A CONFESSION

I am at least partly responsible for some of the pet food nonsense presently taking place in the market. Many years ago when I first discovered that there was a need to develop alternative dog foods and cat foods, most products were essentially the same. Pet food companies competed with one another based upon percent protein, digestibility, palatability, shape, color, and price.

The industry thought the best pet food didn't have much to do with ingredients. My view was that ingredients did matter. Whole ingredients and nutrient dense fractions were nutritionally far superior to refined ingredients and non-nutritional additives. I also discovered that there was significant science behind - and health benefits to -certain ingredients that could be used in micro amounts, such as probiotics, enzymes, phytonutrients, antioxidants, amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and accessory nutrients. These are now called nutraceuticals.

Face with this challenge, anufacturers found it difficult to defend their inferior ingredients and adopted some of our innovations. Others, looking for a business opportunity and sensing increasing public awareness of natural nutrition, began new brands highlighting the presence of "good" ingredients and the absence of "bad" ingredients..

Dozens of new "natural pet food" companies emerged with exotic ingredient labels playing to increasing concerns about nutrition and laying claim to the best pet food.

What was lost in this quest for business success, however, was an underlying commitment to good science and health, and expertise to do something about it. The result over the decades has been a spate of toll manufactured "super premium natural" pet foods with "100% complete" labels and ingredient gimmicks misleading people into feeding yet another processed food meal after meal.

I helped create a monster. Sorry.

Video: Salsa Dancing Dog

"Dancing With The Stars" has got nothing on this salsa dancing canine!...

Thought for the day: "I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it." – Abraham Lincoln

Word for the day: extrusion - noun: a manufacturing method of continuous cooking using varying amounts of heat, steam, shear, and pressure. It is used to gelatinize starches (making them digestible), sterilize ingredients, and inactivate antinutritional factors which can interfere with digestion. Extrusion permits cooking with high temperature/short time (HTST), which causes the least damage to nutrients.