YOUR PET IS NOT AVERAGE

There is a difference between overt nutrient deficiencies (causing conditions such as rickets, anemia, blindness, goiter, scurvy, etc.), and nutrition that is necessary to optimize health and prevent a host of chronic diseases that have long incubation periods.

These more subtle and insidious diseases that creep up on humans and the animals in their care, are usually not thought to be associated with food at all. Because the distance in time between improper eating and the surfacing of the disease is so long, improper foods are often considered proper, even 100% complete and balanced. That's why the 26 week AAFCO feeding trials are misleading. That is simply not long enough to really determine merit, or whether it is the best pet food.

Pet foods which are designed to achieve "average" levels of nutrition for prevention of classical nutrient deficiencies (so-called "100% complete" foods) do not take into consideration these facts. Designing foods to be barely good enough to keep an animal alive is like barely good enough parachutes or fire extinguishers. The risk is too great to just get by.

The confusion, even blindness, of researchers and regulatory agencies (however well intentioned) is apparent in the following incredible contradiction by authors with DVM, PhD and specialty board certification in veterinary internal medicine and nutrition:

"These protocols (the authors are discussing AAFCO feeding trial studies) were designed to assure that pet foods would not be harmful to the animal and would support the proposed life-stage." But then they go on to admit: "These protocols were not designed to examine nutritional relationships to long-term health or disease prevention." (Veterinary Forum, Oct 1992:34)

After a pet has been fed a test food for a period of time equal to the duration of an AAFCO study, all bets are off. The approved and stamped "100% complete and balanced" food may actually be fostering disease and yet have the blessings of the academic, professional, scientific, regulatory and industrial pet food establishment.

Also, when researchers establish the percentages of each nutrient necessary to claim "completeness," they use statistics. A bell curve is created which is a statistical distribution to determine what the requirement would be for the average majority. If an animal falls in the middle of the bell curve for every nutrient (each nutrient has its own bell curve), all may be well. But on the slopes and edges of the curve there are a number of animals for which the "average" dose is either too little (creating a deficiency) or too much (creating possible toxicity). There is a good chance that any specific animal (as opposed to a statistical average) will be on the edges of the curve for at least one nutrient.

So don't count on your pet being average. Your pet is biochemically unique and its best pet food can only be achieved by letting reason, nature, and rotation and variety, not percentages or specious "complete" claims, rule your feeding decisions.

Thought for the day: "We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's the best deal man has ever made." – M. Facklam

Word for the day: allergy - noun: an exaggerated response by the immune system to environmental and food substances. Nearly anything can become an allergen (a prompter of an allergic reaction) if exposure is excessive and the immune system is weakened by stress and/or improper nutrition.