The Best and Worst Foods for Your Dog

Popular demand today's topic is on best to worst foods for your dogs when I lecture when I go over the list of the best to worst foods there are 13 foods on my list it's interesting because you what you're feeding your dog is going to fall in one of those 13 categories I don't want you to beat yourself up when we go over the list invariably one of two things happens either people are feeding a food that they would prefer to not feed but they economically can't afford to feed a different food or people simply don't know and so if you're feeding a food on the lower half of the list or poor quality foods don't beat yourself up the goal is to strive to feed a better food once you know or can afford to do.

So everyone will fall on the list somewhere and just decide where you are on the list and then of course the goal is to always do better by our dogs and feed them better foods that are more species appropriate in a nourishing manner for them so as a proactive veterinarian at my practice I always encourage my clients to evaluate diet because diet obviously is the foundation of health but pertaining to diet there are two very important critical factors that everyone needs to evaluate when it comes to what foods they're nourishing their dogs with foods have the ability to heal or foods have the ability to harm and depending on what you're feeding your dog foods can do both of those things.

So first important factor is to evaluate species appropriateness for dogs a species appropriate diet contains high protein both dogs are carnivores as well as high moisture moisture content is very important for dog foods because denying dogs adequate moisture leads to a whole host of biological problems but it can cause organ dysfunction including kidney disease because dogs were designed to eat a diet that contained about 70% moisture that's what mice and rabbits contain and when we feed dogs in entirely dry food diet that's about 12 percent moisture dogs live in a state of chronic mild dehydration that ultimately can cause organ stress so species appropriateness is high protein high moisture and low starch.

Another word we use for starches or grains or carbohydrates so corn wheat rice soy are all carbohydrates that are not biologically necessary for dogs to consume so we recommend that you follow it nature intended and feed them everything that they do need and try to eliminate those foods that are biologically unnecessary for dogs to eat second important point to consider when you're thinking about how and what to feed your dogs is it's very important that you feed your dogs a balanced diet when I say the word balanced I mean not guessing that it's approved in terms of meeting all vitamin mineral nutrient levels but guaranteed to meet your dogs basic vitamin mineral and nutrient levels through testing it's very important that foods are balanced if you're guessing then chances are the foods are not balanced and nutritional deficiencies happen much faster in dogs than in people so a growing puppy can end up with nutritional deficiencies obvious signs of Oregon degeneration or skeletal problems between two and six months.

After a deficient diet dogs can have life-threatening organ degeneration as adult dogs two to three years after feeding a nutrient deficient diet so the foods have to be balanced so here we go number one on the list the best food you could ever pick for your dog is a balanced raw homemade diet balance meaning nutritionally complete and you know that to be true because you're following a recipe that is been proven to be nutritionally complete such as the recipe book you can buy off of Mercola healthy dogs calm raw meaning unadulterated or unprocessed it's very important that raw foods contain vitamins minerals and nutrients that have been on adulterated and when you process foods the those raw enzymes and nutrients have been destroyed and the downside is they're not delivered up the food chain to your dog homemade diets are some of the best options you can pick because you're in full control of the quality of ingredients that are found in your foods.

We also recommend a lot of variety and the great thing about you doing a homemade diet is that whatever fruits and veggies are in season or whatever meats you happen to come across it or either on sale or that you're able to locate you can use them in rotation which provides good variety for the animals that you're providing those foods for second best food on the list is a commercially available raw food diet now commercially available raw food diets are raw food diets of course that someone else has done the hard work and made them for you it is important that they're balanced which means there are a lot of raw food diets that are coming on the market that have not yet been proven to be nutritionally complete you'll know if the raw food is balanced because right on the bag which you'll find in the freezer section of your upscale dog boutique unfortunately right now.

There are not a lot of raw foods that are offered at big box dog stores but you will be able to find commercially available raw foods both online that you can purchase as well as some of the upscale dog boutiques that may be in your area it'll say right on the bag this food has been proven to be nutritionally complete or adequate for all life stages and that's very important third food on the list in terms of best tors foods third best food is a cooked balanced homemade diet it's the exact same thing as number one but just cooked which means some of the nutrient composition has been diminished because of processing fourth best foods you can feed is a human grade canned food if it doesn't say that the ingredients on in the product are human grade then they are not so you'll know that human grade canned foods are human grade because it's very clear and you'll also know by the price this particular food item is the most expensive food item.

You can feed your dog it's very expensive and what I tell my clients is if you have more money than time you can purchase a human grade canned food for your dog if you have more time than money most people end up making their own balance told me diet because it is quite a bit cheaper. number five on the list is a human grade dry food take a note that dry food is coming in fifth on the list which means we know that it's not as species-appropriate as a moisture dense diet human grade is very important because that means that it's approved in theory for person consumption it's not made with rendered byproducts number six on the list is super premium canned foods super premium canned foods you would be able to purchase at big-box stores like Petco or dog Smart number seven on the list of super premium dry foods number eight on the list is veterinary recommended canned foods veterinary recommended camp foods you would purchase from your veterinarian such brands such as science diet or the period of veterinary lines Royal Canine and wall--the um are all veterinary types of canned foods that fall into that number eight category.

number nine is veterinary recommended dry foods followed by number 10 which is grocery store brand canned foods followed by number 11 which is grocery store dry foods followed by 12 which is the bottom of the list number 12 is the semi moist pouched foods the reason that I do not recommend that you feed your dog semi moist pouch foods some moist pouch foods do not come in a can they come in a package and when you open the seal the food is soft and chewy if you read the back of the bag of semi moist foods you will find that it contains an ingredient called propylene glycol propylene glycol is a scary ingredient that is approved in the pet food industry it's the second cousin to antifreeze which is ethylene glycol propylene glycol is unhealthy for your pets to eat and we do not recommend that you feed any foods that contain propylene glycol bottom of the list worst foods you could feed your pet is an unbalanced homemade diet raw or cooked and I see this unfortunately a lot of my in my practice where people throw their dogs a chicken breast with some veggies and call it a day and as much as that is homemade.

it is nutritionally unbalanced and I do see skeletal issues and organ degeneration come about from not meeting pets calcium mineral trace mineral omega fatty acid requirements by guessing at what a balanced diet is here's what's interesting the worst food on the list being a homemade unbalanced diet can so easily be remedied by simply following approved recipe that you can go from feeding the worst unbalanced food on the list to the best which is number one a balanced homemade raw food diet in a matter of just a few minutes by simply adding in the necessary ingredients to make the food balanced so that's a quick easy simple fix when it comes to correcting an unbalanced diet to a balanced diet pretty quickly so there you have it the entire list of best to worst foods if you are on the lower half of the list make it your goal to work up the list if you're at the top of the list you can pat yourself on the back and know that you're doing the very best you can when it comes to providing species-appropriate nutrition for the animals that you're caring for.

By Dr. Karen Becker!

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