Biologically Appropriate Raw Food, BARF, is a type of diet that focuses on raw meat and bones feeding to provide the necessary nutrition needed by a dog. Also known as Bones And Raw Food diet, and the Born Again Raw Food diet, BARF diet is picking up and getting more popular lately.
The argument for a BARF diet is that it follows closely to the diet of the ancestor dogs as they ate raw food too. Studies also show that cooking food would reduce the nutritional value, breaks down valuable proteins and sometimes even cause certain food like, bones, to be detrimental to the dog's health.
This view point has a great deal of truth because it is well known and documented that certain vitamins are reduced or degraded by heat, some more cooked bones would also splinter when chewed.
Nevertheless, there are also many reasons to go against the BARF diet. The main reason being that it is a fact that current domestic dogs live longer than before and there is good grounds to believe that they must be eating right or rather better than they used to.
Secondly, a cooked diet is safer to feed in term of bacterial content as the heat from cooking kills most of the bacteria that might survive in the meat. Dogs have also been eating cooked food throughout their long relationship with humans. There is no concrete evidence to proof which type of diet is better at the moment, and both side have their own set of supporters. The decision whether to raw feed your dog depends largely on you. The factors to consider include the willingness to spent time and determine what type of food is biologically appropriate to your dog, to handle the food appropriately, and to incur the extra expense if you decide to raw feed. On the other hand, a cooked diet or a commercial prepared diet is less expensive to feed. There are also commercial raw diets available in the market. These foods are safer to handle if they have been irradiated to kill bacteria. These diets may differ a little from BARF diets, however they are still largely consist of ground meat and bone fragments or bone meal. In addition, they may also contain vegetable matter where a typical BARF diet may lack.
Last but not least, no matter what diet you decide to feed your dog, it is always advisable to seek advice from your veterinary. He should be in the best position to advise you accordingly depending on the condition of your dog and your current lifestyle.
| Moses Wright is the founder of Dog-Diet.net. You can find more helpful information on Canine Dog Diet, Natural Dog Food and Homemade Dog Food on his website. You are welcome to reprint this article if you keep the content and live link intact. |
1 comment:
Hello,
Rob Mueller from BARFWorld wanting to comment on your article. I consider myself a pioneer in the field of raw feeding since I have been involved in several manufacturing facilities and have sold raw meat diets for 32 years. I have been involved long enough now to feel that I have adequate knowledge to inform and advise people on the merits and advantages of feeding raw. I have seen the turn-a-round in thousands of dogs when switched to raw. Our philosophy is to feed a dog or cat the fuel that nature designed it to eat. If you just observe the dentition of the animal it will give you a clue as to what it should be fed. Plain and simple- a dog or cat is not phisiologically designed to eat a grain based diet. They have teeth designed to rip and tear flesh and they have a shorter digestive system to handle higher bacterial laden food.
Cooking food will create two very important problems. It will destroy the enzymes in the food so that the body then has to produce its own digestive enzymes to digest the food. Secondly, cooking tends to change the molecular composition of the food and will render it far less digestible in most cases. In addition, the heated food debris becomes toxic and gradually overwhelms the immune system. The more a food get cooked, the further it compromises health.
Dry food companies have tried for years to make carnivores adapt to a grain based routine and as a result, our pets suffer from an increasing number of degenerative diseases including a high incidence of diabetes and they get fat. Yes- they might be living longer today- but I give credit to the medical advances available today that can mask the symptoms and sustain life.
In conclusion, I feel that having sold in excess of 100 million pounds of raw meat diets over the last 32 years has given me a positive track record to brag about the results of feeding raw meat diets to carnivores.
For those interested in reading more about the merits of raw feeding you can obtain a copy of my recent new book called "Living ENZYMES- The World's Best Kept Pet Food Secret" available on our website at www.barfworld.com/cgi-bin/product.cgi?category=35
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