freshfetch Village

Spoiler– Hybrid raw whole food  isn’t the new raw.  But, it’s very possibly the smart raw we’ve been looking for all along.   Sixteen years after Dr. Ian Billinghurst cleverly spun the idea of informing the diets of domestic dogs from the diet of wolves into the Bones and Raw Food (BARF) movement, we have pause to look back at everything we’re learning.  And, there’s a lot of it. And there are a lot of well meaning people who want to share their experiences and successes with raw.  But, frankly, there are also opportunists, generally in the dog feeding industry in some way, who sometimes knowingly distort a truth until it supports their agenda. I’ll try not to do that, by presenting some facts with science behind them. Before starting freshfetch, I became one of the most adamant supporters of feeding almost any of the, then emerging, raw meat foods that were starting to gain popularity.  Somehow, though, the rational side of me couldn’t completely dismiss some of the arguments against raw. I found myself confronted with several points that created dissonance for me:

1. That raw meat-based diets appear to really benefit dogs in a variety of ways, including skin, coat, histamine responses, and food sensitivities;
2. That wild canids have eaten raw prey for millennia; but, domestic dogs aren’t wild, and the raw meat in today’s raw diets isn’t wild prey;
3. That thousands of veterinarians – good, conscientious, veterinarians –  have a huge problem with advocating raw meat meals for dogs;
4. That, even if a dog can eat,  say, raw chicken, and fend off a salmonella infection, the dog can still cross-infect humans and other animals;
5. There are at least a few known (possibly more undocumented?) cases of dogs that have died from eating raw meats taken from the same supply chains as human foods.  Perhaps these cases represent puppies or older dogs without adequate immune response.  But, is any number of deaths acceptable, especially if there’s an acceptable alternative that reduces risk?

So why not try to reconcile the doubts and concerns that these points raise?  The new raw meat foods were certainly making noticeable differences in my dog’s health, coat, and even alleviating problems like skin irritation, sensitivity, and histamine reactions (allergic responses.)   Feeding raw meat based diets seemed like finding the gold at the end of the rainbow.  But, there were still those points of concern!  I was certainly NOT going to just shrug these off as fabrications by commercial opposition to raw food, or a bunch of doctors who were really just trying to sell commercial pet foods from their back rooms.  There was, and is, more to it than that. My vet didn’t agree with my decision to feed raw meat based diets.  She vocally and equally adamantly warned me that I was just asking for trouble.  And, I found, she was joined by a chorus of other vets that said the same things.  Why? Were they all against my new-found success with raw diets?   I would discover that the answer was they were (and still are) trying to engage their Hippocratic tendency to do no harm. I set out to find reconciliation for these points of concern, my vet’s opposition, and what seemed to be the beneficial results of feeding a raw meat-based diet. Things I learned and considered:

