5 Additives That Could Be Poisoning Your Dog Dog Health Food Is A Great Alternative

With more and more questionable ingredients being routinely added to our pet food, we need to learn about dog health food more than ever. We need to know what is really going into the dog food under various disguises and omissions. Here's a list of 5 of the nasty ingredients that could be harming your best friend right now

1. Generic Fats And Proteins

If we want our dogs to eat well, why would we even consider giving them food with animal meat as a primary ingredient? Would you ever consider buying 'animal meat' from the butcher and cooking it up for the rest of your family? I hope not!

Generic meat can hide all manner of substandard animal parts that you wouldnt knowingly give your dog. So to keep using the cheapest parts they label them with a very vague term like animal meat. This could always be a nice cut of meat, but lets face it, if there was beef in the food, theyd be labeling that way, not animal.

While it's true that dogs in the wild would eat just about all the parts of an animal. Not too many wild animals would have concentrated growth hormones and pesticides in their organs. We've all heard of things like roadkill and pet bodies being put into our dog's food, but we're never quite sure. Theres a whole bunch of nasty things that can be put in under the term animal so its probably the most important thing to avoid in your dogs food

2. Corn Or Wheat Gluten Meal

These are cheap by-products of the human food industry that have been put into dog food. These forms of protein are incomplete for a dog so they arent put in there for the dogs dietary needs, just because its a cheap way to fill out dog food. This is also a handy little rule of thumb to judge the quality of the rest of the food. Either of these ingredients is a pretty good indicator that the food is going to be poor quality overall. Theres also a higher chance that theres cheap but toxic preservatives and additives in there too.

Rice and soy protein concentrate are slightly higher quality but still have the problem in that theyre incomplete proteins. For a dogs nutritional needs there is a vast difference between a pant protein and a meat protein

3. Meat By-Product Or Digest

These are usually parts of the animals that are considered unfit for human consumption. Why would we want to feed to our dogs something that we wouldnt even consider? Quite apart from that, usually those parts arent eaten because they are places that toxins concentrate within the body.

Some by-products may be listed as fit for human consumption, but unless this is specifically stated its pretty safe to assume that its no good.

4. Ethoxyquin

This is a cheap and commonly used preservative that extends the shelf life of the dog food by stopping the fat from going rancid. However this particular preservative has been banned for human consumption and has also been linked to many pet health problems.

There have been many cases of dogs developing skin and coat problems from having foods containing Ethoxyquin added to their diet. Conversely it has been noted that within days or weeks of stopping the consumption of foods containing Ethoxyquin, serious long-term health problems have cleared up. And this is just the most researched effect of Ethoxyquin, with plenty more possible nasty side effects.

5. Too Many Grains

While some grains are actually a good source of minerals for dogs, often theres far too much of them to be healthy. Grains can fill out the bulk of the food without meeting the nutritional needs of your dog.

Grains and grain by products are often the waste from the production of human food and although there is a certain amount of protein in grains and cereals, it really isnt the same as animal proteins. Meat is the type of protein that dogs will get the most nourishment out of. Grains on the other hand are not something that dogs would be eating the wild and so their body has a hard time digesting it properly. This leads to them overeating because theyre not getting enough nutrients but at the same time getting too much in the way of carbohydrates that they cant deal with. This often leads to dogs getting obese.

With all the sneaky labeling on commercial food, knowing about dog health food is really a key component to giving your dog the very best. Giving them the best possible nutrition is vital and will add years to their life and theyll be much more healthy and have more energy. Its up to us to get educated and give our dogs what they really need for the best nourishment.