Grain free/carb free
Grain free/carb free
Dear friends, the concept of grain free or carb free spread all over the world, but I would like to make a simple analysis: I have more than thirty years of job experience, focused on dogs and cats, and since 1995 I have being formulating the various Forza10 diets, that I fundamentally based on corn and sea-caught fish. Today, in some other diets, I have replaced corn with rice or potatoes. They are single-protein and single-carb diets. Dogs grow up, live and die according to nature and those who have problems are objectively very few. The large majority of them live in an excellent state of health, a condition that must concern the WHOLE body, that is to say that no organ has to develop disorders, feces must be compact and the coat has to be bright. The hair reflects the pet’s health and the coat of many dogs, after washing, remains shiny for a few days only. This is a sign that their health is not optimal. Just think to wild animals: why is their coat always beautiful and bright, even though they live exposed to the weather? It is simple, if they are in good health, their hair does not absorb mud or dirt. Aside from the coat, we are now used to consider some signs as normal: the fact that dogs graze more grass than sheep, frequently vomit on an empty stomach at night or early in the morning, have ear wax or suffer from ear infections, continuously tear or have conjunctivitis, have foul breath, have inflamed and swollen perianal glands, frequently scratch their back or neck, have dandruff or smell like a goat, continuously lick their paw, frequently fart or have diarrhea or soft feces. This is not normal at all and a truly correct diet must not develop any of the above-described disorders. Even from the behavioral standpoint, dogs must not be unpredictable, excitable, scared, asocial, nervous, aggressive or disruptive or bark excessively. Guess what? The most of the described disorders depend on food. So, everybody should observe their dogs and evaluate their real state of health. If ALL the mentioned parameters are in order, that means that the diet is correct, otherwise it is not. That does not mean that things are bad, but that your dog could be surely better.
Grain free/carb free
Do you think dogs are not designed to eat carbs? It is not true, but I do not maintain that just to defend the formulations I have worked out. I created a company to make it possible that the highest number of dogs and cats are fine and I have a truly deep knowledge of food-related disorders and intolerances; I was the first veterinarian in the world to discover food intolerances: do you think I would insist on some diets if the results were not really good and constant? Sure, some dogs do not tolerate corn or rice or potatoes, but we should consider that more than 90% of dogs are perfectly well thanks to this diet. I prefer to consider this overwhelming majority rather than taking dogs out of foods that they can digest very well and limit myself to eliminate such foods in those few cases where they are a problem. Finally, I wish to report you the data of a Swedish research that was led for a completely different reason. It scientifically explains that dogs have four to thirty gene copies (they are actually copies) that enable them to digest starch. In the dog’s progenitor, the wolf, these genes were only two, which anyway confirms that this animal had some mechanisms of carb digestion, maybe indirectly through the preys’ viscera.In this research that was led in Uppsala, Sweden, Dr Lindblad-Toh and her colleagues drew their attention to the topic of domestication, certainly not to the interests of pet-food producers, so the whole world of pets will be able to form an opinion on the real necessity of “Grain-free” food, a phenomenon that, especially in the States and for evoking reasons, has overwhelmed the market.
The choice is yours.
Forza10 Founder and Head of SANYpet’s Research and Development Department Veterinary surgeon and international expert in food-borne diseases