Boxer Diet

We feed our boxers a BARF diet. BARF stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food, and it is easy to prepare. You are basically feeding your dog "bones and raw food", adding in or taking out supplement as needed. Giving your boxer a raw, natural diet (as opposed to commercially prepared one) makes the feeding task flexible and you get to control the quality of the food your boxer is getting.

I began making raw dog food about six yrs ago, it doesn't by any means make me an expert. I just know what I've read and the differences in my own dogs. The litter of pups that just went to homes were raised on BARF (benefits are raw foods). It was recommended to some of the new owners, but I got the feeling that it would be a time issue to prepare the dog dinner also. No problem, but feed a high quality kibble food.

The quality of food you give you dog can have a tremendous effect with their behavior. Poor quality food can cause behavior problems. There are many vitamins and supplements that counter balance each other, such as iron and calcium. These are necessary, but shouldn't be fed together all the time.

Below are some articles about the relationship between processed commercial dog food and your dog's general health.

Why Is Cancer Killing Our Pets?

Perhaps the most shocking and informative book about the pet food industry is Ann Martin's "Food Pet's Die For", published in 1997. As Dr. Michael W. Fox, vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, says, "Ann Martin is to the pet food industry what Rachel Caron was to the petrochemical-pesticide industry." Martin spent seven years investigating the commercial pet food industry and what she uncovered isn't pretty. There are several reasons you really do not want to feed your dog or cat commercial foods. Perhaps the most compelling moral reason is that there are rendered, euthanized pets in much of this food. These pets have been mixed with other materials, including some condemned for human consumption: "rotten meat from supermarket shelves, restaurant grease..'4-D' (dead, diseased, dying and disabled) animals and road kill."

The Minister of Agriculture of Quebec told Martin that dead animals are often cooked with viscera, bones, fat and fur. In both the United States and Quebec, this rendering of pets is not illegal. Martin points to an article originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle in which an employee and ex-employee of a rendering plant admitted that their company rendered approximately 250,000 to 500,000 pounds of animals, scraps and more, including "somewhere between 10,000 and 30,000 pounds of dogs and cats a day."

That's enough to make most of us sick, isn't it? Martin, a Canadian writer who lives with several animal companions, went a bit further in her investigations and discovered that some pets are euthanized with sodium pentobarbital and then rendered. This poison does not break down and goes into commercial pet food and feed for cows, pigs and horses.

Two thirds of the pet food manufactured in the United States contains added preservatives, according to the Animal Protection Institute. There are also coloring agents, emulsifiers, lubricants, flavoring agents, pH control agents, synergists and solvents. "Of the more than 8,600 recognized food additives today, no toxicity information is available for 46% of them," the institute says.

EQ (ethoxyquin) is the most common antioxidant preservative in pet foods. It has been found in some dogs' livers and tissues months after the animal stopped ingesting it. Monsanto Chemical, the largest manufacturer of bioengineered foods, manufactures Ethoxyquin. EQ is listed as a hazardous chemical by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and is considered a pesticide by the USDA. It is used in most US dog food, but is banned in Europe. The FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine requested that pet food manufacturers voluntarily reduce the maximum level for ethoxyquin by half to 75 parts per million.

Processed Pet Food - Why you should avoid it

“Let medicine be your food and food  your medicine- has been the catch cry  of dedicated healers down the ages".

On that basis it is hard to believe that dedicated animal healers – veterinary surgeons - will recommend commercial pet food. I find this hard to believe because as a practicing veterinary surgeon, I constantly see the enormous difference in health between pets raised on commercial pet food compared to those raised on a biologically appropriate raw food diet. I see the enormous change for good in the health of pets switched from cooked to a raw whole food diet. Despite that very obvious connection between commercial pet food and the poor health of the animals consuming it, commercial pet food has become the accepted way to feed pets throughout the civilized world! There are of course reasons. Much of it has to do with the way vets are trained in small animal nutrition.

An alarming fact of life is that vets receive very little worthwhile training in nutrition. No training in the use of raw whole foods and a biased approach to our understanding of commercially produced pet foods. It is relevant to ask what do many veterinarians really know about pet foods? Unfortunately the answer translates as - not very much. Regrettably, a lack of knowledge concerning nutrition has become the basis for recommending processed pet food!

Most people and that includes vets who are interested in their own health, will acknowledge raw whole foods as basic in the formulation of their own healthy diet. Why then do we insist on feeding our pets processed pet foods? Sadly we have been hoodwinked into accepting the hype regarding commercial processed food. We are prepared to believe the highly improbable theory that two species of animal, the dog and the cat, will do better on a diet for which their bodies are totally unsuited rather than their evolutionary diet!

"Unfortunately, many of the people who realize that commercially produced dog food does not produce worthwhile results, devise and cook up something which is in essence not very different from the processed food they were worried about. As a consequence, the results in terms of the health of their dog is not a whole lot better"

Processed pet foods do not produce the lifetime of health promised by the pet food companies. They do not produce the lifetime of health seen when a properly formulated raw whole food diet is employed. Most degenerative disease processes in pet animals are the direct result of a lifetime being fed cooked and/or processed foods. This includes those so called "super premium" foods that have their own set of unique nutritional problems.

The super premium processed foods have most of the drawbacks commonly associated with “ordinary” pet foods, chief among which is the fact they are based on cooked grain. However, they have an additional problem. In their attempt to remedy another common problem associated with dry foods - a lack of essential fatty acids, both omega 3’s and omega 6’s - they contain a very high level of cooked polyunsaturated fats. This makes the coats of the creatures that consume these products look good in the short term, but in the long term, the inclusion of high levels of heat damaged essential fatty acids will produce an enormous range of degenerative diseases including many of the auto immune diseases.