• The transition from canned or bagged processed food to raw foods (including raw meats) most certainly provides substantial benefit. I’ve never met a vet (holistic or not) that wouldn’t admit that moving from a traditional canned or bagged food to a raw diet provides verifiable better nutrition and almost immediate benefit.  Imagine that you ate only fast food.  It’s high in fat and sugars, full of empty calories that are without substantial micro nutrients.   One day, you decide to start eating only raw foods and raw meat.  Your health would very, very probably improve dramatically! But, would it be smart, or would it be risky?
• We can compare human nutritional needs and digestion with that of dogs. Of course, we can, and we should.  Mostly we should because so much research has been done into human nutrition, and we should look for ways to identify crossover research.  But, we should frame what we compare with what we know to be true about dogs and how they differ from humans.  For instance:
  • Domestic dog ancestors that prevailed in evolutionary ascent passed along their ability to gulp (bolt) their foods, not chew them (masticate) like humans do.
  • As a result of the successes of their ancestors’ methods of eating (efficiently, quickly) dogs didn’t evolve with a strong ability (or need) to linger over their meals.  So, digestion for dogs begins in the stomach, not in the mouth, as with humans.  Among the notable physiological differences that demonstrate this is the lack of canine salivary α-amylase enzyme, which is responsible for the digestion of carbohydrates (starches) in the mouth
    • As a side note, with this food gulping technique understood, now’s a perfect time to say that grinding of food for dogs (presumably to increase digestion, but far too often to disguise substandard commercial ingredients) probably isn’t nearly as necessary (or beneficial?) for dogs as it may be for humans.  Dogs are adapted to swallow and digest their food in large pieces, and their digestive tracts appear designed to digest large pieces of food quite well.  You can be sure there were no blenders or grinders  on the plains and savannas as dogs integrated into human populations.   It may actually be that we don’t need to try to improve on the type of eating, and the natural bite sizes that dogs perform without us intervening.   Modern dogs’ ancestors did well with their ability to eat and digest plant materials or our dogs wouldn’t have this ability today.  (Personal Note: People ask me about this all the time, after inspection their dog’s droppings.  They’re alarmed to find large pieces of dietary fiber apparently largely intact.  But, this doesn’t mean that the dog didn’t derive nutrition from that food.  (this happens to humans, too).  It may be that pureed fiber may not be as useful for maintaining digestive health as natural bite sized fiber.  In fact, anal gland problems are linked to soft stools.  And, we find, dogs digestive tracts adapt to provide longer transit times to some foods than others, depending on conditions in the tract.  So, what passes today, may not tomorrow.)
  • It’s easy to find people (often with an agenda) who will try to claim that since dogs don’t have mouth-based amylase, it’s some sort of proof that they’re not designed to eat any type of starch or carbohydrate.   Similarly, some of these same authors suggest that dogs’ possession of salivary Lysozyme (an enzyme with antibacterial properties) makes them particularly suited to eat bacteria-laden meats or even carrion.  Both of these assertions about salivary enzymes are wrong.  The saliva of humans and dogs both contain Lysozyme.  But, since dogs’ food doesn’t stay in the mouth long enough for this enzyme to effectively change the bacteria presence in their foods, it’s not really an effective bacteria killer in foods that are bacteria laden.   So, the Lysozyme in dogs’ saliva probably fulfills much the same role for dogs as it does for humans.  That is, it controls the level of bacteria in the mouth — not food — aids the healing of mouth and tongue wounds, and aids the overall health of the mouth.
  • Dogs secrete (among other enzymes) amylase, pepsin, and trypsin into the digestive tract, instead of the mouth.  This fact has a stronger relationship to the way dogs eat (gulping with little or no food linger time in the mouth) than it does with any argument about what they’re supposedly intended to eat.
    • Take particular note of the presence of amylase in the digestive enzymes for dogs.  It’s there because the ancestor to modern dogs were able to eat carbohydrates and, because their bodies produced this enzyme , they survived in their environment to reproduce and pass this ability into the genetic pool that contributed to modern domestic dogs. So, the question of whether dogs were meant to eat carbohydrates is irrelevant.  It’s not a debate. Ancestor dogs with a capacity to digest carbohydrates survived the evolutionary gauntlet, and passed along this ability to modern domestic dogs.  Note that this doesn’t suggest dogs have a need for carbohydrates just that they are perfectly capable and adapted to digest carbohydrates, because their ancestors — over millennia — did.  (Smeets-Peeters, Tim Watson, Mans Minekus, et. al.)
  • Dogs generally have a higher fasting stomach and intestinal pH level than humans.  Many people take this to mean that dogs’ stomachs and intestines are more acidic (and somehow stronger?) than humans’.   Some even try to draw conclusions or suggest that somehow this higher pH is better suited to the digestion of this or that diet for dogs that they’re advocating. Actually, the opposite is true about pH. As pH increases, acidity decreases. So canine gastric acidity (pH avg. 1.8) and intestinal acidity (pH avg. 7.3) is lower than humans (pH avg. 1.1 (gastric) and pH avg. 6.0 (intestinal)) with an empty stomach.  (Chung Y. Lui, Gordon L. Amidon, et. al.)
  • Unlike humans, dogs’ average stomach acidity frequently rises when food enters the stomach, even when the food isn’t acidic itself.
    • Generally, when you introduce food into an acid bath (as when food enters the stomach) the food lowers the acidity of the acid bath, as it, essentially, dilutes the acid.  Dogs’ stomachs make hydrochloric acid fast, though, and their stomach’s overall acidity frequently rises when food enters the stomach.  This means that dogs’ stomachs, on average, pump out hydrochloric acid to aid digestion faster than humans. This is only occasionally true for humans, depending on several factors.  As with α-amylase in the mouth, this finding makes perfect sense in the context of the way dogs eat. Ancestor dogs that secreted higher levels of hydrochloric acid to digest their big, gulped bites, clearly won the evolutionary race to the top.  Note, that this has little to do with whether the food is raw or not.  Human stomachs, and dog stomachs, produce hydrochloric acid strong enough to dissolve metals. Ancestor dogs that secreted more acid faster, and consumed larger bites (ate faster?) won the evolutionary fitness challenge because of the results of this combination of traits, and became the models for modern domestic dogs.  (Kazuko Sagawa, Fasheng Li, et. al)
  • Dogs do better with more meats and fats in their diets than humans do.
    • Dogs really thrive on proteins and fats.  Thankfully, we can provide the benefit of phyto-nutrients to them from natural vegetables and fruits because they can also digest carbohydrates.  But nothing replaces the efficiency and appropriateness of proteins and fats from meat in a dog’s diet.
  • Dogs benefit from some of the same antioxidants and other phyto-nutrients that benefit humans. (Billman, Kang, Leaf)

