Processed foods “out of context” with environment and nature.

R. L. Wysong, DVM

          Do veterinarians create disease by promoting “100% complete and balanced” manufactured diets? Consider the following:

            Before the modern hammer mill, extruder, retorter, AAFCO, FDA, NRC and state regulatory agencies, there were table scraps. Animals consumed their natural, raw prey in the wild.

            Let’s look at these events in the perspective of time.  If we were to map out time on a line and let one inch on that line represent the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, the rest of that line representing the amount of time life is estimated to have been on earth, the line would be 276 miles long. So other than our present speck of time on the scale of biological history, animals and humans were consuming natural, whole raw food.

            If food is viewed as part of our environmental context – which it should be – then it can certainly be argued that today we are out of context.

            Fractionated, processed, additive-laden foods are an entirely new synthesis, a new food context. We and our companion animals are, in effect, in a genetic time warp. Animal genes which are adapted to the natural raw prey diet fully expect that that is the food their body will be consuming. But they are assaulted with something entirely different.

            Disease, in a more general sense, can be seen as nothing more than an environmental stress that overtakes an organism’s ability to adapt. A fish thrown out of water onto the ground will live for awhile, but quickly becomes dis-eased and succumbs to the new unnatural environment.

            We are rapidly learning that alteration of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the soils from which our foods are derived can also cause disease because these polluting events distort our natural genetic context. Although we and our companion animals don’t always die rapidly from such stress, it nevertheless insidiously takes its toll.

            The scientific literature is replete with evidence that disruption of our natural food and environmental context is directly related to a vast range of chronic degenerative diseases. These diseases include cancer, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, arthritis, adult-onset diabetes, dermatoses, psychological aberrations, dental disease, obesity and general loss of thriftiness and vitality long before the natural genetic end-stage of life.  These are the myriad cases walking through a revolving door at veterinary clinics country-wide which are never cured.

            While today evidence mounts to demonstrate that human beings should be eating more fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grain products, nuts and clean, minimally processed meats, anachronistically, the pet food industry, nutritionists and the veterinary profession press for new tests which will prove that a manufactured, fractionated, additive-laden, embalmed, processed product will last indefinitely on a shelf and solitarily provide optimum nutrition for pets.

            Think for a moment about the “100% complete and balanced” claim.  Nutrition is an aggregate science, resting on the basic sciences such as chemistry and physiology. No one would claim that these sciences have reached a complete, 100 percent knowledge state.  Since nutrition rests on these disciplines, how, therefore, could the “100 percent complete and balanced” claim be made for any processed, manufactured food? This fundamental flaw in the quest for a complete manufactured diet for pets is insurmountable. Making sure a nutrient analysis matches an NRC or AAFCO nutrients profile, or performing a six week AAFCO feeding trial does not make this logical absurdity disappear.

            For example, literally thousands of cats were maimed and died as a result of taurine deficiency--eating packaged products that met NRC nutrient guidelines. The literature has also demonstrated problems with potassium, zinc, calcium, phosphorus, pH, carnitine and other imbalances in animals being fed so-called “100 percent complete and balanced” thoroughly “proven” pet foods.

            Does the problem go away because manufactures now add taurine to the diet or don’t acidify the product as much as they used to, or supplement potassium?  No. These are only Band-Aids, not solutions.  Overt manifestations of nutrient diseases, cardiomyopathy, hypokalemia, etc, --accidental post-damage discoveries—are simply the tip of the iceberg that victimizes every companion animal exclusively eating a so-called “100% complete” manufactured food.

            Clients should be advised by any responsible veterinarian, in the face of established evidence, to supplement fresh, raw, natural foods to these manufactured diets. If fresh meats and organs had been supplemented occasionally to the thousands of cats that suffered from a taurine deficiency (diets devoid of taurine like the Science Diet C/D from some years back that was supposed to be 100% complete and balanced – JRF), they would never have fallen victim to the disease.   (Thousands of cats died from heart failure or went blind due to taurine defficiency, [taurine is an amino acid – JRF}.  The hundreds of thousands of dogs and cats suffering from gum and tooth disease would have been spared if they were consuming fresh, raw, nautral bones as part of their regular diet.  Similar salutary results are likely with virtually all modern chronic degenerative conditions.

