do not improve the lives of your pets.

Stereotype 1. Dry food is balanced.

I adore this argument because it answers my next question: what is “balance?” And the responses are wildly disparate. Someone claims that this is a magic recipe that only dry food manufacturers know about; someone claims that this is a change in meat types, ironically, according to expert examinations, 42 dry food, meat in the feed or not at all, or it is far from the first place; someone swears that this is a combination of BZHU, providing your dog’s unique needs…

Everyone understands balance as completely different!

There is no such thing as “balance” in reality. What’s the problem? We’ve all forgotten the most fundamental thing: who a dog is and how a dog eats in nature. A dog is a predator that feeds on flesh (meat), and in nature, a dog does not compute how many calories it consumes!

The legs of the balancing myth are derived from any dog owner’s fear of making a mistake. Under the guise of “balanced feed,” the term “balanced” is ideal for selling food waste. This word conjures up images of not just making a purchase that is not only useless for your dog in terms of briquette composition, but also dangerous to his health. After all, every dry food product on the market contains harmful carbs in the form of cheap fillers: rice, corn, wheat, oats, legumes, and potatoes.

The very existence of the term balance “multiplies by zero” the arguing party’s reasoning and common sense. After all, it’s hard to estimate how much your dog requires a priori because each demand is different, owing to differences in mode, rhythm of life, age, stress level, climatic circumstances, biological needs, genetic predispositions, and so on.

What, in fact, could still be called a balance?

Of course, all of the necessary minimum nutritional standards must be met. But do you realize what the issue is?! If you feed your four-legged friend 2/3 meat and organs and 1/3 vegetables and bones, he will get all of the nutrients he requires. This is how a dog’s body functions! The dog eats as much as it can for future consumption (they do not chew, but tear off the flesh of the prey). And assimilate – how much her body requires based on the needs of the dog in question. There’s nothing else!

Stereotype 2: Dogs need carbohydrates.

What carbs are beneficial for dogs and why do they require them? These are the two issues that must be addressed.

Carbohydrates are not required for dogs! After all, unlike humans, dogs require the least amount of energy. The figures are as follows:

As can be seen, lipids provide the highest energy (nutritional value) to dogs (9.4 kcal), followed by protein (5.7 kcal), and carbs (4.1 kcal). This is owing to the dog’s incredibly weak glucose absorption! After all, a dog will never consume them on its own in nature. A dog, like any predator such as a wolf or coyote, should eat predominantly animal protein meals.

If carbs make up the majority of a dog’s diet (as they do in the composition of any dry food), the dog will not live long or efficiently. As a result, there are so many sick dogs whose owners were duped into believing the producers rather than their own common sense and nature.

Dogs get a lot of carbs from dry food, which has a big impact on the acidity of their stomachs and how well their internal organs perform. And the claims that living with a human dog taught them to digest them are total nonsense! If you look back far enough, dogs never ate at the table, even during the Soviet era. They were fed scraps from the slaughterhouse, which were part of the hunter’s plunder. And if you go back much further – 3000 years ago, remains of human sites show that someone fed a dog deer, which he surprise did not consume. The digestive and enzyme systems of the dog and the wolf did not develop any distinctions.

What carbohydrates are still useful?

Only those that are useful. Carbohydrates, for example, are found in carrots. However, in this scenario, they will make up 50-60% of the composition and 1-2 percent of the total. This is the crucial distinction. Learn to think critically and to ask the correct questions, such as, “Who profits from this?” Certainly not your dog…
What does “functional” mean? It refers to ingredients that are introduced for a specific purpose, such as pushing a food lump down the esophagus and forming excrement.

Why then add cereals, corn, potatoes, and legumes to dry food?

Carbohydrates are added to dry food in the form of these cheap and ineffective fillers only to save money. Accept that no one cares about your dog’s health: not the manufacturer who profits from the sale, nor the veterinarian who profits from the visit, and certainly not the pet store consultant.

Stereotype 3: Dogs are omnivores.

Dogs, ostensibly, do not resemble wolves at all, according to veterinarians. If you open Wikipedia in a different language, you’ll see completely different information about dogs. Omnivores in Russian, predators in English. Why is this the case?

It’s all about the money, or more precisely $ 2 billion. This is how much the Russian Federation’s cat and dog food sector contributes to feed producers. And you may rest assured that they will not be misplaced. Wikipedia and a million other websites will continue to correspond, and new generations of veterinarians will be purchased and raised with the sole purpose of bolstering erroneous nutritional theories.
Due to a variety of physiological constraints, a dog cannot be an omnivore:

The appearance of teeth. The molars (back teeth) of predators are sharp and are not designed to consume vegetable (carbohydrate) food. The predator’s dentition shape directly reflects the sort of prey being consumed, which is, by definition, natural dog food.
The jaw’s appearance. The jaw moves in a different way in omnivores and herbivores than it does in dogs – rotating movements. Crushing and chewing complex carbohydrates and plant meals is important for omnivores. The jaw of dogs, like that of wolves, moves solely up and down, and food is absorbed by pulling pieces of meat from the victim and swallowing them.

