a pet’s food should never be cooked. It should be fed in a raw natural state like nature intended. Cooking a dog’s food ruins most of the nutritional value.
It is very expensive for what you get, and is an inferior food source.
Most pet food is made up of waste product that is too low quality, or inappropriate for human food. For example a waste product of the rice industry is the hulls from the rice. It is sometimes sold as a garden product. It is often sold as a filler for commercial dog food, and has zero nutritional value for a dog. It is extremely cheap for the pet food companies to buy at under $50/tonne.
What’s on the label can be very deceiving. Is your dog really getting beef? Blood from abbatoirs is sold to specialist manufacturers who cook it and compress it and make it into pellets which are then sold to pet food companies. Chicken bones (as opposed to meat) are sold in huge bulk (under 30 cents/kg) to pet food manufacturers who then cook them up, grind them, and place them in pet food. So, here we have the basis of a product which could be labelled chicken and rice, or beef and rice, and given a few rudimentary extra vitamins (which will always be glamorised on the label as something extra special), and sold to you for $7-10/kg or more.)
Nothing can replace the benefit of raw meaty bones. These clean their teeth, work and develop their neck and jaw muscles, and the chewing action prepares their stomach for the incoming food mass. Chewing bones also slows down the eating process considerably, making it far harder for a dog to over eat.
dog foods have as their main ingredient cereals – the main ingredient your dog should be eating is raw meaty bones. And it is these very cereals that cause a range of problems such as allergies.
commercial pet foods are laden with preservatives, colours (dyes), and salt. They have additives to make the food taste better so that the dogs will overeat.
the vast majority of commercial dog foods have far too much carbohydrates in them. High levels of carbohydrates are linked to over-eating, diabetes, weight gain, and numerous other problems. Dogs should eat a diet with only a small amount of carbs.
there is no substitute for a raw diet
your vet is more than likely only recommending a manufactured diet because they know no better. Some even receive financial kickbacks for recommending such.
