On Food...
Who knew it was so complicated? Certainly interesting anyway...
So one of the chapters in this book "Help For Your Fearful Dog" covers food and the impact it can have on your dog's behavior. Supposedly, fearful or nervous dogs can feel and behave even more so (or less so) based on their diet.
I guess dog food manufactures are legally required to list the content of the food in descending order by bulk weight. So the food has more of the ingredients listed first. The author says that the first two ingredients should be meat because dogs are primarily carnivores. But there are three grades to the quality of meat: whole meat, meal (ex. "chicken meal") and by-products, each in order of respective quality. By-products, in chicken for example can contain heads, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines.
With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm sure we all remember hearing that the post-turkey induced coma is caused by the amino acid in turkey called tryptophan (precursor to serotonin.) Ahh the calming and relaxing post-turkey bliss... So it makes sense that dogs, especially fearful dogs, are positively impacted by foods containing tryptophan.
Corn is high in the amino acid tyrosine. I guess this amino acid does just the opposite of the tryptophan in our friend the turkey. It blocks the amino acids required to produce serotonin from passing to the brain. "...it is not conducive to a calm state of mind."
"Other ingredients to avoid include artificial colors or flavors, and any that are not identified by source (for example, 'animal fat'.) Also, read the ingredient line that begins 'preserved with...' The desirable preservatives are vitamins E (sometimes listed as 'mixed tocopherols') and C (often called 'ascorbic acid'.) The unhealtful , potentially cancer-causing preservatives are BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin."
So after reading this chapter, I of course went straight to the label on the newly purchased 40 pound bag of dog food sitting in my kitchen. My dogs are currently fed Pedigree - adult complete nutrition, small crunchy bites.
So what are the first few ingredients in my dog's food? Sigh...
Ground whole corn, meat and bone meal, ground whole wheat, corn gluten meal, animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid), wheat mill run, chicken by-product meal...
Not only an I feeding my nervous dogs food of poor qulaity that is not conducive to helping them develop calm and less nervous characters, there's that "potentially cancer-causing" BHA. The first two ingredients are not meat. It's got almost all of the negative ingredients mentioned and none of recommended quality. So it looks like I'll be making a trip to the pet store to review food labels.
I'll check up on some common kibbles and report back. Seems a change in diet may be in order here. Does anyone feed their dog a Science Diet kibble? If so, could you post a comment with the ingredients for me?
So one of the chapters in this book "Help For Your Fearful Dog" covers food and the impact it can have on your dog's behavior. Supposedly, fearful or nervous dogs can feel and behave even more so (or less so) based on their diet.
I guess dog food manufactures are legally required to list the content of the food in descending order by bulk weight. So the food has more of the ingredients listed first. The author says that the first two ingredients should be meat because dogs are primarily carnivores. But there are three grades to the quality of meat: whole meat, meal (ex. "chicken meal") and by-products, each in order of respective quality. By-products, in chicken for example can contain heads, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines.
With Thanksgiving coming up, I'm sure we all remember hearing that the post-turkey induced coma is caused by the amino acid in turkey called tryptophan (precursor to serotonin.) Ahh the calming and relaxing post-turkey bliss... So it makes sense that dogs, especially fearful dogs, are positively impacted by foods containing tryptophan.
Corn is high in the amino acid tyrosine. I guess this amino acid does just the opposite of the tryptophan in our friend the turkey. It blocks the amino acids required to produce serotonin from passing to the brain. "...it is not conducive to a calm state of mind."
"Other ingredients to avoid include artificial colors or flavors, and any that are not identified by source (for example, 'animal fat'.) Also, read the ingredient line that begins 'preserved with...' The desirable preservatives are vitamins E (sometimes listed as 'mixed tocopherols') and C (often called 'ascorbic acid'.) The unhealtful , potentially cancer-causing preservatives are BHA, BHT and ethoxyquin."
So after reading this chapter, I of course went straight to the label on the newly purchased 40 pound bag of dog food sitting in my kitchen. My dogs are currently fed Pedigree - adult complete nutrition, small crunchy bites.
So what are the first few ingredients in my dog's food? Sigh...
Ground whole corn, meat and bone meal, ground whole wheat, corn gluten meal, animal fat (preserved with BHA and citric acid), wheat mill run, chicken by-product meal...
Not only an I feeding my nervous dogs food of poor qulaity that is not conducive to helping them develop calm and less nervous characters, there's that "potentially cancer-causing" BHA. The first two ingredients are not meat. It's got almost all of the negative ingredients mentioned and none of recommended quality. So it looks like I'll be making a trip to the pet store to review food labels.
I'll check up on some common kibbles and report back. Seems a change in diet may be in order here. Does anyone feed their dog a Science Diet kibble? If so, could you post a comment with the ingredients for me?
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2 Comments:
Hi. I think you can do a lot of your dog food analysis via the internet rather than having to go in-store. I found www.dogfoodanalysis.com via a Google search. Every manufacturer has their own philosophy. Be careful about switching them over to a different food to avoid upset stomachs.
What ingredients are you planning to try? -- Donna in VA
Oh that's very helpful. Thank you! And yes, we'll definitely switch food slowly over two weeks, adding just a little at first the their current food and then reducing the amount of their old food till they're just on the new. Definitely don't want upset tummies!
Not sure that I'm really as concerned about exact ingredients specially. I just want to make sure that 1) a full meat item is listed as the first and maybe second ingredients. 2) None of the harmful perservatives mentioned in the book are used. and 3) corn is one of the lower level ingredients so there's not as much of it so we can reduce the impact it has on tryptophan and therefor serotonin.
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