• Domestic dogs aren’t wolves.  And, the raw meats (and pathogens) in their commercial diets don’t come from wild prey, so comparison of wolves’ immune response to bacteria present in wild prey to the immune response of domestic dogs to strains of bacteria present in domestic meat sources isn’t objective. Raw meat for today’s canine diet comes directly or indirectly from the human food chain, often without some of the safety checks that are designed to protect food intended for humans.  In that food chain there are resistant and extraordinarily virulent strains of bacteria that never existed in wild prey. And, our domestic dogs can and do die from eating these bacteria.  Nobody — even the strongest raw feeding proponent (like I’ve been) can argue that they don’t.  This is the objection you most frequently hear from vets trying to do no harm. Add to this objection the reality that even if your dog is unharmed after ingesting bacteria (like salmonella), you live with your dogs. Already mentioned is the reality that bacteria in our human food supply is increasingly resistant and more virulent, and that, consequently, we can’t compare the immune response of a wild wolf eating wild prey to that of a domestic dog eating raw meat from the human food chain.Couple this with the fact that studies of commercial raw pet foods have quantified the presence of bacteria in raw meats intended for dogs, and have documented the presence of resistant strains of those bacteria in those foods.  Given that dogs shed bacteria (like salmonella) in a variety of ways, care must be taken to avoid exposing yourself or family members to potential dangers from the raw meat and from your dog when he or she eats raw meat.  (R. Finley, R. Reid-Smith, C. Ribble, et. al.)

So, what was my conclusion with all of these observations and notes in mind?  Well, you’ll see it reflected in our freshfetch food.  To us, it makes sense that we apply some of our understanding of science and reality to the feeding of our dogs.  That’s why we’ve created the hybrid preparation that we use for freshfetch.  We gently cook the meats, leaving the amino acid profile of the finished meat virtually identical to that of raw meat, and we leave phyto-nutrient bearing vegetables and fruits largely raw.  This provides meat safety appropriate to the dangers of the today’s meat sources, coupled with the best of raw vegetation, the only source of phyto-nutrients, and the best source of assistive enzymes for humans and for dogs. It’s really the best of raw, and the best of good sense about meats, with little or no sacrifice of nutrition, because nothing’s processed.