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 Chiot Manchester Puppy!

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We hope you enjoy browsing on our Web site on the Manchester Terrier and that you will find lots of useful information .

NANcy & ROXanne

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CHAPTER 6

 

The Importance of Food Separation (and Combination)

At this point I would like to develop and discuss the idea of food separation and food combination.  In human nutrition, much emphasis is placed on food combining by folk such as naturopaths.  They claim that certain combinations of foods are more easily utilised by the body, and utilised without causing problems.  On the other hand, certain combinations of foods ‘’fight’’ each other.

This brings us to several related issues that affect the health of your dog.  These include the idea of a complete and balanced diet at every meal, and the idea of mixing nutrients together and cooking them.

These two ideas are part of the ‘’commercial dog food feeding programme’’.  They are also part of the idea behind feeding chickens or pigs in cages, and lot feeding beef cattle.  So entrenched have these ideas become, that it is now assumed by most vets, and therefore most modern dog owners, that this is the correct way to approach the formulation of meals for animals, including companion animals.

However, normal feeding of anything, including humans, does not work on the theory that every meal has to be balanced.  It seeks balance over a period of time.  Most meals for most creatures will consist of a limited number of food items.  Never will each meal be ‘’complete and balanced’’.

  • Let me give you some examples of this method of eating or feeding at work in nature…..

When a wild dog or a modern dog fed in a primitive way receives its nutrition, each meal is likely to be different in size, timing, and content.  It will certainly not be complete or balanced.

One meal may be totally vegetarian, e.g. the guts of some herbivore.  That meal will have very little protein and no minerals whatsoever.  Another meal may be all protein, e.g. some muscle meat.  Another meal may be mostly liver and kidneys and other internal organs.  Another meal may be mostly fat.  Another meal mat be mostly minerals as that dog chomps on and consumes some bones that have been stripped of meat.

Over a period of weeks to possibly months, that dog’s diet is balanced.  This approach to eating is in stark contrast to the way modern dogs are fed using the so called ‘’complete and balanced diets’’ produced by dog food companies.

The need for each meal to be complete and balanced is the notion we get from a quarter century of feeding dogs artificially on prepared dog foods, (Longer in the United States and Great Britain).  Commercial dog foods are formulated that way thought necessity, not because it is a good way to feed an animal.  It is the only way they can sell their product.

However, you are not trying to sell dog food to an unsuspecting public.  You are trying to feed your dog in such a way as to keep it healthy, which is a totally different thing.

Dogs, like any other animals, do not require that each meal be complete and balanced.  The attempt to do that causes numerous problems.  The normal, natural, and far superior way in terms of ease of doing and maximum health for your dog, it to provide the nutrients it requires over a period of time in many different meals.  By doing that you will achieve superior nutritional balance and do a much better job of feeding your dog for health.

 

THE PROBLEMS CAUSED BY ‘’COMPLETE AND BALANCED MEALS’’

The attempt to put every nutrient an animal needs in the one cooked up product causes enormous problems for the unfortunate animal forced to eat it.

The first problem is one of nutrients no longer being available, which of course leads in turn to a myriad of health problems.  This lack of availability is due to chemical interactions between nutrients when they are broken up, mixed together and then cooked.

That process results in nutrients such as calcium, chemically combining with other nutrients to produce insoluble, indigestible compounds which are no longer available to the dog. This is particularly so in commercial dog foods where excessive levels of calcium are the norm.

This situation does not occur on natural or primitive diets.  Let me give a very common example.  The wild dog requires minerals such as zinc, copper and iron.  These will be obtained when it eats the liver of another animal.  That liver will be eaten along with maybe the gut contents and perhaps with some muscle meat.  It is unlikely that it will be eaten with bones which are rich in calcium.  In other words, there will be no interference with the absorption of those much needed minerals.

The calcium is eaten at another meal.  That is, when the dog has a bone meal.  Even if bones are eaten with other foods, the digestion of the bones will be relatively slow, while organ tissue will be digested and absorbed much more quickly.

Getting back to the cooked product – the commercial dog foods – these often have trace minerals such as copper added to them.  This also causes problems.  The trace minerals, particularly when heat is involved, inactivate many of the vitamins.

If the food is overcooked, this produces further problems.  This has the potential to produce insoluble, poorly digested compounds, for example, compounds made up of carbohydrates and proteins.

