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Unfortunately, vets aren’t the most reliable source of nutritional info for your dog either. True to form in this late stage capitalist world, so, so, so many vet schools are funded by brands like Iams and science diet. They literally fund the schools and write out lessons and classes. They teach vets that your dog needs grain or whatever ingredient they use to make their food more profitable.

Not to mention, your vet most likely gets kick backs for selling science diet in the office. So…it’s a tough situation. Listen to your vet, for sure. But also use a little logic. Read the label. If corn or wheat is like the second ingredient or the third? It’s probably not a great food. And all of those big brands are guilty of doing that. Also, chicken byproduct meal? Yeah, no good. Rice? Not terrible, but it shouldn’t be a massive part of their diet. And cats, even less so.

Kibble companies got in while the market was even more unregulated than it is now, which is still way too unregulated. Kibble is convenient for us but in truth, it’s not the form the bulk of your pets food should be coming in. By nature of making it a hard dry biscuit, they need to use stuff like binders, starches. Starches that turn to sugar when interacting with the enzymes in your pets saliva. Which is why so many pets have tooth decay and gum disease by three years old.

Best advice: whole, raw foods. But the tricky part is it needs to be balanced. There are raw pet foods like primal, small batch, vital essentials, Stella and chewy’s that all come as a full, balanced meal. Even those refrigerated cooked foods are better, though still not completely biologically appropriate.

Sorry, I worked in the pet nutrition industry for years and really believe in what I’ve learned. Definitely try to get some of the raw foods, even if it’s just 1/3rd of your dogs diet. And always add good veg, a whole egg with the shell, raw goats milk, etc.

Oh—and human-consumable raw meat actually has higher allowable levels of contaminants like fecal matter and pathogens because it’s produced to be cooked away. So…yeah.