A lot of people use the expression “natural diet” when referring to the evolutionary diet of pet animals. Forget the word natural. When we approach this way of feeding from a scientific standpoint we speak about feeding our domestic pets a biologically appropriate diet. It is important to realize that processed foods are biologically inappropriate. That is why they cause problems. They are not up to the standard the ‘manufacturer’ of our pets requires for optimal performance. I believe that when we vets recommend any form of cooked and processed food we fail our clients and their pets in a major way.

The sad truth is that prepared pet foods help provide patients for vets

Prior to the mid 1960’s, most Australians fed their pets on home produced food. On the down side, the worst we did was to produce a few simple and very obvious nutritional excesses or deficiency problems. Mostly calcium deficiencies, with the odd vitamin B1 deficiency, vitamin A excess and the very occasional vitamin E deficiency. These were simple uncomplicated nutritional problems that are (and were) easily remedied. As our pets moved onto a steady diet of processed foods, we swapped these limited number of easily remedied straightforward nutritional problems for the vast array of complex and insidious degenerative diseases which now afflict our pets and fill our textbooks and waiting rooms. Problems with difficult medical and surgical solutions. Problems that are not usually associated with their true cause, the biologically inappropriate foods that spawned them.

The question we must ask, has the swap been worth it? For pet owners, has the convenience of feeding their pets with pet foods been worth the increase in degenerative disease? As vets, has our relinquishing of the right to be the experts on nutrition been worth the tremendous increase in the suffering of our patients? We must educate ourselves about the enormous dangers inherent in cooked and processed foods. We must realize that they cannot and do not promote health.

The proof concerning these products is found in the long term results of feeding them and the degenerative diseases they produce. The reason these diseases occur is very simple. These processed pet foods are BIOLOGICALLY INAPPROPRIATE. Those two words are the heart of the matter.
In What Way are These Foods Biologically Inappropriate?

The philosophy behind the production of even the so called “best” of these awful products is flawed. It is based on the requirements of the manufacturer, not the needs of the consumer. That is, cost and availability of basic ingredients combined with what is currently known and legally determined as the minimum nutrient requirements for a pet animal. To the recipes formulated using these principles is added whatever the manufacturer deems necessary to ensure the animal eats it (flavor enhancers), and whatever chemicals will prevent it from autolysing or becoming rancid, together with colored dyes to attract the purchaser. The result is a cooked “complete and balanced at every meal” product which does not promote long term health, and although “legally complete,” is not biologically complete - there is a vast difference.

Processed pet foods contain barely adequate levels of the known vitamins. As a result, pet foods do not cater for stressful periods when vitamin needs increase or the individual needs of certain animals whose requirements are higher than average. Pet foods are full of indigestible and inappropriate grain based fibers that are used as cheap fillers. These fibers bind and make unavailable essential nutrients. They have an almost complete absence of biologically appropriate fiber. Note that the fiber - sourced and used by modern pet food manufacturers who have only just discovered the importance of fiber - is not biologically appropriate in the way that raw fiber produced from a wide range of in-season whole fruit and vegetables is.

Many contain biologically inappropriate antioxidants, enormous levels of refined sugars and masses of salt together with other chemicals used as colorings and flavorings. This chemical cocktail is a lethal brew which is a major factor in producing the epidemic of degenerative disease leading to the early death and suffering we see in pet animals fed such rubbish, including cancer, arthritis and a range of allergies and auto immune diseases.

Cooking renders these products biologically inappropriate in a fundamental way. It is now widely recognized that cooked food has had much of its nutritional value lost. Cooked foods are devoid of enzymes and biologically active essential fatty acids due to heat denaturation. Once denatured, enzymes are no longer biologically active. They are simply cooked proteins. Denatured essential fatty acids which should be the backbone of health become slow poisons, doing irreparable damage. In fact all processed pet foods are disease producing simply because all of them lack biologically appropriate essential fatty acids. They are either not added in the first place, or have been denatured by heat during processing.

Cooking causes complexes to form between proteins and starches, between vitamins and trace minerals, and between minerals and minerals. By this method carcinogens and anti-immunogens are formed and many minerals, essential amino acids and vitamins are lost to the animal by becoming indigestible.

Processed and cooked foods are biologically inappropriate because they lack nutrients which are only present in fresh whole raw foods. These are the nutrients the body requires for healthy longevity. They include biologically appropriate antioxidants - substances present in the species diet until the present era. They include the phytochemicals which to date number in excess of 100, 000 isolated, with many more being discovered daily. Unfortunately typical processed pet foods do not contain these health promoting degeneration reducing factors. Such factors are present only in raw whole foods.

It takes many years for the loss of such nutrients to be noticed. Even then, the degenerative diseases which develop are generally assumed to be part of the “normal” aging process, and are rarely if ever linked to these foods which caused them.

The vast majority of these products are based on cooked grains. This makes them biologically inappropriate. At no time in their evolutionary history (except in the last 50 to 150 years) have cats and dogs been subjected to cooked grain in any amount, and certainly not as the basis of their diet. Our pets in Australia have only suffered eating this way for a relatively short period of time. About thirty years. However, in that relatively short period of time we have seen a population of pet animals exchange a few simple deficiency diseases for a whole range of complex degenerative diseases largely unknown prior to that time.

Biologically inappropriate pet foods attempt to be balanced at every meal rather than producing a situation where the diet is balanced over time. This, approach where added vitamins and minerals are mixed with a combination of chemicals, starches, proteins and rendered fats and then mixed and subjected to heat, makes many nutrients unavailable. It also produces toxic and carcinogenic chemicals.

Here are looks to some additional information:

What's Really in Pet Food?

Briarbush Boxers, LLC.        85 Briar Bush Rd Canterbury, NH 03224-2601                        Email: info@briarbushboxers.com