Simple, Healthy Feeding Anyone Can Do

Okay, you’ve got a busy life. Work, family, human meals to prepare, exercise to get in, I get that. “Not enough hours in the day” to do raw food, you may think. I hear that a lot.

Let me just walk you through a couple of downsides of feeding kibble, and if you’re still wanting to use it, I’ll give you my recommendation for the best premade food out there. And ways you can work around the downsides.

Dog's Only??

Yes, if you’re feeding a cat, you’re really doing a disservice to them if you do that with kibble! More on that here. I’ll help you get Puff off the “kitty crack” if you’d like to transition your cats to real food (yes, dry food is really addictive to cats, hence the drug reference!).

To help make the jump to raw for kittens, puppies, kibble addicted cats, and dogs, listen to Vital Animal Podcast Episode #13. Kasie Maxwell has you covered!

The Trouble with Kibble

Dog food reviews often miss this, but for one thing, it’s cooked to death. It takes lots of heat and pressure to get a piece of extruded food made. Enough heat that lively nutrients are lost forever. Enzymes, for example, only survive up to 118º, nowhere near the kibble making temperatures that often exceed 280º for long periods of time.

Heat destroys valuable nutrients, turns once valuable fats toxic, changes proteins radically, and turns edible and absorbable into denatured and inert foodstuffs. Manufacturers of pet food routinely spray on fats and flavor enhancers to make it palatable. The less expensive, more profitable source of fats? Look behind the restaurants for the grease catcher there. Yeah. Ewwww!

If the cooking weren’t enough, ingredients are often toxic in and of themselves. Dead animals, condemned parts from the slaughterhouse, etc.  See this post for more on these ubiquitous toxic protein sources.

Exceptional Exception

So, I no longer recommend kibble, with one exception: Simple Food Project is aware of these myriad problems in food processing, and works to minimize them by:

  • choosing high quality ingredients, never inferior and toxic byproducts, and all U.S. sourced, no ingredients from China.
  • only whole food sources of vitamins and minerals. No synthetics.

This gives your dog valuable, close to Nature sources of food.

  • utilizing careful manufacturing practices (choices include freeze dried and dry roasted nuggets)

This means you get full value from the ingredients, even after processing, which can destroy food value.

  • seeing through marketing hype (real food ingredients you can easily recognize, no games like blueberries as the 37th ingredient).
  • preserving by natural means, like vitamin E.

You want preservatives to prevent spoilage but not the common toxic ones that damage your dog’s health.

You can get this remarkable food delivered fresh via home delivery straight from the source (click to order).

Making it Even Better: Kibble Plus!

1. Use a base food you trust, to comprise 75% of the meal.

The one I feel fits this category best comes from Simple Food Project. As I mentioned above, a lot of careful thought goes into every product this small company produces. I recommend, as you’ll see in #3, that you change recipes regularly.

2. Add some fresh, raw ingredients, to comprise up to 25% of the meal.

(Why?) This can be raw chicken, turkey, beef, or whole raw eggs. It may also include very finely chopped vegetables like sprouts, carrots, squash, or greens. This portion could even include healthy left overs from your table (knowing they may not be raw, use these less frequently than raw additions). Now and then, add some organ meats as part of this portion: liver, giblets, heart, etc. Just don’t use these exclusively.

3. Change it Up!

Vary what you offer, both within the Simple Food Project family of foods (you’ll see several when you shop at their site) and within the raw additions you add. Remember, wolves would never eat the same thing day after day for their whole lives.

Variety is important, helping to fill in gaps nutritionally and reducing the likelihood of becoming allergic to any one food. I suggest changing protein sources every few weeks.

A simple rotation could be beef, chicken, turkey, and back to beef, changing every few weeks.

But you'll find some more exotic rotations available Simple Foods as well! Bison, duck, trout, and lamb, for example!

4. Feed once or twice a day only, picking up any leftovers after 10 - 15 minutes.

Think wolf again, here. First comes hunger, then the hunt and killing of the prey, then gorging until satiety is reached. This is followed by a rest period, during which digestion takes place, and finally elimination, and a return, sometime later, to hunger.

Once a day is a plenty for any dog over 30 pounds, and twice a day is my rule of thumb for the small breeds who have a higher metabolism.

5. Choose the quantity based on body weight goals.

You’ll be feeding your dog who’s underweight more until he’s just right, and one who’s overweight less until he’s back to normal. You knew your dog wasn’t average, didn’t you!

In general, a dog who holds a normal weight will have a good cover of muscle on his spinal bones, but, with firm petting, you can feel his spine.

An underweight dog will feel obviously boney without firm petting, and an overweight dog will have a spine hidden to touch by fat, as well as bulges in front of the hips where a waist should be.

This Kibble Plus Plan is so easy that anyone can do it quickly and without fuss. Still keep a balanced raw diet on your wish list, as that’s the species appropriate choice for the wolves in your life.