Feeding Your White Shepherd

My first big surprise when pondering food came in a phone conversation with a local veterinarian about certain brands of dog foods.  He really threw me for a loop when he passionately told me that foods like Pedigree and Purina Dog Chow are excellent  foods for your dog.  At the time I wasn't too well informed on the wide ranging views on dog foods.  What I knew was that these brands and some others have lower protein content than "performance" brands, and also that they use higher percentages of grain versus meat sources for protein.  But even the top commercial brands (Science Diet, Pro Plan, Iams, Eukanuba, Nutro, etc.) all contain a high percentage of grains.  You decide for yourself whether that's OK. 

What's the P.E.R.fect  protein?
When I told the vet that those foods get most of their protein from corn, he gruffly countered "What's wrong with corn?"  I meekly told him that corn protein has a poor Protein Efficiency Ratio (P.E.R.) - the amino acids that make up the protein are not in the proper ratios.  This obviously threw him off balanced, so rather than defend corn he changed the subject to his belief that the companies that make these foods will back up their product,  which is probably true.  They probably are good at ensuring their product is consistent and legally what they claim it is.

Now don't get me wrong here, ...
I'm not going to go into a lecture about how commercial dog foods are poisoning and reducing the life of your pet.  There are plenty of people out there with such a passion for that message that an evangelist would marvel.  I'm not going to tell you those people are wrong either.  A bit overly concerned maybe.  Maybe not.

The baby formula analogy
Back in the 1960's, breast feeding declined and most mothers in America turned to feeding their infants formula.  There were many arguments for this beyond convenience - the main one being the risks and dangers of breast feeding.  You don't know if your baby is eating enough.  You don't know if your milk is good quality.  Disease... Malnutrition...  In my opinion, scare tactics were used to promote the safety and benefits of feeding formula over breast feeding.  Facts were overplayed to develop fears.  And the resulting statistics proved them right.  Fewer babies had problems that were related to breast feeding.

The same argument was used when the commercial dog food industry grew and it is still made today.  My vet tells me that it's almost impossible to balance a home-made diet.  Commercial dog foods are scientifically tested to prove they are balanced.  Feeding homemade is inconvenient, dangerous...  And dogs are living longer since people began feeding commercially prepared dog foods.

Yes, it's true.  Babies are healthier and dogs are living longer since switched to commercially prepared foods.  But what they don't point out is that people are also living longer despite the fact that the diet of humans in North America has gotten far worse.  We are eating more fast foods, fats, sugars, and processed foods than ever before.  We are eating vegetables with lower vitamin and mineral contents and fewer of them than we did in the early 1900's.  But we're living LONGER !!  How can that be?

Health Care
I hesitate to believe the arguments from the raw food extremists that veterinarians are educated about nutrition by the dog food companies, but when I read and hear veterinarians credit the longer life expectancy of dogs and cats to the commercial foods they are eating, I stand in awe.  People live longer because of the miraculous advances in health care that occurred in the 20th century, and so do our dogs.  Vaccinations are the greatest factor in those statistics.  The advances in health care are so powerful that we can feed our children Fruit Loops instead of fruit and a couple burgers instead of a balanced dinner, and yet they're healthier than kids used to be !!

No!  Baby formula and bags of kibble dog food are not superior to a natural diet.  They are more akin to meal replacement shakes and energy bars, but we'd never think it's OK to live just on those would we?  I can't imagine anyone would answer yes to that question.  Please don't believe that Proctor and Gamble or Purina are really giving your dog the best in a bag of dry kibble.  It simply isn't possible to do so in a shelf-stable product.

So what's missing from commercial dog foods?
It's all in how you look at it.  The big brands want you to believe that protein from corn or soy is the same as protein from beef or chicken.  It isn't.  If a dog food has 28% protein but that protein has a P.E.R. of 60%, then your dog is simply not getting enough protein unless it eats too much and gets fat.  Poor protein is also one of the causes of excess shedding and skin problems in dogs, and usually money is wasted providing oil supplements when the actual problem is a protein deficiency. (see Merck Vet Manual )

They want you to believe that grains are a good source of vitamins for your dog and that a high level of carbohydrates is a necessary part of a dog's diet.  What they don't tell you is that dogs have ZERO biological need for carbohydrates (see Merck Vet Manual ) and that they cannot digest grains without them being cooked first.  So they cook them, but they don't tell you that they know that the heat degrades the vitamin content and that the contents on the label are measured before the ingredients are cooked.

Dogs simply are not capable of digesting grains without aid, and even then they don't do it well.  Bluntly put - that's why they fart - A LOT.  Whether you want to believe they are carnivores or omnivores like us, they do not digest food like we do.  Our teeth chew to a paste and mix food with the enzymes in saliva.  A dog's teeth tear food up enough to swallow it in large chunks.  Their stomachs have a far more acidic pH than our do, thus the flora and fauna necessary to digest grains that we have.  We digest grains before they get to our intestines.  A dog's digestive tract doesn't provide any digestive enzymes until the intestines.  (then more enzymes required to be added to the system than is natural.  It is argued that this stresses other organs that produce these enzymes.  Research that on your own if interested)

The argument against this is that domesticated dogs have evolved to eat what we eat over thousands of years eating our garbage.  I say that logic cannot be backed up and I've not found anything to do so.  Society hasn't been civilized and living with dogs in our homes for thousands of years except for a few breeds preferred by royalty.  The rest of the dogs scavenged our garbage true, but conditions throughout most of human history weren't plentiful like they are now where we throw away cooked food.  I believe that shepherds fed shepherd dogs the carcass and guts of the animals he butchered.  The vegetation was most likely limited to the contents of the stomach - a very small percentage of the animal.

And then there are the allergies.  This is where the extremists really get hot, and maybe they have a point.  Whether it's because of the grains or because of contaminants in the questionable meat meals and byproducts, I don't know.  What is very well known is that dogs are having more and more allergies, and many are related to commercial dog foods.