Stop Feeding Your Dog Low Quality Processed Food. Learn To Make Your Own High Quality Dog Food. Click The Picture For More Information.
As you may know, the ingredients in foods are listed in descending order of amount. The meat in dog food refers to only cows, pigs, goats, and sheep, and only includes muscle tissue that is specified. Dog food is made up of animal byproducts. When cattle, pigs, chickens, lambs, or other animals are slaughtered, lean muscle tissue is trimmed away from the carcass for human consumption. Fifty percent of the animal does not get used in human foods. Whatever remains of the carcass — including heads, feet, bones, blood, intestines, lungs, spleens, livers, ligaments, fat trimmings, unborn babies, and other parts — is used in pet food, animal feed, fertilizer, industrial lubricants, soap, rubber, and other products. The nutritional quality of byproducts varies from batch to batch. Some years ago, roadkill was even used in pet food. Although there are still no laws or regulations against it, using roadkill in dog food is uncommon today. However, animals labeled as “4D,” which means dead, dying, diseased, or disabled, were only recently banned for human consumption, and are still legitimate ingredients in dog food.
The grains and vegetable products used in dog food are not any better than the meats. These products are labeled as unfit for human consumption. The amount of plant products used has risen dramatically over time, and now replace a large proportion of the meat that was used in the earliest commercial dog foods. As you can imagine, this change led to severe nutritional deficiencies that have been corrected along the way. Most dry dog foods contain a huge amount of cereal grain or starchy vegetables in order to give the food texture. These high-carbohydrate plant products provide a cheap source of energy in the form of calories. Gluten meals, which are high-protein extracts from which most of the carbohydrates have been removed, are often used to boost protein percentages without expensive animal-source ingredients. Corn gluten meal is the most commonly used plant product for this purpose. Wheat gluten is also used to create shapes in the food, such as cuts, bites, chunks, shreds, flakes, and slices, and as a thickener for gravy. In most cases, dog food that contains vegetable proteins are among the poorer quality foods.
Even the low-carb dog food, in which grains are substituted with potatoes, green peas, and other starchy vegetables, offer no particular advantage to pets. Except for dogs that are allergic to grains, dry low-carb diets tend to be very high in fat, and could result in weight gain. Besides lacking in nutrients, dog food is also saturated with additives and preservatives. Because manufacturers need to ensure that dry foods have a long shelf life (typically 12 months) to remain edible through shipping and storage, fats that are sprayed on dog foods to make them more appealing to dogs are preserved with either synthetic or natural preservatives. It is plain to see why so many pet owners are switching to feeding their dogs home-made fresh meals.
