(Feature photo: Far Left: raw chicken liver fit for human consumption. Middle: processed raw dog food, a better processed option. Far Right: processed kibble dog food diet.)

It’s well known if you subscribe to my blog, that I am definitely ANTI-Kibble. Kibble diets were born during WWII & in response to a meat crisis. Men were off on battlefields, and women were melting metals for ammunition. Only few were left for farming and feeding the nation. Meat was allotted to soldiers first, and women and children secondarily. There was not much meat to speak of for women and children, and it was advised to stop feeding meat to family dogs.

Dogs were dying of starvation in groves. Their rotting carcasses became a water contamination and public health issue. Processed dog food kibble was created as a TEMPORARY meat-excluding diet to keep dogs alive through the war. However, the war left us with a very upside-down economy & displacement of goods and services. So folks producing the kibble diets had to continue with this vocation. The standard for kibble dog food is today as it was then: “… must not imminently create death…” and can be “sub-par to a standard diet” & “…may exclude meat…”

Our culture of now more specialized vocations and no more nuclear family farms & self-reliance perpetuates kibble-feeding of dogs. Today it’s a convenience. But be aware that even the best kibble is “sub-par to an adequate diet.” After raising generations of dogs now on kibble-diets, we’ve learned that “… not causing imminent death” isn’t enough. The now slow-deaths created by the vast and varied health issues born from kibble diets have created consumer pressure on the dog food industry to reform recipes and add quality ingredients.

Thankfully we are seeing higher and higher quality processed dog foods (including processed raw dog foods…YAY!) on the shelves available for our purchase. But since the standard for kibble formulas is so antiquated ( . & the meat crisis of WWII well behind us!), we must be discerning and savvy consumers, to protect our dogs. So though I advocate the return of “natural-feeding” (un-processed meat, bone, veggies) as was the norm prior to WWII, I decided to formulate this list of Do’s & Dont’s for those still stuck in the “all dogs are SUPPOSED to eat kibble” box of thinking:

LIST OF DO’s & DONT’s

This is what we opt for when choosing processed dog food:

MEAT:
• at least 3 whole meats.
• at least the first 3 ingredients being the whole meat ingredients.
• we hope the next 2-3 ingredients are of meat or meat meals.
• we hope of the meat ingredients, organ meat is included
• we refuse to buy products w meat by-products listed anywhere in the label

VITAMINS MINERALS
• we optimally select foods made w whole ingredient vitamin sources vs synthetic chemical versions. Typically dog food manufacturers include these specific ingredients as these sources:
-carrots
-apples
-blueberries
-alfalfa
-bean sprouts
-beets
-spinach

• we MUST buy only
-grain-free
-wheat and wheat product free
-soy free
-legume-free when we also see grain free (see blog article “FDA tries to discredit grain free foods”
JillsWholePetSolutions.com/blog)
-corn free
-gluten free
-white potato free
-green pea free

** NEVER select foods containing more than (1) of the following:
– white rice
– brown rice
– beet pulp
– dried products: egg, pea, potato…
When this many water-absorbing ingredients are listed together, they pose significant health risks. These risks range from dehydration and constipation to anus tearing, and even to the extreme consequence of gut rupture and torsion (death without immediate emergency surgery)!
**On that note, IF you feed kibble: PRE-SOAK any and all kibble PRIOR TO FEEDING IT!! I’ve seen kibble expand to 6xs it’s original volume once hydrated. This was a “high-end” kibble too. Very scary! (See Featured Pet article “Mucha, Yorkshire Terrier”

• we optimally select foods w natural preservation methods, like canning, freezing or freeze-drying, vs chemical preservatives

• we refuse to buy foods w dyes added, particularly red and yellow dyes

• we don’t buy foods containing salt. We may “forgive” salt being added as the last ingredient or one of the last 1-4 ingredients.

If we fall short of the things we require from a processed food, we MUST supplement to compensate. This is a convenient solution for many folks, looking for higher quality nutrition for their dog. It’s NOT a solution for folks looking for OPTIMAL nutrition. Processed foods won’t enter the feeding regime for folks looking for optimal nutrition. That being said:

Since there are so few quality kibbles and so few available quality canned foods, an easier solution when buying an all kibble diet, is to utilize (3) kibbles. Ideally, you’d mix the 3 in each meal. Some folks will rotate (3). What (1) doesn’t offer, you look for in another.

EX: one may have the top 3-6 ingredients as a whole meat, then either whole meat or meat-meal, but only utilize synthetic chemically derived vitamins. So the next kibble should satisfy natural vitamin and mineral ingredients

Digestive Enzymes are obsolete in processed dog foods. A supplement of something like DinoVite can fortify that imperative need.

Since kibble foods are so inadequate and then purchasing many to compensate gets to be a storage issue, and supplementing them becomes so costly:
The best solution is home-made raw diets, or frozen/freeze-dried raw processed diets.

For help formulating a raw home-diet see “The Ultimate Cat & Dog Diet” article in this blog.

Stella and Chewey ingredients listed are: beef, beef liver, beef kidney, beef hearts, beef bone, beef tripe, pumpkin seed, organic cranberries, organic spinach, organic broccoli, organic beets … etc with list of natural ingredients continuing