Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats (6 page)

For a period of 27 months, Dr. McCarrison fed over 1,000 rats a variety of live foods, including sprouted beans, fresh raw carrots and cabbage, and raw whole milk, along with whole wheat flatbread and a bit of meat and bones once a week. He also provided
the rats with good air, sunlight, and clean living quarters. At the close of the experiment, when the rats had reached an age equivalent to about 55 years in human terms, he sacrificed and autopsied them thoroughly for signs of disease. To his amazement he could find none. The only deaths that
had
occurred among those rats were from accidents.

Later, Dr. McCarrison fed two other diets to groups of rats—one that was typical of poor people from England and the other typical of poor people in parts of India. Rats who lived on the poor Indian diet of rice had disease in every organ they possessed! Those who lived on the boiled, sweetened, and canned foods commonly eaten by the English poor grew so high-strung that they ate each other, the weaker rats succumbing first.

T
HE
P
OTTENGER
C
AT
S
TUDIES

One of the most fascinating sources of information about the importance of raw foods has come from what is now known as the Pottenger Cat Studies. Dr. Pottenger did not set out to study cat nutrition, but he became intrigued by differences in the health of cats he was using in experimental studies. Turning his attention to this topic, he did a series of nutritional comparisons. For several generations, one group of cats was fed completely raw food (meat, bones, milk, and cod liver oil). Other groups of cats were fed the same foods either partially or completely cooked. What he found is of definite importance to anyone who wants to raise a truly healthy pet:

• Cats on the entirely raw food diet were completely healthy, never needing veterinary attention.
  
• The more the food was cooked, the less healthy were the cats that ate it.
  
• The health problems evident in the experimental cats on the cooked diet were remarkably like those commonly seen in cats today—mouth and gum problems, bladder inflammation, skin disorders, and the like.
  
• Over a period of three generations, the cats on the cooked food diet continued to deteriorate until they could no longer reproduce.
  
• When the cats were put back on a raw food diet, it took
  three generations
  for the animals to
  totally
  recover from the effects of the cooked diet.
  

Why is this? Foods are so complex that there is still much we don’t understand about them. Researchers have discovered, for example, that cats require a dietary source of taurine, an amino acid that many mammals, including humans, can make in their own bodies from the food protein they eat. Cats cannot do this and so must obtain it, already made by other animals, in their food. Taurine, found only in animal tissues, is largely destroyed by cooking. One study found that an average of 52 percent of the taurine in raw meats was lost through baking and an average of 79 percent through boiling. As a result
of processing, many commercial cat foods once had low levels of taurine. Now it is added to cat foods and supplements. (When meat is fed raw as we recommend, by the way, calculations show that our recipes for cats contain taurine in amounts comparable to that found in the wild diet.)

In caring for our own cats, my wife and I came to the conclusion that we would rather not wait for more discoveries. Instead, we would rather be cautious, choosing to feed our cats a diet that most closely resembles that of their evolutionary history.

THE ADDITIVES IN YOUR PET’S FOOD

Since graduating from veterinary school in 1965, I’ve noticed a general and steady deterioration in pet health. We are now seeing very young animals with the same kinds of diseases that we used to see only in older animals. It is clear to me that there is an accumulation of poor health being passed on from generation to generation; this accumulation increases with each step. Without the perspective of several decades, veterinarians just coming out of veterinary school think that these degenerative conditions in younger animals are “normal.” They do not realize what has happened over the passage of time.

I believe that, along with poor quality nutrients, the
chemical additives
in pet food have played a major part in that decline. Just look at the label of a typical burger product for dogs. The ingredients are listed in order of their prominence. (For example, if water is the first ingredient, the product contains more water than anything else.) A popular soft-moist burger lists corn syrup as its third major ingredient. But what is this common sweetener doing in a burger? It’s providing the soft-moistness! The FDA approved the use of corn syrup in its hydrogenated form as a “humectant and plasticizer”—that is, an ingredient that can give the product dampness and flexibility, as well as preserving the food against decay. If this does not seem familiar to you, here is a product you will recognize that uses the same method of preserving food: jam! Food scientists trying to develop similar products for people have acknowledged that despite the American sweet tooth, soft-moist dog food is so sweet that “humans just wouldn’t like it.”

Chemically derived from cornstarch, corn syrup produces the same energy highs and lows as table sugar and causes the same stress on the pancreas and adrenals, a condition that may result in diabetes. It’s easy to see that corn syrup is an undesirable ingredient, especially when you consider the other shortcomings of such an isolated refined sugar. Not only does it dilute other nutrients in the food by providing “empty calories” devoid of vitamins, minerals, proteins, or fats, but it also can over-stimulate the production of insulin and acidic digestive juices. These interfere with a dog’s ability to absorb the proteins, calcium, and other minerals that
are
in the food. Moreover, it can inhibit the growth of useful intestinal bacteria.

The following common ingredients have appeared in soft-moist and other pet foods.

Propylene glycol.
This compound, known to cause illness in dogs, is also used to maintain the right texture and moisture and to tie up the water content, thus inhibiting bacterial growth. Of the commonly used preservatives, it is considered to cause the most health problems in dogs—dry itching skin, hair loss, dehydration, excessive thirst, and tooth and gum problems.

Potassium sorbate.
A commonly used preservative, chemically similar to fat.

Ammoniated glycyrrhizin.
Add this to the list of sweeteners. It is also considered a potent drug that should be tested further for safety.

Sucrose.
Simply table sugar.