The enzyme system is a system that helps us to digest food. Dogs lack amylase, an enzyme that helps omnivores digest carbohydrates. This is a two-pronged argument, one for the carbohydrate stereotype and the other for the omnivore stereotype.

The source of the extract and the method of extraction. No one can deny that dogs assisted humanity in hunting. As a result of this help, the person’s food production grew by 75%. And no omnivorous creature is involved in the hunt for living things!
Acidity in the stomach. Because of the variation in food consumed, the pH of the stomach between omnivores and carnivores is extremely different. Bones, for example, cannot be digested by omnivores because they require a more acidic environment to digest. However, dogs can!
Skeleton. The physiology of the paws’ structure, mobility, and capacity to drive and obtain prey are all more arguments against the dog’s imagined “omnivore” status.

Only those who do not understand either the physiology or the history of the dog’s origin believe in its omnivorous character.

Stereotype 4. There may be an overabundance of protein from meat.

The fact of idea substitution is immediately worth noting here. Veterinarians recognize any symptom of an allergic reaction, such as redness of the snout, when there is an excess of protein.

The word available to every nutritionist-the protein absorption threshold-is not in favor of this stereotype. How can there be an excess of something that isn’t assimilated? That instance, just because a dog consumes 10 kilograms at a time does not guarantee that all of the protein in that 10 kilograms is digested.

Another idea – the ability to assimilate and actual assimilation – has been substituted. Yes, meat and its components can be digested by 95%, but only up to the assimilation threshold, which is defined by the animal’s physiological needs. Returning to our 10 kg of meat example, the dog will have learned 95% of what it requires. And whatever isn’t required will pass through transit and end up in the feces. It is simple to verify this by analyzing the dog’s feces, which will contain proteins that the dog did not absorb in order to exceed the assimilation threshold.

Meat is a dog’s most natural source of protein.
All negative symptoms of food allergies in dogs are caused by inappropriate feeding, either by the dog or by its owners. And the redness of the muzzle could be due to the contents of the meat, not the meat itself. That was the case with my previous dog. Yes, veterinary-controlled beef is free of parasites, antibiotics, and growth hormones. It’s ridiculous to be terrified of it!

And if your dog has a bad reaction to the meat you’ve offered, you’ll need to select a new type, such as turkey instead of beef. And there isn’t a surplus of protein in nature; I think we’re on the same page here:).

How does a dog’s digestion work?

Stereotype 5: Feeding doesn’t affect your health.

When the human genome was investigated in 2015, it was discovered that 23,000 genes out of 26,000 were shared with humans, prompting the publication of the amazing book Nutrigenomic, which is a compendium of study on nutrition and how it impacts a dog’s health.

Nutrition has an impact on the quality and lifespan of the dog, but there are two other facts that 99 percent of dog owners are unaware of.

The health of the progeny is directly influenced by the nutrition of the dog’s parents. This means that puppies raised on dry food and puppies raised on good natural nutrition will have different health outcomes. Then there’s the conclusion that all breeders who want to help future generations stay healthy should give their pets natural food. The buyer, on the other hand, should become more demanding and aware as a result of this information.

Your dog may not develop inherited problems if it is fed naturally. What is the mechanism behind it? There is a major gene-mutagen that is in charge of turning on harmful genes. Many environmental factors influence this mutagen, one of the most important being diet. Let me repeat: if you feed your dog the correct natural food, they will live longer!
The statistics on diseases back up these assertions. The number of cancers has increased by more than a factor of ten since 2000. Allergies, liver difficulties, and digestive problems are the most prevalent concerns of dog owners who feed dry food.

Stereotype 6. Kashi is a straight girl.

Those who believe in this misconception tend to follow the faulty logical chain: the dog eats the victim’s stomach, the prey’s stomach contains grains, hence the dog should, in their opinion, consume grains. A grain is any porridge.

First and foremost, this thesis contradicts the omnivore stereotype; second, it pertains to cats rather than dogs; and third, it is irrational and omits essential data.

In contrast to the quantity of grains in dry food, stomach contents are fermented, which is not the same as consuming an unfermented product. Separately, the proportion of stomach content, from the weight of the prey consumed, will be 1-2 percent (from 50 percent )
The victim’s stomach may be empty, but there will almost always be grass in it (since animals hunt herbivores).

Only the strongest and most adult dogs will be the first to eat the stomach, as there are still other organs to consume. There is also a hierarchy, with only the strongest and most adult dogs being the first to eat the stomach.
The inclusion of such grains in a dog’s diet, such as rice, causes metabolic problems, blood sugar surges, and a reduction in mineral and macronutrient absorption from the intestines. Allergies, diabetes, and cancer are the result of this.

Because many people consider feeding meat to be expensive, the myth about porridge evolved from simple savings. Smoking, consuming alcohol, not properly feeding the dog, and not properly fuelling the automobile are all cheap ways to die. Everything is so straightforward and practical, but alas!