What you see … Is not always what you get

Just looking at the pet food ads on TV and in magazines, you’d get the impression that all commercial pet foods are healthy. All those fresh ingredients could tempt you to try these pet foods yourself! Unfortunately, the truth about most pet foods may be far from what artful ads would have us believe. If you’ve ever opened a pet food can that was marketed as healthy, and then found a glob of unrecognizable, grayish something-or-other, then you probably know what I mean.

What you want to know

Now, if you’re already aware that not all pet food commercials and ads live up to their promises, you should ask yourself a simple question: how can I tell if a particular pet food is healthy? The answer to this is often hidden in plain sight, on the pet food label, often in the midst of a bunch of unfamiliar terms. To do well for your pet, you need to be able to interpret pet food labels correctly.

What you need to know

First and foremost, healthy pet foods contain real food ingredients.
Healthy commercial pet foods are made from natural food ingredients that reflect the needs of the pet for which the foods are intended. Remember that ingredients are listed in the order of their relative quantity in the pet food. Healthy dog and cat foods should contain animal-derived products as their first ingredients. The quality of these ingredients is absolutely essential to the health of your pet. If you see terms like ‘chicken meal’, ‘fish meal,’ ‘animal by-products,’ or ‘animal fat,’ you should know that these ingredients are of extremely low quality. Better choices are products that list terms that precisely describe the ingredient, such as chicken, cod, or animal parts, such as chicken heart or beef liver. Finally, the addition of synthetic chemicals should be kept to a minimum, as most of the available pet food supplements added routinely to pet foods are of low or questionable quality and value.

Second, healthy pet foods are certified organic.
This is true quite simply because organic ingredients are both safer and healthier for your pet. Organic ingredients are safer because their production and processing precludes by regulation the use of toxic manufacturing and processing chemicals. These include agricultural pesticides, fertilizers such as sewage sludge, hormones and antibiotics used to raise livestock, and toxic chemicals used during manufacture, including among others, fumigants, pesticides, and corrosive sanitizers. As well, organic ingredients can never include genetically engineered foods (some of which have been implicated in a variety of health problems, such as allergies or reproductive disorders). Increasingly, studies have shown that organic ingredients are healthier than their conventional counterparts, not only because they are free of toxic residues and diligently processed, but also because they contain more nutrients, including vitamins, antioxidants, minerals, and critically important trace elements.

However, you should be aware that only USDA certified organic claims are regulated and enforced by Federal law; other non-certified organic claims cannot be verified by an unbiased third party.

Third, healthy pet foods are made of human-grade quality ingredients.
Although it doesn’t seem to make much sense, there are both USDA certified organic ingredients for human consumption and USDA certified organic ingredients for animals (examples are eggs, peas, etc). The latter are called ‘feed-grade’ ingredients, and are approved for the use solely in pet foods. Feed-grade ingredients are certainly of lower quality than human-grade ingredients. So, if you’re searching for a healthy pet food, look out for the descriptive word ‘human-grade’ on the pet food package! Never assume that pet food manufacturers are required to tell the consumer whether they use human-grade or feed-grade ingredients; they aren’t. But they most certainly will indicate if they use human-grade ingredients because these are of higher quality (a major selling point) and more expensive to produce (a justification for charging more for their product).

Fourth, healthy pet foods can be identified by the way they’re processed.
Even certified organic pet foods, containing all of the appropriate ingredients for a particular species of pet, are not necessarily healthy. Healthy pet foods must offer more than just organic certification and species appropriateness. They must also be processed in a manner that preserves the integrity and bioavailability of the nutrients in their ingredients. Heat-based processing, such as canning, baking or extruding food into nicely shaped kibble or biscuits, ruins the quality of many nutrients and can render even the best ingredients ‘lifeless’ and all but useless to your pet. Dehydration is a better way to process foods—but keep in mind that cats in particular don’t do well on dry food alone and that certain problems can even be associated with rehydrated pet foods that were previously dehydrated. If fresh foods are unavailable, the best choices among commercial pet foods are products that have been fresh-frozen. Of course, freezing is less convenient and more expensive for the manufacturer to ship and store, and those costs get passed down to you, the consumer. Nevertheless, keep in mind that this additional expense will almost certainly ensure that your pet will stay healthy longer, and will also save you the pain and financial burden of caring for a sick animal.

