Anyone who wants to learn about dog food can go to dogfoodanalysis.com and read how they analyze dog food. Dog food manufacturers are really good about making a food look good and make you think it has mainly meat based but they are deceiving. They might list chicken as the first ingredient but they will list 3 or 4 different grains after that, so if you put all the grains together then you are actually feeding your dog a grain based diet.
Yes, many dogs love the cheaper dog foods because of all the fat coating they put on the food to make the dog eat it. From my experience the dogs that are fed the cheaper grain based foods have a lot more stool and it is a lot smellier. That is because these cheaper foods are full of filler and nondigestible grains. The ingredients of today's dog foods are not the same as years ago. Now many of the dog foods and our human food contain genetically modified soy and corn. Scientists do not know what the long term effects on our animals health and our health will be. Could it be that is why cancer is so much on the rise? My biggest hangup is all the soy by-products and artificial sweeteners they are putting in our food.
Dog's in the wild do not eat just meat. If a dog kills, for example a bird or a rabbit they generally eat the whole thing, meat and intestines. The stomach of these wild prey contain grains, grasses, berries and things like that.
Any diet you feed has its risks. I have read good and bad about the homemade natural diets. I have find I get the best results with sticking to the 5 star dog foods and I do add healthy treats to their diet. Mine love steamed squash, broccoli and green beans. Also bananas and cheerios. The main thing is to try and keep their diet balanced and don't add too much of one thing or the other to make it off balanced. |