Food Quality: A Complex Matter

FOOD QUALITY:  A Complex Matter

When it comes to food quality matters!  The old saying comes to mind...."You are what you eat!"  It is more true today than ever.  Unfortunately today food quality is too often measured by factors that don't tell the true story.  As in our own lives, Pet Parents often judge a pet food by its palatability. In terms of quality taste has become the primary factor in deciding what to feed ourselves and our pets.  With many Americans the fast food syndrome is in full effect, so too in the pet food world.  We decide on foods that replace nutrition with the magic combination of fat, salt and sugar....foods that make us feel too full yet increase craving and appetite leaving us with a feeling of "not being fed".  We thus create a barrage of health troubles and over all poor health.  As a Pet Parent we hate to see our pets unhappy....even more we should be concerned with the health that brings real happiness, not a quick sugar fix!

Yes, it is important that a pet readily eat the food you present, "Waste not want not!"  But processed foods that are enhanced with undisclosed flavors encourage over eating and are of questionable value, if not toxic.   In the days of misleading labeling laws one should pay particular attention to more than the calorie count.  Fats, carbohydrates and proteins are not interchangeable and one does not equal the quality of another!  One example would be protein of one animal versus another, they do not act the same in feeding a body.  Another example would be the farming of the same animal used for protein... old layer hens fed arsenic for parasites and cement for shells may have the same protein numbers as the clean farmed, hormone free,  free range but not the same health value or quality of protein.  Numbers can be very misleading in the abstract.   If a label reads like a high school science experiment one can safely say it is not food; leave it on the shelf!  Ingredients should be whole foods based as nature intended!  Parts of ingredients are not advisable, by products of any kind should be shunned.  Many ingredients are from industrial waste, particularly the sugar industry and are not digested well by anyone.  For instance, Beet Pulp is the left-overs from the chemical extrusion of sugar from GMO beets to produce the white sugar common in super markets today.  Many corn solids and glutens are from the left-overs of creating the high fructose corn syrup used by the candy companies (who incidentally own many of the major label commercial brands of pet food sold in chain stores).  Not only full of sugars, genetically modified and indigestible, these inferior ingredients do damage to the body and degrade health like any over processed, nutrient devoid filler.  Animal By products, specific to a species or not, are to be avoided at all times.  These are parts of the animal not fit for human consumption.  Generic terms like "animal fat" has a broad and rather disturbing meaning, and chicken "by products" means the inedible parts like feathers and beaks.

Poor quality ingredients have no place in health.  Consumers should get what they pay for in human or pet food, meaning healthy meats and clean whole foods.  Huge industrial agriculture dumping grounds?  Not my pet!  Nor myself.   Consumers fair much better dollar for dollar, pound for pound by supporting the smaller family farmed, family owned pet food companies who support humane farming and sustainable agriculture; who invest in clean eco systems and put their money in the quality of their foods instead of heavy advertising.  In short, local economies responding to local needs and caring about the place where they live.  We all pay a price for toxic farming....eating toxic food heals no one.  Cats and dogs are carnivores no matter what advertising campaigns may say and they eat meat.  Over fibrous carbohydrate / sugar based fillers (corn, glutens, beet pulps, cellulose ie. saw dust) have no place in pet food.  The cleaner the food the healthier the animal!  I have found the words of Mahatma Gandhi to ring truer today than ever...."There is no disease accept malnutrition."  It is the QUALITY of what we eat that matters most.  Our local economies, health of the soils that produce our foods, and therefore the health of us all are huge issues of quality in life.  The vast definitions that this term encompasses cannot be ignored without paying the highest price of all.  Bring home true quality in food... and your pets, and even your family will thank you.  A community's wealth is in its health.  Quality of life = quality of food!