Why does the quality of pet food make a difference in your pet's health? Because food is body fuel and a quality life does not exist without it. The strength of your pet's immune system, its resistance to disease, and its quality of life all depend on the food that your pet eats. Most commercial pet food products are derived from the waste materials of our food industry. As I have alluded to in previous articles in this blog, many processed pet foods actually contain animal parts, which include diseased along with cancerous tissue and non-food items, euthanized pets including the euthanasia chemicals, preservatives, mold, fungi, and rancid fat. Most cooked products lack vital enzymes and they do not provide a healthy variety. The pet food industry to a large degree remains an unregulated entity without good quality control or stringent guidelines being enforced upon them. Read the product labels for ingredients and ponder if you would want to eat these products yourself. Would you provide them for your family, day after day, year after year, for their entire life? Common sense and ever increasing pet food product knowledge will continue to prove that our pets must eat a wide variety of fresh, wholesome foods to enjoy good health.

Until the last few years, most people have shared their own food with their dogs and cats. Common sense would dictate that it is no coincidence that our pets today are suffering from an epidemic of ill health with many of the same diseases as their human caretakers conducive to what is in their diets.

All species of animals have been shaped through many years of evolution to thrive in good health by eating specific foods. These food requirements vary with each species. To coincide with this evolution, the digestive make up of our domesticated dogs and cats is still identical to that of their wild relatives. The physiology of dogs and cats is that of being carnivores. Here's where a balanced diet should take place, do not feed an all meat diet. Carnivores such as our dogs and cats have evolved to derive their needed nutrients from eating other animals; including their preys bones, organs, and stomach contents, all raw.However, we should also consider the afore mentioned balance of ingredients to include other sources of vital nutrients

Contrasts in health between dogs and cats fed a cooked food diet and dogs and cats fed a raw food diet are readily apparent in their ultimate results. The dogs and cats on the raw food diet will thrive in good health, diminishing the need of veterinary care. Wild carnivores do not cook their food. Their entire physiology is designed to eat raw food. The closer we can simulate a natural wild diet, including a variety of species-appropriate raw foods, the closer we will be in providing nutrients in the form that our animal companions must have to enjoy good health. Making a well-designed homemade diet is the next best thing.

A few of the benefits of feeding a species-appropriate diet of raw foods as well as other nutrient natural food stuffs to your dog or cat include: stronger disease and parasite resistance, elimination of bad body odor and breath, healthy skin and coat, improved digestion, and the satisfaction of knowing exactly what your pet is eating. Switching our pets to a raw food diet should facilitate them enjoying the optimum quality of life that they deserve.