Finally, a pet shouldn’t live on one prepared pet food alone, even if it is healthy and nutritious.
No plant or animal can thrive on just one combination of nutrients. Variety is a must for your pet’s health and wellbeing, and you have the responsibility to provide this variety for your best friend. Just as you and your family would not live happily ever after on even the best quality ‘astronaut’ food, your pet needs different foods to stay both healthy and happy!

Since your pet has few choices of her own, it’s up to you to provide her with a variety of different safe and healthy USDA certified organic, human-grade, quality foods where ingredients have been processed in ways that are designed to preserve the endogenous nutrients. Your pet will thank you for your diligence and care!

Only certified organic pet food claims are regulated and enforced by the US government. All other (non-certified) organic claims are not regulated and are not verified by an unbiased third party. These non-certified organic claims may therefore be true or not as nobody but the manufacturer’s word stands behind them.

As is true for human foods, certified organic claims in the pet food industry guarantee that at least 95% of the used ingredients are certified organic, the remainder of the ingredients have to be certifiably non-GMO ingredients which are not available in organic form (e.g., calcium carbonate, fish).

How do you recognize a certified organic pet food product?
- The label of a certified organic pet food has to display the organic certifying agency (e.g., QAI or Oregon Tilth).
- The product package may display the USDA organic seal.
- The product label includes a certified organic claim.

OK, now that you have found a certified organic dog food, can you be sure that it is healthier than non-certified organic (i.e., ‘conventional’) dog foods?
The answer is yes and no. It is clear that certified organic ingredients have been grown and processed in ways that deliver a generally healthier and safer (more nutrients, less toxins, no GMOs, no irradiation, restricted inclusion of synthetic chemicals, etc.) product. However, it is up to the pet food manufacturer to choose ingredients and processes which result in a healthy pet food product.

Examples:
1. If they use refined organic ingredients (e.g., refined flours or honey), your pet still runs the risk of developing chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, arthritis, and cancer.

2. If they use known allergens (e.g., grains for dog or cat food), your pet may develop allergies or food intolerance.

3. If they use organic feed-grade ingredients (normally pet food manufacturers don’t make a fuss about declaring their ingredients as ‘feed-grade’), your pet gets inferior nutrients. Certified organic human grade ingredients are produced with more care than feed grade counterparts, therefore the quality of human grade ingredients is always higher.

4. Even if they use organic, ‘USDA’ eggs or meats, your pet may get delivered a dose of stress hormones which have accumulated in the animal-derived product throughout the livestock’s life. Although organic animals raised for organic ingredients at least have to be fed GMO-, antibiotic, hormone-, and pesticide-free foods, these animals’ quality of life is still mostly very stressful even for certified organic livestock.

A better way to assure that your pet doesn’t ingest and suffer from the stress hormones the livestock has accumulated during its often short life, is to choose organic ingredients from animals that have been humanely raised (and handled / killed).

5. If they use allowed synthetic chemicals in excess (e.g., to achieve the AAFCO nutritional standards), your pet gets a dose of chemical ‘by products’ which accumulate during the synthesis of isolated synthetic ‘nutrients.’ The benefits and long-term risks of these isolated chemicals and the potential contaminants that may accompany them, have not yet been determined.

Don’t assume that compliance with ‘AAFCO nutrient levels’ guarantees your pet’s long-lasting health! Why else do we have sicker animals now where most of them eat diets that comply with AAFCO nutrient standards because they are supplemented with (isolated synthetic) nutrients? Shouldn’t animals that eat such foods be healthier and live longer than before addition of these nutrients became a ‘must’ for ‘serious’ pet food companies? They should if the promises made of such AAFCO compliant diets were true and kept. Instead, our pets are now increasingly chronically sick and die prematurely, so what can be concluded from that?

6. Heat treated certified organic products contain lower levels of available nutrients and may even render some of the used ingredients allergenic to your pet. Raw, frozen and even gently dehydrated pet food products are a more natural and healthful option than any kibble or can.

