Another Round in the Raw Diet Debate

I was innocently sitting at my computer reading an email list I co-moderate, the K9 Nutrition group, when someone posted a link to an article written by veterinarian Mary Wakeman opposing the feeding of home-prepared diets to dogs, be they raw or cooked.

This is certainly not the first such article I've read, and my initial response was to just ignore it. But something about it ate at me, so this morning I went back and read it again. And while other members of the list had raised some objections to the article, none had raised the ones that irritated me the most.

In her article, Dr. Wakeman wrote:

the grocery store food comes from huge companies with superb quality control and research programs.

This touches on something I've mentioned in passing before, which is a sort of touching (or perhaps disingenuous) trust on the part of some pet owners that industry and corporations are in the business of practicing science, far above the fray of controversy.

I have no objection to companies large or small making a profit. We live in a capitalist society and that's how it works. That's fine. But to suggest that non-nutritional considerations aren't affecting the composition of commercial pet foods is incredible. Shelf life, shippability, price point, marketing appeal, packaging, and other non-nutritional factors not only are part of the picture, they must be part of the picture or the company will go out of business. But none of those things has any bearing on whether or not that food is good for my pet nutritionally.

When I prepare a homemade meal for my dogs and cats, I don't have to think about any of those things. I can make my decision entirely on the basis of their nutritional interests. Commercial pet food manufacturers, from the tiniest boutique foods to the largest multinational food conglomerates, do not have that option.

Dr. Wakeman continues, in reference to grocery store foods:

The billions of pets eating these foods come into the vet's office happy, healthy and glowing. And, they only need to come in once a year for their shots.

She doesn't give any sort of documentation of this claim, but I'd presume it comes from her own practice. If I fed anything other than grocery store kibble, and Dr. Wakeman was my vet, I'd certainly not let her know about it, given her hostility to deviation from such a diet and her biting, unhidden scorn for pet owners who don't stick to such foods. So such anecdotal evidence may be hiding the real story from the good doctor. In my experience, most pet owners do in fact feed their pets a certain amount of home-prepared foods, at least as treats.

As to "billions" of healthy glowing pets eating these foods and never needing to go to the vet, there are only 60 million dogs in the US - and I find it hard to believe that all of them, along with a billion-plus from other countries, are Dr. Wakeman's clients.  So since this one can't be attributed to anecdotal evidence from her own practice, I'd want to see some kind of independent documentation that there are huge numbers of dogs eating grocery store kibble and enjoying radiant good health.

One place I won't find that evidence is among canine dentists - who point out that "80 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats show signs of oral disease by age three. In fact, oral disease is the No. 1 health problem diagnosed in dogs and cats." (American Veterinary Dental Society)

I won't find it talking to orthopedic vets, either. According to an article in USA Today, in the United States, about one in every five adult dogs (more than 8 million) has arthritis - and for senior dogs, that rate doubles.

Maybe all those grocery-store kibble-fed dogs have really exceptional health because of their lean muscle mass and healthy weight? Nope - turns out that, in Purina research quoted by Dr. Wakefield herself, 25 percent of dogs are overweight. The study I find most reliable found that 34.3% of adult dogs and 35.1% of adult cats are obese (Armstrong, Lund, et al, "Prevalence and Risk Factors for Obesity in Dogs and Cats," proceedings of the 2004 Forum of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine). Other studies put that figure at 40 percent (Sloth C., "The practical management of obesity in dogs and cats," Journal of Small Animal Practice, 1992).

So tell me... does all that suggest an epidemic of radiant good health among the pets of America to you? Me neither.

Dr. Wakeman says:

The people who feed barf, raw, or home-cooked diets are the ones I really want to identify.

I guess there isn't a Department of Dog Food Homeland Security that Dr. Wakeman can rat us homemade dog food folks out to, so I'm not sure how she is going to "identify" us. Her motives, though, are good - not to spot bone-bearing doggie terrorists, but to protect our dogs from nutritionally-induced diseases:

First their dogs are at severe risk for many many problems. For instance, the dog with a high blood phosphorous level; does it have kidney disease or an owner feeding barf? The bitch that can't become pregnant; is she hormonally challenged, infected, being bred at the wrong time, or is her owner cooking for her and adding estrogen-like compounds to her diet?

