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This article will discuss dog and cat diets. Alongside the huge increases in obesity diabetes type 2 and cancers in humans we are seeing the same problem in dogs and cats.
In dogs diabetes and obesity has been typically blamed on owners giving too many titbits, especially those containing fat.
This situation is less obvious for cats.
There is increasing evidence from human studies that the culprit for much of these problems is associated with carbohydrates rather than fats and not so much the quantity of what we eat but the quality of what we eat.
Modern pet foods rather than reducing obesity seem to be increasing it.
Carbohydrates, starch and sugars all increase insulin and a substances called insulin growth factors (IGF). Research suggests that these increases are associated not only with diabetes and obesity but also influence longevity and susceptibility to disease including cancers, thus shortening life.
Therefore any diet that reduces these substances is beneficial.
Although cancer is produced by at least six mutations within the cell, the speed of growth and the spread is greatly increased in the presence of high insulin and IGF.
Not only this, but it is thought that this stimulation of growth can bypass the natural auto destruction that occurs in many of these mutated cells thus allowing more cancers to develop.
Increasingly people are changing their diets away from high levels of carbohydrates, especially wheat, and increasing protein and fat levels, resulting in measurable health improvements.
We are starting to see changes in some dog and cat diets with the removal of wheat and other grains and some reduction in the level of carbohydrates.
This is especially important for cats who are obligate carnivores and should not consume much carbohydrate.
I feel there is still too much carbohydrates in these diets but it is a step in the right direction.
There is a line of thought that the types of diet we eat should be related to what we were evolved to eat. Humans, dogs and cats took millions of years to evolve and all the species were finely tuned to the diet that they were able to eat. Animal domestication and farming only occurred about 10,000 years ago, a drop in the ocean in evolutionary terms.
Dogs and cats today are still essentially evolved for the diets they were eating 10,000 years ago.
Also we must remember that commercial dog food has only been present in the last 150 years (which started as a wheat biscuit).
The diet that I use for my eight dogs and 14 cats is called Canagan which I feel gets closest to an ancestral diet (without going to a raw diet).
These types of diet will go some way to decreasing some of the health problems that we are seeing today.
For more information go to www.canagan.co.uk or contact me at [email protected]
Alder Veterinary Practice, 58 Bourne Road, Spalding, PE11 1JW. Call 01775 766646. Opening hours 8.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 10am alternate Saturdays. 24 hour emergency cover.