About dehydration. We have seen that some manufacturers that market their foods as ‘raw’ or ‘dehydrated raw’ actually use a mix of dried and high-heat treated ingredients. When you ask these manufacturers, they may simply tell you what you want to hear; e.g., ‘only low temperatures of 120F are used to make the meat safer.’

Just for the record, 120F is not a temperature that is generally considered to prevent any potential meat-born illnesses. And also, just for the record, if a company has its dehydrated pet food made in a processing plant that is not run by themselves, we are talking powders and not fresh ingredients. So the meat they may include has been shipped dry already, and if the meat powder was made for human consumption I assure you that it was cooked at high temperatures and not dried at 120F).

Keep in mind that nobody knows what is going on behind the closed doors of a pet food manufacturing site, except if you are talking about a pet food manufacturer that voluntarily has his products certified organic.

Now, how do you make sure that a certified organic pet food is healthy?
I hope it has become clear form the above, that even with certified organic pet foods you need to read the labels and see what exactly is in the pet food and how it was prepared to determine if a given pet food is healthy or not.

You have the power to choose a healthy pet food, your pet doesn’t, she depends on you.

….unless have have a pet bear, but then you clearly have another problem to worry about….

Sometimes I am approached by pet owners who want to know why we don’t add honey to our pet food products. Many pet food companies still add sweeteners to their foods to make them more palatable to pets (not coincidentally this translates to greater sales). My answer is that this is not the way we are doing business and if the consequence is that some animals (or their owners) are not ‘crazy’ about one of our products, so be it. Although we are sorry to see a customer choose another company’s product, we can not with good conscience sell a product that we do not consider to be healthy for your pet.

It is known that sweeteners, honey included, are interfering with the glucose and insulin metabolism. We are all familiar with the consequences of this interference: The most obvious consequences of over consumption of sweeteners are obesity and diabetes which are so prevalent in our pet population today. Pet obesity is an epidemic sweeping across industrialized countries. It is estimated that 25 to 44 percent of dogs in the US are clinically obese. There is also evidence of increased disease risk and premature death in overweight cats. Alone these unhealthy weight issues alone are enough for us to omit honey from our organic pet food products.

But honey, how can that be bad? Honey is a sweetener. It may have a lower glycemic index than table sugar, but it still a sugar. Most of the honey added in pet foods which are marketed as healthy, premium, or holistic, is a refined product that contains 23-41% glucose and 31-44% fructose. Both glucose and fructose have been shown in feeding studies to induce diseases including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and inflammation.

Honey used in pet food products may still contain some minerals that are not present in table sugar, but it lost most of its healing powers. Refining destroys many of the therapeutic components of honey. Pasteurization destroys all enzymes that have made honey so famous for its healing properties.

Most honey that is added to pet food products is not organic, which makes it an inferior supplement to begin with. Bees producing this honey feed on pesticide-laced flowers and are often supplied with additional cheap fructose corn syrup or other sugars to increase the yield of their honey. So, how healthy can these animals’ honey be, even if it were raw?

Now, if a pet food manufacturer would add raw and certified organic honey to some of their treats, I would be less negative about it. However, if it would be added to a ‘staple’ diet, I still believe that the risks outweigh the benefits, especially if your pet consumes such product every day. I still have to see one pet food product that contains raw organic honey… (raw certified organic honey is expensive and that’s the reason why cheaper less healthful options are used).

Furthermore, there are less than a handful of pet food manufacturing processes that do not destroy most of the beneficial properties of even raw, organic honey. Any high heat process destroys most of the helpful components in raw honey and renders it to a sweetener that consists mainly of glucose and fructore; it may or may not contain a few remaining minerals.

Aside from that, if a manufacturer truly would add certified organic raw honey to his pet food and not destroy the honey’s properties during food manufacture, he’d have a hard time selling his product! Organic honey is expensive compared to non-organic honey, and raw organic honey is even more expensive.

How would I remedy this? If your pet can benefit from the healing powers of honey, serve it directly into her food when she needs it. This way you can choose the quality of the honey, timing of delivery, and you can be assured that this amazing natural medicine arrives in your pet’s system alive and active. Honey should simple be no food additive that your pet consumes every day; honey is a medicine that should only be used for therapeutic reasons.