DON'T BE A PAWN OF INDUSTRY

Some pet food companies claim their foods are human quality and therefore the best pet foods. This leads consumers to believe such foods are superior to all the others using "by-products" (which, they don't mention, may be superior nutritionally), road kill (a myth), and euthanized pets (another myth).

In the same breath, pet food companies caution pet owners against feeding human quality table scraps. This implies (and often expressly so by way of photos of prime cuts) that their pet foods only contain grilled steak, chops, filets, drumsticks, and turkey breasts. But that cannot be true or you could not afford to buy their products. What are really used are various food industry scraps that can't be easily sold to humans. So, in other words, they can feed your pet scraps and call it the best pet food, but you shouldn't.

Home cooking and feeding is just not good for the pet food industry. Companies would much rather that consumers be totally reliant on processed products. The public is a profit center - passive, compliant, uncritical, dependent, and unthinking. Food industrialists will engineer, grow, cook and deliver your food, and, just like mom and dad, tell you what is best and beg you to eat it. If they could figure out a profitable way to pre-chew and force feed it they'd do that too.

It would seem that if commerce had its way, people and pets would be strapped down with stomach tubes coming direct from the factory and money conveyors going back.

As much as supplemental pet feeding is cautioned against, there must surely be some evidence of harm. But other than occasional reports of problems brought on by feeding large quantities of cooked bones, or meat only, or liver only, or fish in excess, there is no such evidence. In clinical practice, veterinarians do not see such a problem. But every day they see the dismal results of pets being fed a steady diet of processed "complete" foods, namely, every sort of chronic degenerative disease.

Of course, ridiculous excesses of anything can cause problems. Even oxygen and water can kill if overdosed. But feeding fresh foods and table scraps in variety can only cause health - not disease.

If you believe that the natural instincts of your companion animal mean anything, offer some raw liver or meat and observe. Case closed.

Thought for the day: "Quality is not an act, it is a habit." – Aristotle

Word for the day: philosophy - noun: a way of thinking about things. A preexisting viewpoint. Few people realize that the success or failure they have with health begins with their philosophy. If you think the body is just a composition of parts and pieces that can be repaired or replaced at will, that creates the philosophy of modern (failed) medicine. If you think the body is an integrated whole with balances that must be nurtured and respected, that creates a philosophy from which health can emerge.