by S. Heisley » Tue Jan 15, 2013 6:22 pm
When people hassle you about feeding your dog "human" food, simply ask them what dogs ate before there was dog food! Actually, dog kibble is not what nature intended dogs to eat. Come on, fellas! Dogs rarely ate things like corn meal. They ate what meat they could catch and roots that they dug up and grass, etc.
The problem with feeding human food to a dog is that some may not give their dog a balanced diet. The dog food is supposed to have everything that a dog needs in it; so, it's an easy, thought-free meal for the animal. The problem comes in that dog food often has the poorer parts of meat (by products) and other things that humans won't eat or are not considered fit for human consumption. Then, to make it tasty to dogs, some dog food companies purchase the used cooking oil and fat drippings that would usually be discarded by restaurants and add that to the dog food to make it smell good and tasty to dogs. These practices seem to make the pets more prone to disease. (Granted, a certain amount of canned dog food is sometimes eaten by humans who may be too poor to afford much else.)
My dog does not do well on dog food and I don't like it when he gets sick. I don’t like cleaning up vomit and liquid feces, either. I had a boxer that came within a hair's breath of getting cirrhosis of the liver from dog food and every dog that I have fed dog food, to as a steady diet, has ended up with cancer. Some corporations have become very greedy for money and, as a result, the quality of food, both for our pets and ourselves has suffered.
In talking to my pet's doctor, I have found that human food can actually be better for pets than dog food. You just need to be certain that you are giving them all the nourishment that they need. For that reason, many vets now hand out "recipes" for making "human" food for your pet. I also supplement my pet's diet with vitamins, just to be more certain. In addition, it is considered wise to cook raw meat before giving it to a pet because that will kill harmful organisms that might be living in the raw meat.
(As an added note, I understand that humans are the only animal that can not make vitamin C from the sun, as well as vitamin D. Our human bodies can only make vitamin D from the sun.)
