I’ve been wondering why more dogs don’t eat raw diets? We always fed our dog dry kibble and cooked meat and I never really thought about it then but it does seem a bit weird. Isn’t that how they evolved to eat? Then again, dogs are very domesticated now. Raw food is apparently the biggest growing sector in the dog food industry. There are probably some very healthy kibbles out there but most of them have a very high starch content from being heat processed and that is bad for their gut microbiome (sound familiar!?). There are a lot of grain-free kibbles, which is likely better, however, the issue it that they still contain significant amounts of starch which is disruptive to the endocrine system. Heat also destroys a lot of the nutrients that dogs need and denatures the protein. Like I said, I don’t know a great deal about feeding a dog a raw diet because I’ve never done it, but I wonder if it would be beneficial to even feed a proportion of raw foods? Apparently a lot of racing greyhounds and sled dogs are fed raw diets. Maybe those owners might have some good insights. There are risks to feeding a raw diet like bacteria exposure from raw meat or a potentially unbalanced diet. A lot of dogs lose a lot of weight on a raw diet. Could be a good side effect for many! Here’s an interesting article on Feeding raw diets to read if you are curious to learn more.