Perils and the packets

A READER DISAGREES with what I wrote last week about how catfood and dogfood are not only unsuitable for an iguana, but such a food could kill it. Iguanas can’t take protein in food that comes from other animals.

“Protein is protein,” the reader says. “It doesn’t matter if it comes from an animal or a plant.”

Some people would say, I suppose, “Food is food. It doesn’t matter what its source is.”

All foods aren’t the same, nor are they equal. Cats are “obligate carnivores”, which means that your little Miao-Miao must eat protein from animals – beef, pork, chicken or fish. You cannot turn her into a vegetarian. Even if she eats the rice, noodles or bread you feed her, it just passes through, not helping body maintenance very much.

It’s easier to change a dog into a vegetarian, and there are even cookbooks written by vets that provide vegetarian recipes for dogs, but you’re still taking a chance with your Woof-Woof’s health if all his nutritional requirements aren’t met.

The reader, however, isn’t interested in this point, but with the source of the protein you feed your pet.

In the 1980s, zoos in the US became concerned when their cheetahs suddenly began suffering liver failure and dying much earlier than they had previously. In addition, mama cheetahs weren’t giving birth as often, and when they did, their litters were unusually small.

The zookeepers finally figured out the problem, and it lay in the food. Because of increasing costs of feed and care, the zoos had started using a much cheaper food that was part animal protein and part soya. In some zoos, soya was nearly 90 per cent of the cheetahs’ food.

Closer study revealed that the unfermented soya in the food had been interfering with the cheetahs’ hormonal balance, leading to all these other problems. Cheetahs taken off the diet of vegetable protein immediately improved.

Researchers guess that cheetahs are unusually sensitive to a soya bean diet, but they speculate that any pet food that has soya bean protein as one of its top three ingredients isn’t suitable for dogs or any species of cat (including your little Miao-Miao), or your pet bird, or your iguana.

Some researchers go even further and warn against newborn humans being fed soya bean milk, which, they say, doesn’t provide all the vitamins and minerals necessary for babies and even includes some minerals that could be harmful.

If you’d like to read further, here is one website with more information:

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/03/28/avoid-using-soy-on-pets.aspx

Of course, you need to consult your doctor about the questions raised by these researchers.

You also need to be watchful. Gone are the days you could simply open a packet of dogfood and pour it into your dog’s dish.

Globalisation, advances in food processing and sometimes (not all the time) simple greed have taken feeding your pet to all new levels.

In one kind of dogfood or catfood, the different ingredients can come from all over the world. In addition, new brands are appearing all the time, and the information on the packaging doesn’t give you much information at all, such as in which country the product was manufactured or where each of the major ingredients came from – or even what those major ingredients are, at least in language you can understand.

Pet food has improved, aiming to meet the needs of specific breeds and health problems. Just like the social media, though, there are all sorts of hidden dangers. It’s a whole new world out there for careful pet lovers.