Knowing what food you should and shouldn’t eat is a minefield these days. Obviously, burgers and sweets aren’t great for you but it seems like every year we get different advice about what’s good and what’s bad. Try as you might, you’re always going to end up eating some unhealthy food. Luckily, when it comes to your pet food, you don’t have that problem. It’s all the same stuff, isn’t it? That’s a dangerous trap that people often fall into. There are so many different brands of pet food on the market these days and there are actually huge differences in lots of pet food brands. So, what should you be feeding them?
Junk Food
We don’t find it surprising that food companies are willing to sell terribly unhealthy food to people, so why should we be surprised that they do the exact same thing to animals? Most of the commercial brands of pet food like Pedigree and Bakers are packed full of all sorts of junk and the effect that it has on them is no different to the effect that eating fast food has on people. The problem is, these brands run marketing campaigns that lead us to believe that their food breeds happy, healthy pets. Imagine if chocolate was marketed as a health food and we all started eating massive amounts of it all day. The obesity problem would be even worse than it is, and that’s what’s happening with dogs. Around 40 percent of dogs these days are obese and most people don’t realize what they’re doing wrong.
Human Food
Lots of people are trying to correct that problem by feeding them human food, but this is risky There are companies like Betsy Farms that do sell pet food that is made of natural, healthy ingredients, so you don’t need to swear off pet food altogether, you just need to pick the right ones. If you are going to replace your pet food with human food, you can give them a healthy diet, however, you need to be careful. There are a lot of foods that are dangerous to animals outside of the well known ones like chocolate. For example, cats aren’t supposed to have milk, which might come as a shock. You never know what could make them sick so stick to simple ingredients and make sure you research thoroughly before you give them anything.
The Vet Doesn’t Always Know Best
While vets certainly know what they’re talking about when it comes to an animal’s health, they aren’t always experts in nutrition. They don’t study nutrition in vet school and any of the information that they get later in their career usually comes from seminars and training courses run by the pet food companies themselves. That means the stuff they have in their practice could be just as bad as what you were buying before.
The bottom line is, you can’t trust what the pet food companies tell you about their food. The only way to know for sure is to read the ingredients and look for food that doesn’t have any additives in.
Disclaimer: This is a collaborative post.