Propyl gallate.
Manufacturers add this chemical to retard spoilage, but it is suspected of causing liver damage.

Ethoxyquin.
Originally developed for use in the production of rubber and as an herbicide, this common preservative is among the compounds most suspect as causes of severe health problems in dogs. It has been found to cause liver tumors in newborn mice. The Food & Drug Administration, Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA/CVM), has received reports that “include allergic reactions, skin problems, major organ failure, behavior problems and cancer.” This organization, however, did not consider the evidence sufficient to make any changes in the regulation of the substance. A feeding test in dogs commissioned by Monsanto, the manufacturer of ethoxyquin, showed a change in liver color and increased liver enzymes in the dogs fed the chemical, but these changes were not considered significant because the dogs were not observably ill. Ethoxyquin continues to be used as a preservative.

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT).
This poorly tested preservative is implicated by some scientists as a cause of liver damage, metabolic stress, fetal abnormalities, and serum cholesterol increase.

Sodium nitrite.
This compound is widely used as both a preservative and a red coloring agent. Sodium nitrite used in food can produce powerful carcinogenic substances known as nitrosamines.

Many dogs are allergic to foods containing chemical preservatives, enduring symptoms such as excessive scratching, chronic diarrhea, or just not feeling well—problems that will continue as long as the chemicals are fed.

C
OLOR
M
E
S
ICK

Another class of common additives usually listed simply as
artificial coloring
does not require specific labeling. In pet food, the class typically includes the following coal tar derivative dyes, all allowed without adequate lifetime feeding studies and put in the food to make the food look acceptable to the human consumer.

• Red No. 3
  
• Red No. 40 (a possible carcinogen)
  
• Yellow No. 5 (not fully tested)
  
• Yellow No. 6
  
• Blue No. 1
  
• Blue No. 2 (shown in studies to increase dogs’ sensitivities to fatal viruses)
  

Similar dyes that were banned from both pet and human foods in the mid-1970s included Red No. 2 (which appeared to increase cancer and birth defects) and Violet No. 1 (a suspected carcinogen that can also cause skin lesions).

Although concerned citizens have tried to get the FDA to ban the inclusion of artificial colors in pet foods, their use continues unabated. In 1979, a petition to bar color additives from pet food was submitted to the FDA. The petition said that adding artificial color to the foods covered up the true appearance of the product and was a deceptive practice. The consumer could not tell the ingredients apart—they were all colored alike, and one could not tell what was meat, what was vegetable, or what were the other ingredients.

How did the FDA respond to this request? They said that by their definition this practice was not deceptive because it was only deception if, by adding color, you were trying to make the food look better than it really was. But (go slowly because the next part does not make sense), because the term “artificial colors” was listed on the label, then it couldn’t really be deception because the consumer could read on the label that colors had been added and therefore they couldn’t be fooled. Does this make sense to you?

In a crowded marketplace where all the major competitors use these colorings to make their food look more like fresh red meat, a company that tries to sell a product in its true colors—various unattractive shades of gray—could put itself at a serious disadvantage. Since dogs and cats don’t see colors like we do, the inclusion of these dyes is for
human eyes
, not to make the foods more attractive to animals. You can, however, find some pet food products in health food stores that
don’t
use artificial colors, preservatives, and flavors.

F
LAVOR
M
E
F
OOLED

Even more lax are the controls governing the largest class of food additives used in the United States—
artificial flavorings
. Largely due to a powerful lobby, the manufacturers of these delights can synthesize new flavorings, call them safe with little or no testing, and then use them without the need for FDA permission under the general term “artificial flavorings.” Since we have no way at all of trusting or assessing the safety of what is used, anyone seriously concerned about health would be wise to completely avoid using products—for themselves or their pets—that contain this mysterious group of ingredients.

INADVERTENT CHEMICAL CONTAMINATION

Besides those chemicals intentionally added to pet food, there are others that sneak in on
their own.
Chemical contamination
of the food chain is an increasing problem that is becoming a major factor in chronic disease, particularly for animals. It is difficult for us to comprehend just how frequently these chemicals appear in food. The process starts with the herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides used to grow crops. Despite Rachel Carson’s landmark warning about the dangers of pesticides, today we use produce pesticides at a rate 13,000 times greater than we did in 1962, the year that her book
Silent
Spring
first appeared. The process continues with antibiotics, growth stimulants, hormones, tranquilizers, and other drugs fed to livestock consuming grains.

H
EAVY
M
ETALS

Another important class of contaminants is heavy metals (arsenic, cadmium, and especially mercury), which are increasingly finding their way into our food chain. It was a major shock to many of us to find that the EPA has been allowing the recycling of industry waste—material loaded with heavy metals—into commercial fertilizers. We read how industry is cleaning up their act by putting “scrubbers” onto smokestacks of factories to collect all this nasty stuff so it doesn’t get into the air. But once collected, where does it go? We didn’t think it would be used in fertilizer and end up in our food.

The problem is this: Heavy metals, like many contaminants, are not destroyed over time. In the soil, plants take them up into their tissues, where they remain for the life of the plant. When this plant is eaten by an animal, the metals enter the animal’s body and collect there. The more plant that is eaten, the more heavy metal collects in the tissues. If that animal is eaten by another animal, that additional accumulation, more concentrated, is passed on. The contaminants in the soil become more concentrated in plants, then more concentrated in the grazing animals that eat plants, because they eat so many plants. Then the carnivores that eat these grazing animals consume a greater load. Each step results in more accumulation. The problem for carnivorous animals, those that eat other creatures, is that the buck stops with them.