Pet Food Debate: Manufactured or Homemade

A new trend in pet food has been to make the pets food from fresh ingredients at home rather than purchasing manufactured food; there is nearly a 50/50 divide among world wide veterinarians as to which is the healthiest for pets. The new trend is manufactured food, it is an invention of the 20^th century, before this time both cats and dogs were given scraps and lead full and healthy lives. Many dogs were hunter's companions or working farm dogs, and cats hunted mice for much of their meals and were treated with occasional scraps or saucers of milk from humans.

Manufactured Foods

Veterinarians recommend certain brands of pet foods such as Science Diet, because of their acclaimed nutritional value to the pet; additionally many pet owners are lead to believe that the crunchy kibble is good for cleaning a pet's teeth by removing plaque. None, of these claims have been proven, as a matter of fact, veterinarians are not required to learn any sort of pet nutrition as part of their medical training. The pet food companies are known to give a day or two, overview of their products and hand out information to the veterinarians while they are still in school.

Furthermore there is no proof that chewing the crunchy kibble helps teeth at all, in humans too many foods that have the same consistency actually cause plaque build up; the only sure way to fight plaque is regular brushing. Dogs and cats teeth are designed to eat meat; the grain based manufactured foods do not properly 'season' their teeth and is a large part of the reason house pets can have such serious dental problems.

The quality of manufactured food is also up to debate as while the bag claims certain percentages of protein, the protein is not usually of any quality; nor is the grain in both instances the foods are labeled not suitable for human consumption. Further more the rest of the ingredients on the bag are often unintelligible with out the use of a periodic table or a pocket translator of scientific terms.

Whole Natural Foods