This sounds quite scientific of her, and I certainly deplore the feeding of nutritionally deficient or excessive diets to dogs. However, the epidemic of kidney disease currently affecting dogs and cats in this country is primarily among kibble-fed pets, and it's quite easy to determine from simple bloodwork whether an incorrect phosphorus level in the blood is the result of a dietary problem or a disease. In fact, the body is so adept at maintaining homeostasis, including of serum phosphorus levels, that a nutritionally-induced abnormal phosphorus level in the blood would not be the first nor most effective way to determine there's a problem with the diet.

As to estrogenic additives to the diet, it should be pretty clear to anyone that you can add those to kibble as easily as to a homemade diet. If she's referring to estrogenic residues in meats and other animal products commonly fed to dogs, those residues are not inactivated by heat, so they are just as present or absent in kibble as in a home-prepared diet. At least with a home-prepared diet you can deliberately use meats, eggs, and dairy products from animals not fed any kind of hormones. Virtually no pet food manufacturers, and none of the big ones, can make that claim. And the biggest estrogenic additive found in canine diet is soy - not what your average raw-feeder is adding in big scoops to their dog's diet, but extremely common in those wonderful sacks of kibble.

She goes on:

If we assume that there is even the slightest provable merit to these diets, we'd next have to ask if the owner has a lab-quality balance to measure every ingredient on, and every other piece of equipment to finish the nutritional analysis of each meal.

Wow. Now, I'm actually somewhat unpopular among my circle of raw-feeding friends for being a bit of a stickler for nutritionally balanced diets. But not even I believe that EVERY SINGLE MEAL for a dog has to be nutritionally balanced, any more than my own meals do. Nor does even the balance over time that I DO believe in require lab equipment to achieve. But even more than either of those points is this one: COMMERCIAL PET FOODS ARE NOT BALANCED THAT PRECISELY EITHER.

All commercial pet food manufacturers are allowed a great deal of leeway in how they label their products, and what ingredients they include, and what nutrient levels those ingredients may include. All nutritional values are listed on pet foods within ranges, and certain ingredients are allowed to be present in different amounts at different times, with a fairly large amount of variation among batches, without triggering a label change. So that "complete and balanced" kibble you are feeding your dog may, or may not, contain exactly what the label says it does, and will contain nutrients, including macronutrients such as protein, fat, and carbohydrate, and micronutrients such as calcium and vitamin B, within a stated range, rather than at a fixed level.

But hey, don't dare prepare a bowl of food for your dog in your own kitchen without building a little food processing laboratory in the garage first.

Dr. Wakeman concludes:

So instead of the extra two years of life Purina has shown us we can achieve, we're opting for illness, pain and early death for our dogs by refusing to feed them appropriately.

Apples and oranges. The Purina research didn't compare dogs eating homemade foods with dogs eating Purina. In fact, they didn't even compare dogs eating some other kind of kibble with dogs eating Purina. What they did was compare lifespan of dogs eating different AMOUNTS of food. It was a calorie restriction trial. There is no reason you can't restrict calories with other brands of pet foods, nor with a homemade diet. This extra two years has nothing whatsoever to say about commercial vs. homemade diets, or any specific diet.

She then raises another objection to not having all her patients being fed the exact same thing, day in and day out, for their entire lives:

As the veterinarians of these patients, all of our thought processes must be altered. We cannot assume that we are looking at a dog that's starting from the same basic husbandry conditions we are used to. They aren't being fed a commercial kibble diet, so we now have to factor in all of the multitude of variables these raw, barf and home-cooked diets may cause. It makes diagnosis and treatment difficult.

I've never had a vet who found this so onerous, but even if they did, am I supposed to change how I feed my dogs and cats, how I have fed them with great success for over 19 years now, in order to spare my veterinarian from having to alter her thought processes? Am I not compensating my veterinarian for her training, expertise, and knowledge? I like to think she knows how to use her brain, and wrap it around new or unfamiliar concepts now and then.

