The Growing Problem With Homemade Pet Food

there's a growing problem that's happening with homemade pet food and this problem unfortunately stems from fear but to understand what this problem is and why it's happening we first need to take a look at how we used to feed our pets before dry and canned foods were invented pet owners fed their pets meat bones and other Whole Food scraps that they were either eating themselves or throwing out but in the early 1950s commercial pet food companies began extruding their food by pushing the mixture of grain meat meal and other ingredients through a Dye forming it into bite-sized dry kibble shapes this made feeding pets a lot more convenient in a catapulted commercial pet food into more households than ever before then in the 1980s nutritional guidelines for cats and dogs were established which allowed pet food companies to follow these guidelines and Market their food as nutritionally complete pet owners and veterinarians were thrilled I mean who could resist a convenient food that's also considered nutritionally complete and balanced for Optimal Health yet still some people just couldn't get past the idea of feeding their pets balls of grain and meat meal and one of these wary pet owners was actually a vet I used to work with he told me that he remembered when dry Pet Foods started gaining popularity and even though it made sense to switch to it he still felt strange doing it nonetheless he continued feeding kibble and after he finished vet school he was fully convinced that commercial pet food was the safest and healthiest diet for pets it's now been about seven decades since kibble became the main food source for cats and dogs and the majority of owners today have grown conditioned to believing that dry and canned food are the only Foods pets should eat I mean when I was little feeding these starchy dry balls seemed completely normal but the tides are starting to change once again over the past decade owners began questioning drying canned food after a series of fatal pet food recalls ranging from toxic ingredients to bacteria contamination and because of this many owners have been switching back to a homemade diet for instance a recent study on dog owners showed that 64 percent make a homemade meal for their dogs at least three times a week this is a positive step towards feeding pets a more fresh whole food diet but unfortunately not everyone is on board while many pet owners and even veterinarians believe that homemade diets are a much healthier option than processed food a large majority believe that commercial pet food is the only way to properly feed cats and dogs and that it's just not possible to make balanced homemade diets when I first started looking at alternative diets for my pets I even wondered this making a balanced diet seemed like a science especially when looking at the ingredients list and seeing all of those big words How could an average pet owner figure this out Well turns out it's actually a lot easier than you might think because not only can you find out your pet's caloric and nutrient needs by doing a little online digging you can also find out what nutrients are in the foods that you're feeding by searching them on food data websites and I'll give you a resource on how to figure all of this out a little later doing this is how me and many other raw feeders check the nutrient profiles of our recipes and going this extra mile has actually brought some much needed credibility to homemade diets so wait where's the problem with homemade diets then hold on I'm almost there an ideal raw meal would be made up of whole food ingredients like meat raw bones organs fish and other Whole Foods this way most nutrients will be provided through the food but the reality is not everyone has the time or money to feed a fully whole food diet so what many pet owners use to replace some of these foods are synthetic nutrients or lab created nutrients now adding some synthetic nutrients from time to time is totally fine however there have been many cases where supplements were either overused or overdosed and this is the growing problem with homemade diets I've actually noticed this a lot when helping owners through email for instance there have been many times where I've looked over an owner's recipe and almost half of that recipe was made of supplements other times I've noticed owners misreading the dosage label and we're actually adding too much of a supplement adding too much of a nutrient can be very dangerous because not only can too much of one nutrient be toxic to the body but it can also prevent the absorption of other nutrients have pet food companies scared us into believing that if we don't provide every single nutrient in the perfect amount our pets will instantly become ill so many owners have become so fearful of nutrient deficiencies that they're formulating homemade diets in a similar fashion as commercial pet food companies meaning the majority of the nutrients are coming from supplementation rather than species appropriate Foods okay I know for those of you who have watched my videos on balancing homemade diets I'm sure this is confusing so let me just answer this one question do homemade diets have to be balanced every single day down to the milligram no I will always believe that it's important to understand what it takes to make a complete and balanced diet but it's also important to understand that our pets bodies know how to handle missing nutrients here and there it's okay to guesstimate sometimes and if you've been holding off on feeding your pet a raw diet because your scared you won't be able to keep it balanced every day this is your sign to finally take that leap because as long as you know the basic fundamentals of what nutrients your pet needs in their diet what foods are appropriate for their body and what ingredients their body thrives best on your pet will do just fine and a great place to start learning about these fundamentals is actually my free cheat sheet which gives you all of this information for you including how to figure out your pet's caloric and nutrient needs what foods you should feed them and how to feed these Foods properly the link to download is in the description below [Music]

Channel: Paws of Prey

Views: 256,896

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Id: wkIhxYS_R9U

Length: 6min 36sec (396 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023