Photo courtesy of Dutch Della Rocco
The pet food industry is a highly competitive multibillion-dollar industry. This leads to a substantial amount of marketing hype to convince pet owners that their food is best for your pet. As these myths have been reported over and over on the Internet and in online forums, they become accepted as truth, when in reality they are not. Let’s look at three of the more common myths.
Myth #1: Corn is a filler and causes food allergies.
A filler is an ingredient with little to no nutritional value. Corn contains protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, so it is certainly not a filler.
The protein portion of corn, called corn gluten, contains up to 70 percent protein and is a good source of important amino acids like methionine and cystine. Corn contains the essential fatty acid linoleic acid for healthy skin and hair coat, along with vitamin A, niacin, vitamin E and beta carotene.
Walk into any pet store that sells food, and you will be convinced that whenever your pet scratches excessively or has a skin condition, a food allergy is the cause. However, food is the cause of allergic skin conditions in only 10 percent of dogs and cats. The majority of the time, it’s fleas or an environmental allergen.
When there is a food allergy, it’s beef, dairy, wheat and eggs as the most common causes in dogs. Beef, dairy and fish are the most common causes in cats. Corn is not on this list.
Myth #2: By-products are low-quality ingredients.
By-products are regulated by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). They define by-products as “the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals.”
By-products do not contain hair, horns, teeth or hooves, as is commonly thought. They commonly contain highly nutritious mammalian internal organs like kidneys, brains, livers, lungs and spleen. These organs are an important source of iron, vitamin A, vitamin B12, vitamin E, riboflavin, biotin and folic acid.
If you were to feed only meat to your pet, it would soon have an imbalance of important nutrients and he or she would develop an imbalance of calcium and phosphorous, leading to metabolic bone disease, which is a serious condition.
Myth #3: Grain-free diets are healthier and prevent food allergies.
Grains contain fiber, fatty acids, minerals, vitamins and amino acids that are essential to health. When grains are cooked, they are highly digestible.
Grain-free foods still contain carbohydrates if potatoes and tapioca are used in place of grains.
Food allergies, when they even occur, are almost always from wheat and animal-based proteins like beef, dairy, eggs and fish, and not grains.
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