Fellow dog owners - what food do you feed?

[anatess]

And about Science Diet. It is crap food.

They went through an overhaul last year - getting new packaging, re-formulating to make the product seem like it has more animal-based protein now, getting rid of artificial dyes and animal by-products... but looking at it closely it is still the same crap food it was. Yes, meat is now the first ingredient but then it is followed by a whole bunch of high-protein cereals. Which means, most of the protein still come from plants, not animals.

So, you ask, so what? So what if the main source of protein is corn or rice? It is still high protein! Protein is the most critical nutrient in a dog's diet. Dogs require 22 amino acids for its survival - if only 1 of these amino acids is missing, the rest of the amino acids cannot do the needed function. Protein is the carrier for these amino acids. A dog can produce its own amino acids by breaking down proteins. But the dog's body cannot produce 10 out of the 22 amino acids that is essential for its survival on its own, so it needs to get those amino acids directly from the protein it consumes.

But, not all proteins contain those 10 missing amino acids. And in addition to that, not all protein sources are digestible to dogs (low biological value). Basically, my leather shoe that my dog likes to chew is rich in protein - but when the dog poops, the pieces of leather comes out undigested, so it has practically no nutritional value to the dog. So, what we need to do is to find a good protein source that has a high biological value to the dog and is rich in all 10 of these amino acids.

Proteins from animals have a much higher chance of containing all of these amino acids than plant material. But not all body parts of an animal is a good source either. Beaks, hoofs, and most animal by-products are rich in protein but is of low biological value and is not rich in those missing aminos. So, when you see a dog food that boasts of high protein content but contains the words (any kind of animal) by-product, that's low quality.

You can also get these essential aminos from the right combination of plant matter. But, plant matter has low biological value to a dog. Think about this - biological value is measured from 1 to 100. 100 is egg - a dog can digest and use 100% of a raw egg. Fish meal is 92. Beef is 78. Corn is 54. Wheat gluten is 40. So, basically, a dog can only use 54% of a corn's protein. So, you see a dog food bag and it lists Protein at 25% and you think, that's high protein, and you realize, a big bunch of it comes from corn, so you can just go ahead and slash half of it because it's not going to get digested. And what's more, plant matter is high in carbohydrates. Carbohydrates is not essential to a dog. The dog can break it down and use it for energy but it is not very efficient in doing so. Basically, most of the carbs-breakdown-work is done by the pancreas which is very taxing on a dog's system. So, the more carbs a dog food contains, the bigger chance you got of a sick dog.

Anyway, vets sell Science Diet in their offices. This is even well before Science diet overhauled their formula last year. Vets are terrible at dog nutrition because vet schools are sponsored by dog food companies. So, unless they do their own research on the matter, they just go by what dog food company researchers say. Of course, that research has bias. They're working for the dog food company. And so they go open their vet practice... and they get subsidy if they prescribe or carry Science Diet in their offices.

So yeah, this is such a long-winded post just to say... Science Diet is still crap food.