            Animals in the wild do not experience the degenerative conditions on the scale (if at all) that domestic pets do. Similarly, primitive societies do not experience the degenerative disease conditions that modern humans do.

            So…what could be wrong with the modern, supposedly fine-tuned commercial diets that have received so much research?  They are simply not the proper food context for animals.

            Dogs and cats in the wild would not eat beet pulp, wheat middlings, barley, hydrolyzed feathers, and rarely, the animal by-product components that predominate in pet foods. [By-products: heads, beaks, wings, feet, intestines, etc – JRF]. For these products to be edible, they must be disguised by processing and mixing with additives. Furthermore, as various ingredients are mixed together and then heated to temperatures above 300 degree and subjected to pressures of 600 pounds per square inch, the chemical components complex [with one another – JRF] forming new toxic matrices. Put simply, what goes into processed pet foods as starting material is not what comes out.

            Amino acids racemize, rendering a large percentage of them nutritionally unavailable due to their new optical rotation [form].  There is acetylation and succinylation of the terminal amine in lysine, of the hydroxyl in serine and threonine, of the sulfhydryl in cysteine, of the phenol in tyrosine and the imidazole in histidine.

            Reducing sugars in all pet foods combine with episilon amino of lysine to create a Maillard reaction, rendering the resultant product indigestible and perhaps toxic.  Even vitamins can combine with certain amino acids, such as B6 with lysine, to create a hybrid (epsilon pyridoxal lysine) making them both nondigestible. Various minerals with the food can oxidize vitamins as well as essential fatty acids.  Cooking of meats in all pet foods creates heterocyclic amines which damage mitochondria and causes free radical pathology including cardiomyopathy (this processing toxin is likely the root cause of dilated cardiomyopathy in cats and taurine defficiency simply aggrevates it).

            Exposure to heat, light and oxygen can dramatically change the nature of essential fatty acids, oxidizing them, setting the stage for free-radical pathology throughout the body, now believed to be the seat of many, if not all, degenerative diseases.

            None of this is measured by an AAFCO feeding trial or a nutrient analysis, let alone by a consumer reading a bag’s label assuring them that the food is “100% complete and balanced”.

            The solution.  The solution is first and foremost to disregard the “complete and balanced” propaganda on pet food bags.

            Pet food manufactures should very simply be permitted to exercise their First Admendment right of stating truthfully what is in the product and what they have done to make the product of value.  Instead, what we have today is regulation forcing manufacturers to put the spurious “complete and balanced” claim on their bag while being denied the opportunity to state truthfully what they have done to the product.

            Although the “complete and balanced” claim is believed to create assurance of nutrient quality, it does the opposite. The criteria used to permit use of the claim are minimum average standards (like wading across a stream with an average depth of 4 feet with 100 pounds of weight on your back).  Once a manufacturer achieves these minimum standards and can state that their food is “complete and balanced” of what purpose is it for them to go further in their nutritional research and development to continue to try to improve it – until their product is shown to be toxic by feeding it to millions of trusting people’s pets?

            On the other hand, manufacturers should continue to try to improve the nutritional quality of their products in an attempt to optimize health. If they don’t, someone else will, and in an increasingly health-conscious society, those who do will win.

            Certainly, regardless of the merits of processed food, owners should be encouraged to feed a variety of fresh foods. Meats, organs, bones, eggs, dairy products, vegetables, cooked grains, fruits and nuts are all foods that can be consumed with great value by pets.

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Dr. Wysong is director of the Wysong Health Institute, a non-profit, health research and educational organization. He writes the monthly Wysong Health Newsletter addressing nutritional, health, environmental and social issues.  He is the author of several books and directs development of companies producing veterinary equipment, animal foods and supplements, agricultural products, human foods, supplements and personal care products.  (N.B. Italices mine, JRF). I consider Dr. Wysong to be one of the top nutritionists in the country. Check out their website for much good information on pets and people at www.wysong.net.