What is the best way to feed your pet?
Diet discussions are often emotionally charged. Pet parents want to make the “right” or “best” decision for their pets. Add to this very strong opinions shared by different veterinary professionals, others in the industry and friends and then comes the reality of finances; it’s no wonder people are stressed and confused.
In reality, I do not feel that there is one right or best answer as to what you “should” feed your pets. I apologize to those of you out there looking for the blueprint for the best food, but I believe that an honest discussion on feeding is much more nuanced. What it comes down to is you need to feed the animal in front of you. For example, if you are feeding a frozen raw and then read that it can damage stomach Yin and should be warmed, stop and take a beat… Is your pet having any trouble digesting the food as you are feeding? If your pet is thriving, file this very valid information away for the time being. It is probably not a current concern for your pet. If, on the other hand, your pet is having soft stool or vomits occasionally, maybe this would be helpful to explore for your pet.
Let’s start with the basics of feeding and what I consider most important. Pet’s need to be fed a balanced diet. A good rule of thumb is that 90+% of a pet’s calories should come from a balanced food source. These calories can come from a raw diet, kibble, canned, freeze dried, home cooked or other source. Be aware that numerous studies report 80-95% of home prepared pet food recipes on the internet and in print are not properly balanced (Fell, 2013). Diets formulated by veterinarians are statistically more likely to be balanced but are not guaranteed to meet this bar. One very simple rule of thumb is that if a homemade diet does not have a specific calcium source recommended such as bone, bone meal, a commercial calcium supplement or eggshell powder, you should question the recipe. It is possible, but difficult, to get enough calcium for dogs and cats through vegetables, dairy, legumes or other whole foods.
Now let’s look at the energetics of food.
All foods provide nutrients, but past this, Traditional Chinese Medicine sees foods as having warming and cooling properties. This concept is easy to understand when you consider your body’s response to spicy food or soup (warming) vs watermelon or cucumber (cooling).
The goal in Chinese Medicine, much as in life, is to find balance. What is best for your pet?
The first step is to determine if your pet’s natural energy state is hot, cold, or neutral.
A “hot” pet doesn’t have an elevated temperature but will tend to have excess energy. They may be overactive, nervous, or restless. They seek cool surfaces such as tile and shade. They may drink and pant excessively or be intolerant of the heat. Excess heat can show as allergies, hot spots, dry skin, or other inflammatory conditions.
“Cold” pets seek the warmth of a sunny spot or curl under blankets. They tend to be slower, may have a poor appetite, and may look stiff when first getting up from a nap or period of inactivity.
Neutral or balanced pets don’t regularly show symptoms or tendencies. They may occasionally show signs of having excess heat or cold, but they are generally balanced or average.
Choosing to feed cooler foods to hot dogs and warming foods to dogs with cold tendencies can help address health issues such as allergy symptoms and can help to neutralize the heat or cold symptoms that your pet is showing.
Allergies are the immune system’s overreaction to an allergen. The allergen can be food or inhalant. The body responds with heat and inflammation. This shows as red, inflamed skin, and/or itch. Cooling foods are thus often recommended to alleviate allergy symptoms.
All foods have energetic tendencies. I have read in various places and heard proposed that proteins have the greatest effect in pets but have been unable to find any studies or data to support this statement in a concrete way. With raw and other high protein diets, this makes sense. Meat is the majority of what is being fed. When we get to the more highly processed foods such as kibble and canned, we find a much lower percentage of protein. It could be argued that carbohydrate choices could have more effect here. However, I feel it is also very plausible to argue that the energetics or inflammatory nature of highly processed foods overrides the nuance of the components of the food.
We can measure AGEs or Advanced Glycation End-products in food types. These are inflammatory compounds formed when sugars react with proteins and lipids. High heat and extensive processing will increase the AGE’s in food. High AGE consumption is linked to health issues, such as insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic diseases(Bridglalsingh et al, 2024) (Palaseweenun et al, 2020). By measuring AGE’s in food we can rank their inert inflammatory potential or thermal nature as noted in Traditional Chinese medicine..
Hot processing methods would be the ultra processed foods- Canned and Kibbled.
Neutral to warming would be the more gently processed foods such as lightly cooked, cooked and dehydrated foods.
Cooling foods would be raw or freeze dried.
Looking at the components of pet foods we can categorize the energetic nature of various proteins.
Hot Proteins are best fed in moderation, even to cold dogs and should be avoided in hot dogs. Lamb, venison, mutton, goat and trout are examples of hot proteins.
Warm Proteins are especially beneficial during the winter months. These proteins include chicken, turkey and pheasant. They can be very beneficial for colder pets.
Cool Proteins are viewed as anti-inflammatory. These proteins can be good choices for allergic or anxious pets. Rabbit, minnows, duck, cod and whitefish are all considered cooling.
Neutral Proteins are a great option, at least in part, for most pets. Neutral proteins include pork, beef, goose, bison, salmon, quail, herring, mackerel, and sardines. These are great proteins to add in for variety and balance for either hot or cold pets.
Food can be effective medicine and is the foundation of health for our pets. Food energetics should hold most true with a minimally processed or raw diets. High heat and significant processing adds heat to the food. Additionally, pro-inflammatory husbandry conditions such as those seen in feedlots and poultry farms could also be looked at to change the energetics of meats as it has been shown to change the nutritional composition of the meat (Duckett, 2009)(Bosco, 1016). Translating into TCM terms, intensive husbandry conditions could be assessed to make meat “Warmer”, making it more difficult to find a truly cooling food.
So, what is the best food to feed? The best answer is “it depends” and now you see why. In practice, I believe that the only way to determine the power of foods for your pet is through trial and error. Ultimately you need to feed the pet in front of you in a way that allows them to thrive.
References
A. Dal Bosco, C. Mugnai, S. Mattioli, A. Rosati, S. Ruggeri, D. Ranucci, C. Castellini,Transfer of bioactive compounds from pasture to meat in organic free-range chickens, Poultry Science, Volume 95, Issue 10, 2016, Pages 2464-2471.
Bridglalsingh S, Archer-Hartmann S, Azadi P, Barbier de La Serre C, Remillard RL, Sunvold GD, Bartges JW. Association of four differently processed diets with plasma and urine advanced glycation end products and serum soluble receptor for advanced glycation end products concentration in healthy dogs. J Anim Physiol Anim Nutr (Berl). 2024 May;108(3):735-751. doi: 10.1111/jpn.13927. Epub 2024 Jan 27. PMID: 38279966; PMCID: PMC11327896.
S.K. Duckett et al, Journal of Animal Science, (published online) June 2009, “Effects of winter stocker growth rate and finishing system on: III. Tissue proximate, fatty acid, vitamin and cholesterol content.
Andy Fell. UCDavis.edu. July 15, 2013 Homemade dog food recipes can be risky business, study finds..
Palaseweenun P, Hagen-Plantinga EA, Schonewille JT, Koop G, Butre C, Jonathan M, Wierenga PA, Hendriks WH. Urinary excretion of advanced glycation end products in dogs and cats. J Anim Physiol Anim Nutr (Berl). 2021 Jan;105(1):149-156. doi: 10.1111/jpn.13347. Epub 2020 Apr 11. PMID: 32279406; PMCID: PMC7818435.