Don’t Kill Your Pets!

Even if you pick a premium pet food, there are more things to think about than just the ingredients.  Most people don’t consider two very important things.  Where do the ingredients come from?  And, how is the food made?

Here’s what happens when a typical dry dog or cat kibble is processed at the company plant.

First, they remove the natural fats from the meat and the grind the meat into a meal.  With the grains, they remove the oils and then seperate the whole grains into different components.  For instance, with rice they could seperate it into rice bran, rice flour, etc.

Next the ingredients are all mixed together and then added to an extruder.  This is a large tube with a large screw in the middle to help mix.  It is mixed while being steamed at an extremely high temperature.  The high temperature destroys many of the natural vitamins and enzymes that occur naturally in the unprocessed food.

After mixing and streaming, the food is squeezed out the end of the extruder through holes almost like a past a maker.  the resulting ribbons of food are cut into small peices and then placed on a conveyor belt which takes them through the dyring and cooling process.

After it is dryed, the food is sprayed or coated with fat and vitamins to make up for what was lost during the steaming.  However, the fat and vitamins sprayed back on are not the same as they were naturally in the food before processing.

Because of this method, the must add chemical preservatives to the food so that it does not go rancid quickly.

There are a couple of ways you can get around this processing method.  Many people homemake their dog or cat food because they don’t want chemical preservatives and they don’t want unnatural vitamins and greasy fat sprayed on it.  I will post a few recipes for some great homemade recipes.

Then there is Flint River Ranch which I will also write more about in another post.  All their dry foods and treats are twice oven baked under specific conditions.  Because of this, they do not use any chemical preservatives.  It is not baked at too high of a temperature and all vitamins and fats are as they naturally are in the food.  They do not need to spray anything on the finished kibble.  You can literally stick your hand in a bag of their kibble and no grease or residue will be left on it.  This is not true with other kibbles.

This is not to say that there are no other great foods out there.  There are more and more great premium foods showing up that are still very nutritious despite the typical process method.  But if you want the best of the best, or the most natural possible, it must be homemade or oven baked.