Did you know there’s more to healthy eating and feeding pets than just opening a bag of pet food?
Animals are naturally adept at balancing their own diets, until humans interfere, and sometimes our choices of processed foods contribute to illness and discomfort.
Our animals’ diets would be much more varied if we allowed them to hunt and scavenge. Most species will select a variety of foods, with selections changing with temperatures and other environmental factors.
The science of feeding pets has become quite controversial, with questions arising over the sources of grains, meat, and other ingredients. Most of these controversies are triggered by hard to decipher labeling of processed pet foods.
You and your pet can benefit in the short term from the convenience of processed pet foods, but if you gain an understanding about the properties of foods, your pet can weather seasons of the year and of their life more gracefully. You can choose supplemental foods and snacks to help them stay cooler in summer, warmer in winter; to have better organ function through the liver cleansing foods available in spring, and store up nutrients for winter during bountiful autumn harvest time.
By using a combination of ancient wisdom and modern science, you can learn to pick pet foods (and help your whole family with this newfound knowledge) like a pro.
As a veterinarian, incorporating Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and food therapy for 32 years, I have seen the advantages of adding a variety of seasonal, unprocessed foods to pets’ diets. Drugs alone can suppress symptoms of disease; health improvements are accelerated when therapy includes dietary changes - especially when treating chronic illness, cancer and immune diseases. In western culture, we tend to focus on label facts when choosing foods, like grams of protein, fat, and carbohydrates, rather than the properties of food. Fads in our diets and our pets’ diet seem to change as quickly as social media trends.
In contrast, Eastern medicine has incorporated the balancing properties of food, including the energy, color, flavor, and movement of foods and herbs into wellness care. Foods possess energy which produces heat (Yang), warmth, neutral (neither hot or cold), cool, or cold (Yin) effects on the body.
The saying, “Cool as a cucumber” is accurate regarding the energy of this vegetable, and we eat them in summer to cool our bodies. In contrast, foods like hot peppers, can produce sweat and heat in the body. If a person is already too hot, consuming hot peppers would add to their discomfort.
I use the knowledge of foods’ energy, including meats, to help pets become less hot or inflamed, especially during summer heat. Meats like turkey and beef are more cooling by nature, and therefore may help pets feel less hot and itchy, provided they don’t have an allergy to the chosen meat. Chicken, is more warming. I suggest avoiding this meat during summer in pets that have allergies or excessive panting.
The flavors of foods - sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter - can also be used to help pets with their comfort in the warm months. For example, bitter and sour foods may provide more relief from the effects of heat because they create less heat and inflammation.
In dogs, the addition of apples, apple cider vinegar, and occasional tomatoes (all of which have sour properties) in the diet can help regulate inflammation and heat internally. Bitter foods, like turmeric, ginger and dandelion, decrease heat and also help clear toxins and inflammation. These actions also reduce histamine/allergies and can improve heart and intestinal health.
The way a food is prepared can change it’s action and flavor. For example, high heat processing for dry foods and the inclusion of grains increase the heat production in your pet’s body.
To help a pet feel cooler, feed a raw or homemade diet with cooling meats, such as turkey, fish, duck, goose, rabbit, beef, or quail.
Cooling fruits include apples, watermelon, cantaloupe, cherry, blueberry, raspberry and pear. Also, eliminate dry foods and hard treats, and opt for treats which include pieces of meat or organ, veggies and fruit instead.
Cooling grains include barley, wheat, wild rice and buckwheat. Avoid grains like oatmeal in the summer. Raw goat milk from a commercially tested source can reduce your pet’s heat, and it may be frozen in ice cube trays and given to pets as a treat on a hot day.
Dogs love steamed parley and melon water, made into ice cubes, as a cool treat.
Keep in mind, if your pet has special dietary needs or a history of specific food intolerances, allergies or pancreatitis, seek a veterinary nutritionist before changing their diet. Always introduce new items gradually.