Exploring Cat and Dog Nutrition

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A NOTE ON FOOD RESTRICTION IN OVERWEIGHT DOGS....

That post this morning got me thinking.

Food restriction studies in dogs, cruel as they seem and sometimes are, have shown us that if you feed dogs a touch less of their diet each day (20%) they do better, might even live longer, suggesting over-feeding is at play.

In fact, recently, we learned just one food meal a day for a dog instead of two seems to bestow health benefits including gastrointestinal, dental, orthopedic, kidney/urinary, and liver/pancreas conditions. The study, conducted by the Dog Aging Project, looked at data from over 24,000 dogs did not look at the type of food fed, sadly.

Now, MASSIVE CAVEAT here - you can't just slash the QUANTITY of food fed to a dog without a little prior consideration.

For example, complete dry food is made to MINIMUM standards. And they can't even manage to provide that. Studies show us 2/3 of complete dry dog food sold in the UK (and 94% of complete cans) fail to provide the MINIMUM nutritional needs to your pet at the recommended dose!

So, if you feed 20% less of a junk food like that you WILL go into nutritional deficiency over time.

And "light" dry pet foods are worse again. Studies show they just jack up the indigestible component of the kibble with cellulose, like a runway model chewing tissue before a show. These light dry foods are shown to result in nutritional deficiencies while leaving dogs hungry, massively increasing begging and scavenging behaviour.

The poor dogs starve on that crap.

For reasons known only to them, they insist on keeping the carb content up in these products! Does that make sense to you?! Like going to the gym on 50% bread rolls, as I keep saying. Yes, dogs in a cage can lose weight this way but when studies show simply replacing the carbs with more protein results in better weight loss endpoints (more weight loss WITH retention of LEAN body mass, crucial to the whole thing) why would you go any other way?

For overweight dogs fed real food it's much easier - you need to ensure your meaty mixes are lean, 3 or 4 parts protein to fat. That's the first step to slashing calorie intake - smarter meat inclusions / dodging crap, cheap, fatty raw dog food. At that, with careful attention on the treat end of things, the weight will slowly come off, lean muscle mass will stay in place and nutrients will stay topped up (they’re in the red meaty bit…).

Only with food and treats addressed in that manner can you think about reducing the amount of food fed to an overweight pet.

Once you have done that by 10%, 15% then say 20% (measure twice monthly), with no improvement after a few months, get the thyroid checked.

https://solutionspetproducts.com/the-role-of-fermented-foods-lactic-acid-bacteria-and-their-metabolites-incombating-viral-infections-and-supporting-the-immune-system/

The Role of Fermented Foods, Lactic Acid Bacteria, and Their Metabolites in Combating Viral Infections and Supporting the Immune System […]