Reading a pet food label is very important, it can tell you a lot.
If you know the right things to look for.
Today I want to talk about the synthetic vitamins and minerals in pet food and shed some light on to why we stray away from them in the food brands we carry at Poochie Moochie Edmonton.
Take a look above at the long list of synthetic vitamins and minerals. You might wonder, isn’t the addition of these vitamins and minerals a good thing?
In order to gain AAFCO approval, a pet food must meet a standard vitamin and mineral requirement. The least expensive way to meet this requirement is to add an accepted blend of premeasured synthetic vitamins and minerals to a processed diet.
To put it simply, there are not enough nutrients in processed foods to prevent disease. When a meat, grain, vegetable, or fruit is cooked or heat processed in any way, nutrients are lost.
The fact of the matter is that synthetic vitamins possess only one component, out of a whole family of micro-nutrients that would naturally accompany them in their pure state. They may perform some of the functions of their natural counterparts while being useless for others.
Most of them have long confusing names, like a chemical. Which is exactly what they are. Synthetic vitamins are prepared from chemicals instead of nature, they are less active biologically than their natural counterparts, thereby reducing any beneficial effect they may have.
Because natural nutrients only exist in certain amounts in whole foods, overdose is much less likely. If it were to happen, it will at worst cause diarrhea; however, the body can recognize and expel the excess appropriately. The body can’t do this with an overexposure to synthetic vitamins and minerals. There is even a case of a pet food manufacturer accidentally adding too much of a synthetic vitamin into the recipe, which led to the death of many dogs.
There is also the concern of where the synthetic vitamins were sourced as well as how they were made. Most of them are made in a lab with chemical compounds. Let’s take a look at just a couple of the chemicals on this ingredient list.
Pyridoxine hydrochloride comes from petroleum ether, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde. Gases don’t sound like the most appealing things to be making your pets vitamins with. It isn’t readily absorbed or converted and has actually been shown to inhibit the action of natural B6 in the body. It also has side effects not normally found with natural food sources of this vitamin.
Sodium Selenite, when consumed in small amounts with the necessary cofactors, is a anticarcinogenic and an antioxidant. But when consumed in higher amounts as a synthetic additive, has been found to cause cancer and inflammation.
A big question to ask yourself is, why are so many more animals getting sick and dying young from diseases? Take for example, the Bernese Mountain Dog. Their average lifespan use to be 10-12 years. Now it’s lowered to 6-8 years due to the leading cause of death becoming cancer.
It’s near impossible for real food to cause vitamin A or Vitamin D toxicity. Yet synthetic vitamin A toxicity is well published and a lot more common than you might think. The effects of vitamin A toxicity include, increased tumour growth, joint disorders, dry skin, liver and spleen enlargement and even the cause of immune depression. Autoimmune diseases occur when your dog’s body attacks its own cells. Normally the immune system fights off germs, bacteria, and viruses. But when your dog’s body can’t tell the difference between good cells and bad cells, it’s antibodies attack all cells. Hypothyroidism, lupus, diabetes and addison’s disease are all examples of autoimmune disorders that can occur in a dog with a weakened immune. Dog’s are harmed from vitamin D toxicity from pet foods each and every year.
These are really common issues in dogs today, yet nobody suspects food as a cause until dogs literally drop dead from eating it. Until then, nobody makes the connection, so the synthetic vitamin D builds up in the dog and creates a seemingly unrelated disease.
Half of adult dogs die of cancer while joint disease is affecting today’s dogs at epidemic proportions. Could your dogs food have anything to do with this?
A body can thrive on smaller amounts of whole food source vitamins than it can on synthetics. Knowing this, why would you not want to feed your pet real food? Real food with a name you recognize.
For example, zucchini is an excellent source of vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C and vitamin K. It also contains significant amounts of calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, and phosphorus. These nutrients help promote a healthy immune system and support your dog’s bones, organs, skin, and coat. Beef liver contains the highest concentration of naturally occurring Vitamin A. Liver is also a great source of folic acid and B vitamins which help with fatigue, mental ability, and nerve health, it can even prevent anemia. Iron is packed in liver which is necessary for many functions such as brain development and function, body temp regulation, muscle activity and metabolism. These are common ingredients you will find when you look at the ingredient label of a good raw food brand. (Will link blog on choosing a good raw food) When you feed a complete balanced raw meal you do not have to add extra supplements, because your pet is extracting the nutrients they need directly from the whole food source. When you feed a complete balanced raw meal like Big Country Raw dinner’s, you do not have to add extra supplements, because your pet is extracting the nutrients they need directly from the whole food source.
(If you do have a dog or cat that has severe allergies you may have to use synthetic vitamins or minerals.)
At Poochie Moochie Edmonton we strongly believe in raw, though not all of our products are complete meals, we have everything you need to make them complete.
If you’re local, come and see us or contact us for a meal consultation, we would love to help you get your pet started on a natural fresh food diet!
Sources
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/synthetic-vitamins-and-minerals-in-dog-foods/
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/the-truth-about-dog-food-and-supplements/
https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/calling-bullhit-prescription-diet-dog-food/
https://primalpetfoods.com/blogs/news/the-battle-of-the-vitamins-natural-vs-synthetic