Dr. Wakeman also identifies bacterial contamination as a grave risk of feeding raw foods, then turns around and recommends her clients feed raw marrow bones to their puppies and dogs. I have no idea why the bacteria on raw bones is so much less dangerous than the bacteria onthe meat you cut off those bones. It's either a concern or it's not. You really can't have it both ways.

She (rightly) criticizes people for blindly believing everything they read in a book or on the Web, then tells them to "Use your computer and Google-out the information you need to become fully informed," as a means of protecting themselves against the bogus claims of raw diet gurus and "mom and pop pet food companies."

In her article, Dr. Wakeman wrote:

Our society is driven so much - and more all the time, it seems - by marketing that we are well into damaging our dogs by becoming the disciples of idiots with a good pitch. I am not naming names here, but rational readers will immediately know what I mean; of course, the gullible brain-washed culties will never get it.

While there is definitely some truth there, the fact is, she is asking people to do the very thing she's chastising them for doing, which is not thinking critically about the information they are being given. She simply wants them to switch authority figures from raw-feeding advocates to her and to pet food manufacturers - preferably the really huge ones owned by multinational food conglomerates.

On the other hand, what I want people to do is USE THEIR OWN DAMN BRAINS and realize two things:

1. It's not that hard to feed yourself or your dog, but...

2. It does require a certain amount of intelligence, information, and awareness.

If you are stupid, lazy, and oblivious, really, I do think you ought to feed a commercial pet food. Dogs who live their lives on the end of a chain tethered to a tree, with a pile of old tires for shelter, a rusted-out old can of motor oil filled with stagnant water for drink,  and a sack of Ol' Roy for food, are certainly not owned by people who I trust to feed their dogs - or their families, for that matter.

Part of Dr. Wakeman's concern is quite valid. I agree that diets that are nutritionally deficient or excessive will cause health problems. But the idea that no one is competent to put a decent fresh diet together for their dogs, to "Use your computer and Google-out the information you need to become fully informed" about home-prepared diets just as readily as commercial diets, is condescending and demeaning. For the last 19 years, I've demonstrated that I'm perfectly capable of feeding my dogs a nutritious and appropriate diet, and don't need it delivered to me in pellets to know that.

And I bet you are too.

Comments

[Gina]

What clarified this issue for me was realizing how ridiculous it would be to expect to feed ourselves a "complete and balanced" pelleted product. "Kid Chow"? People would laugh at the very idea. If you believe that fresh, whole (and by that I mean unprocessed) foods are better for your own nutrition, how can you believe any different for the animals in your life?

[Kate]

I also took issue with this article. Since I'm fairly new at raw feeding (9 months), I don't have quite the background to write such an indepth response but you summed things up very nicely. At one point she said she would like to ask if these (raw-feeding) pet owners have a university degree in nutrition, well I do, although in human nutrition. As Gina stated, the idea that humans could receive "complete and balanced" nutrition in a pelleted product is ridiculous. Well, basically there is such a thing, nutrition via tube feeding or via IV. Yes, these modes of feeding do keep humans alive, however, with all the technology available they still can't duplicate a diet made up of real food. I don't know why the same wouldn't be true for animals too.

[Stacy Andelin]

I've been doing my raw feeding research, and have started both dogs on a raw food diet for the last little while. It's refreshing to come upon your website, because as of this morning, I was convinced that I was killing my dogs on this diet, when all I really want to do is make them healthy. I can't even say healthy again, because the chronic ear and anal gland infections, and all the vet visits for these ailments, leads me to believe they were never really very healthy in the first place. I can now take this information with a grain of salt, so to speak. Thanks for giving me my balls back. Figuratively, that is.

[craig pepoon]

This is an awesome source for a seeker such as me! Thanks for the point/counterpoint perspective. My own 'common sense' (isn't that a fox news term?) puts me on the side of the raw/natural, but i'm digging digging digging!

Thanks!