31/10/2020
Dogs are carnivores and have a digestive system designed to handle large amounts of raw meat and fat. Therefore, it makes sense that dogs would thrive on the diet nature intended. Protein is the primary food staple of the carnivore and is a vital element in your dog’s diet. It is essential for good organ and tissue health, a strong immune system, healthy skin and a shiny coat. Recent studies have confirmed that a high level of protein is not just beneficial, but necessary for dogs of all ages from growing puppies to senior dogs. So what is protein, and what proteins do dogs need?
When people think of proteins, meat, fish, eggs and dairy tend to come to mind. All of these are good sources of protein. Grains and vegetables also contain proteins; however when it comes to dogs, it is important to understand not all proteins are created equal.
Proteins are made up of amino acids. There are two types of amino acids; essential and nonessential. Essential amino acids must be present in the dogs diet and in the right amounts for the diet to be truly “balanced and complete”. If your dog doesn’t receive enough nonessential amino acids from dietary sources, it’s body can synthesise them well enough to suffice.
If we looked at the list of all the amino acids and their long scientific names, it might be enough to convince us that canine nutrition really is a complex issue! However, you don’t need to know the names of all of them; nor do you need to know what amounts your dog needs. Why? Because all of them are found in the correct amounts in the simple staple foods that should make up the basis of your dogs diet.
The quality of a protein is determined by how many of these essential amino acids it contains. The more amino acids a protein includes, the more digestible or “biologically available” it is for your dog. Animal proteins that contain all the amino acids are considered “complete” proteins. Plant proteins are considered “incomplete” because they are missing the important amino acids l-carnitine and taurine. The yardstick for measuring protein quality is the chicken egg, which is considered to have all the amino acids your dog needs.
The next best thing to the “protein perfect” egg is protein from animal meat and organs. Plant proteins, however, can fall as low as 45 percent on the digestibility scale. Even if you feed your dog twice as many plant proteins as you feed animal proteins, your dog will still not get all the amino acids it needs. This is where the problem with feeding plant protein lies. Quantity unfortunately is not a substitute for quality.
The best nutritional choice is to feed your dog animal proteins. As it is with people, homemade meals are more nutritional than processed foods and fast food meals. When it comes to providing the nutrients your dog needs, there are things that can affect the quality and digestibility of meats and their amino acids. The human raw food movement was founded on the understanding that cooking foods destroys the nutrients and enzymes and alters their makeup, usually for the worse. Similarly, studies have shown that high temperatures and prolonged exposure to heat alters amino acid chains making the essential amino acids less available and digestible to dogs. In many cases, high heat destroys the proteins or compromises the quality of the protein. The longer the proteins are cooked and the higher the temperature they are cooked at, the less useful they become.
While prolonged or high temperature cooking may be necessary for omnivores, the carnivores digestive tract is designed to digest raw meat easily. While we would not eat raw meat each night, our dogs need it to thrive. As we have already learned, canned and dry dog foods tend to be over-cooked and high in fibre, which makes them hard for dogs to digest. If you look at the quality of the ingredients that are put into these foods prior to the cooking process, it is not hard to understand that the protein quality in most processed dog foods is seriously compromised and questionable at best! Plant proteins do not meet your dogs nutritional needs. Likewise, feeding large quantities of low quality proteins does not meet their nutritional needs. Poor quality proteins do not satisfy your dog nutritionally and they can create a host of other problems as well. Poor quality proteins are taxing on your dogs liver and kidneys, and over time can cause deficiencies that may compromise even the healthiest dogs organs. Some dog owners tend to over feed their pets to try make up for lack of quality in the processed food. This can lead to obesity and other serious health problems.
Your dog needs regular meals of fresh, quality protein. This does not always mean you have to shop for your dogs food in the meat aisle of your local supermarket, there are creative and cost effective ways to get your dog the nutrition it needs.
www.primepetnutrition.com
Feeding What Nature Intended. 🐾
We work individually with you to formulate a home prepared natural raw meat diet that is unique to your pet’s nutritional requirements, advice on supplements & support you with techniques to stay on track with your pets nutrition plan.