In other words, combining all these foods together and then cooking them, in an attempt to produce a ‘’complete and balanced diet’’, is disastrous in terms of its effects on the availability and usability of nutrients.

The attempt to combine all the nutritional needs of all classes of dogs from puppies to old age pensioner dogs, in the one product has its problems as well.  It eventually results in damaged kidneys because of continual excesses in the diet of protein, phosphorus, sodium and calcium.

It bothered me for a long time that the meals I advocated were often higher in protein and phosphorus than some commercial dog foods, and yet where the commercial dog foods promoted poor kidney health, the diets I was advocating did not.

The answer lies with this food separation method.  Processed foods with their uniformly high protein and phosphorus levels, never give the kidneys a rest, whereas with a more primitive or natural way of feeding, where each meal is quite different, the kidneys are alternately worked and rested.  One day the kidneys are dealing with a diet high in protein and phosphorus, the next day they are not.

It is the rest period, when protein and phosphorus in the diet is low which is benefitting the kidneys… preventing kidney degeneration… promoting kidney health.

Another problem is digestion and assimilation.  For reasons not fully understood, greater health is obtained when foods containing mostly starch are kept separate from foods containing mostly protein.

The meals I describe further on in the book, separate predominantly starchy foods from predominantly protein foods.  The original research from which these ideas stemmed was actually done with the dog.

 

ACHIEVING BALANCE OVER TIME

Many people find it difficult to comprehend the notion that each meal does not require to be balanced.  However, we vets see this ‘’balance over time’’ principle at work all the time.  Let me give you a very common example.

Many folk, desperate to help their dog suffering severe health problems such as infected, itching, smelling, oozing eczema, often make drastic changes to their dog’s diet to see if that will help the problem.

Not uncommonly, the change will be from a processed food to an all meat diet.  However, it is just as likely that the diet change will go in the opposite direction.  No matter which way it goes, there will always be an improvement – for a while.  You see, no matter which direction the change in diet takes, they take their dog from one poor quality diet to another, but for a while, during the period of change, the dog is closer to receiving a balanced diet that it ever has been before.

This is not because the two diets are mixed together.  Commonly the change is abrupt, one day one diet, the next day the other.  What they are seeing is the balance over time effect.

What these folk observe, is that for a period of several months, their dog is much healthier than it used to be.  Not perfect, but much better.  This convinces them that they are doing the right thing by changing their dog’s diet.  That the new diet is ideal.

However, alter a few more months have passed, that dog will begin to develop a new set of problems, caused once again by an incorrect diet.

Of course I am not saying it is necessary to balance your dog’s diet over a period of many months.  For an adult dog, balance will normally be achieved aver a one to three week period.  For a growing puppy, balance should be achieved over say a three to seven day period.

 

RAW MEATY BONE BASED DIETS FOLLOW THIS PRINCIPLE

Without knowing about these ideas, many of the early feeding trials I carried out actually followed those principles, and doubtless contributed to their success.

Feeding whole foods tends to make it very simple to stick to the basic ideas behind food separation and combination, particularly because the foods are not cooked.

The most obvious food separation involves bones.  For both practical reasons and for reasons of foods separation, it is best to feed the raw meaty bones separately to everything else.  If you try to feed a mixture of vegetables and meat, most dogs, particularly dogs that have not eaten this way before, will separate the veggies from the meat, and only eat the meat.

In the section on practical feeding, I outline a number of meals which you may use to supplement the raw meaty bones.  Each of these meals follows the ideas of separating predominantly starchy meals from predominantly protein meals.  No meal attempts to be complete and balanced.

What I would like to emphasise at the point, is how difficult it is to provide balance in your dog’s diet by attempting to make each meal a balanced meal.  It is one of the reasons commercially fed dogs do so badly.  On the other hand, it is absurdly easy to achieve a healthy balanced diet for your dog by feeding a wide variety of foods, with each meal being different.  It means less thinking, less worrying, and a dietary regime which is almost impossible to unbalance.  This is in stark contrast to commercial dog foods, which have their balance so easily upset.

So let me stress one more time, it is not each meal that has to be balanced as the makers of the commercial dog foods are forced to do.  (not very well of course)  It is the over-all eating habits of your dog which require to be balanced.  This is most easily achieved by a wide variety of whole foods…. fed at different times.

(Note also that balance is never achieved by offering your dog a wide variety of brands or types of dog foods.  By feeding different brands and/or types of commercial dog food, you are offering your dog what amounts to ‘’more of the same’’.)