Is Natural Dog Food Enough? #Sponsored

“Creating a natural dog food is one thing. Creating a perfectly balanced one to Hill’s high standards is quite another.” –Kathy Gross, Hill’s Pet Nutritionist

In the desire to feed our pets natural dog food, we first look at the ingredients. While ingredients are important, it’s what is IN the ingredients that matters. Really, ingredients are vehicles for nutrients. Nutrients are what your pet’s body absorbs from those ingredients. And as ingredient quality increases, so does a pet’s ability to absorb and use the nutrients from those ingredients. No single ingredient makes a food better or worse. Too much of one nutrient (like protein) or too little of another (like phosphorus) can be harmful to a pet’s health. Which is why the first goal of Natural Dog food manufacturers is to make a food with high quality ingredients that deliver the nutrients your dog needs. The second goal of Natural Dog Food Companies is to come up with the optimum proportions in which to use those ingredients in order to allow your pet to live a happy, active, and healthy lifestyle.

As researchers are finding out more protein, fat, and minerals does not a better food make. Just like we need all things in proportion so do our dogs. Which means a diet consisting of only raw meats likely will not be able to provide everything your dogs needs nutritionally long term. Once your dog has absorbed all the nutrients from the meat that it can, the rest are removed from their bodies as waste. In the wild animals expend a lot more energy just to survive. Couple that with the fact that in the wild females spend a large portion of their lives reproducing. Considering most dogs in the US are not capable of breeding even under controlled situations we need to realize our pets just do not need the same resources they would in nature. Plus, the whole feast or famine thing that takes place in nature where today the animal might feast on a fresh kill but might not be able to get anything again for several days. Our pets are fed on a regular basis at least daily if not 2 or 3 times per day (treats provide nutrition too). Our dogs do not need to store energy for later or tomorrow or a week from now and all of that stored food energy will convert into fat.

What is considered Natural Dog Food?

The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) has developed a definition for the types of ingredients that can be referred to as “natural”. These ingredients must be “derived from plant, animal or mined, unprocessed or subject to physical, heat, rendering, purification, extraction, hydrolysis, enzymolysis or fermentation, but not subjected to chemically synthetic process.” According to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), “for the most part, ‘natural’ can be construed as equivalent to a lack of artificial flavors, artificial colors, or artificial preservatives in the product.” Which means you need to find a dog food company willing to go above and beyond the minimum in order to produce a dog food that is not only Natural but Balanced.

That is exactly what Science Diet / Ideal Balance set out to do with their Ideal Balance line. Create a Natural, Balance, and Nutritionally sound product that dogs would thrive on.



This is a sponsored post on behalf of Hill’s using graphics provided by the brand. All thoughts and opinions are my own.