I think that’s a deceptive argument. No cat is going to starve to death (even slowly or partially) because they’re eating filler.They’ll just eat and poop more. It’s not like they are working animals who will deplete body reserves because they can’t get nutrition in fast enough.
Just as “sugar” is often broken down into two or three entries in human food.
I am a deeply concerned and devoted pet owner, and I encourage all owners to spend the “extra” (often not) money on high-quality food for the benefit of both pet and owner. But I don’t think corn-filler foods are, by themselves, causing any great harm to pets eating them.
It’s a logical contradiction to say that corn is a way of getting in Calories without nutrition, or to say that it has no nutrition, only Calories. Calories are nutrition, and in fact are the most important thing a living creature gets from its food.
Now, they’re not the only thing you need from your food, and so a food like corn (with Calories but not much else) won’t work as the only thing you eat. But so long as you combine it with other foods in the right proportions, it’s fine.
I used to feed Science Diet. They fed SD at the vet, so that seemed like good enough for me. Every time I’d go to the pet store to buy it, however, the owner would rant and rave and go on and on about how SD is the worst crap diet you could feed your dog, the vets all get free food and kickbacks (that’s why they feed it) and it’s this big scam.
I ignored him for years, thinking that eventually, he’d either adjust his little tinfoil hat or give up on converting me to the One True Church of the One True Dog Food™.
Then both my dogs developed the itchies. (Yes, that was the clinical diagnosis. ;)) Dry, flaky skin, lots of scratching and licking on their feetz, etc. I continued ignoring the pet store owner guy. Then my younger dog developed irritable bowel disease, which meant I’d wake up in the morning and find he’d gone downstairs in the darkness to poop enormous puddles of bloody poo all over the floor. Vet finally suggested a limited ingredient diet.
So I switched to another brand (and have since landed on Blue Buffalo, even the cat likes the dog food). Within a week, all the Itchies went away. No more dry flaky skin. The IBD dog’s poo started to solidify a bit. So I switched the cat too. His fur got all silky and shiny. The new dog’s fur is silky and shiny. I can see the jury seems to still be out on corn/grain in pet foods, but mine all seem to do better when I either feed BARF (Bones and Raw Foods) or stick with one of the non-grain/low grain brands. Kitty has switched to the Merrick brand and loves it.
In my experience my dog’s flatulence increased in volume, potency, and it seems, viscosity when they eat foods or treats with a high amount of corn in them. When they are on rice and meat based foods/treats it is vastly less. YMMV.
In addition my dogs also have adverse skin reactions with products with a high amount of corn. Rashes, hair loss, etc.
Corn isn’t indigestible. Geez, dogs can digest practically anything. Also, the main food allergies dogs have, believe it or not, are to specific animal proteins, most commonly beef. Corn was a celebrated Bad Food in the world of dogfood worriers for a long time, and became Truth because repeated endlessly.
One of the big problems with pet food is that it is largely “self-regulated” with very little oversight. This is how the melamine horrors happened – Chinese exporters of gluten protein substituted vastly cheaper melamine, which apparently tests as similar, except it happens to be poisonous. Animals died.
Corn has got to be the cheapest nutrient source in the US, due to all the vast subsidies etc. But it is not very good for dogs; giant piles of poo are the result of feeding low-quality foods. And poor health, sometimes. The rule of thumb for a decent dogfood is that the first two ingredients be a named meat. The reason for the naming is that otherwise you could be feeding your dog ground up feathers. The reason for the two is obvious.
If you look at kibble ingredient labels you will see that you are going to pay well for those first two named meats. But, you can also pay the same for corn and ground up feathers and a great marketing campaign. So reading labels is a good thing.
Corn is fairly hard to digest for both people and dogs in anything approaching a whole grain form. The more processed it is, the easier it is to digest (processing can include chewing it more). Dogs aren’t great at chewing their food, generally, so it’s either got to be pre-processed to be more digestible or it’s left less digestible.
You start processing corn and you start escalating some of the bad impacts from it.
So, process the corn and it’s not particularly good for you or your dog. Don’t process the corn and it’s not particularly digestible for you or your dog.
I have cats, so I have no (ahem) dog in this fight.
One of my dogs gets itchy when I feed food with corn. I learned this via trial and error.
All my dogs look better and have more energy when I feed high quality food. They also eat and poop less. Oh, and the maltese mix gets almost no mats in her fur. Instead of being floofy and tangly, it’s smoother and silky. So, that’s why I use better food.
Urban pet owners can be a bit irrational. Why else would we see references in ads for overpriced dog and cat food to the owner being the critter’s “Mommy?” The fact remains that millions of farm dogs and cats have been eating pretty much nothing but pig starter and water ever since weaned from mother’s milk. I suppose the dogs get an occasional groundhog and the cats supplement with mice, rats and young rabbits, but by and large they all thrive on a grain based pelletized diet.
I also see ads harping that your dog is deep down a wolf-child who need meat. Well maybe, but raw meat and putrid? Raw and putrid meat is after all what wolves eat in the wild. I know one guy who subsists his pack of dogs on deceased dairy calves (a certain number of which just die for no good or apparent reason). The dogs do OK but, damn, it is disgusting. Disgusting or not it is probably as close to a “Wolf Diet” as you are going to find. I doubt if the homeowners association in any modern community would approve of the family Labrador savaging a 200 lb. Holstein calf in the back yard.
As with everything else in life and commerce, a lack of critical (skeptical?) thinking will lead you down the primrose path.
Our vet is down on pet foods that contain any grains. Grain is not something that dogs and cats would normally ingest were it not for humans giving it to them in their food (although dogs will snarf down most anything, it seems). Hypo-allergenic pet foods do not have grains in them for a reason.
I don’t think anybody is saying corn provides calories without nutrition, but rather that aside from the calories it provides it doesn’t do much else in the way of nutrition, just like I could take in the same calorie content from eating lean chicken and broccoli or by eating spoonfuls of Crisco. Not that eating corn is the same as eating Crisco, but you get the idea.
It is? I don’t see it as obvious at all that two meats is better than one. What is it that makes a beef and pork food good, while an all-beef or all-pork food is bad?
IIRC, some of the ingredients associated with food allergy dogs include chicken, beef, and wheat (not corn). Which is why in many other limited-diet products, the carbohydrate/fiber source is usually not corn but rice or potatoes, and the proteins are lamb, duck, or kangaroo.
the key is “partially digested.” “Mr. Bunny” is an herbivore whose physiology is geared towards consuming plant matter. A carnivore consuming the contents of an herbivore’s gut is not anywhere close to the same as corn used as filler in pet food.
hell, we’re omnivores and I’m not convinced that even we are meant to eat much in the way of grains. grains are nutritionally worthless to us unless we process the shit out of them. I can’t imagine how foreign they are to the physiology of a dog or cat.
Corn is prevalent in pet food for the same reason high fructose corn syrup is prevalent in damn near all human “food.” And that reason is because it’s cheap, not because it’s good.
and that’s evidence of what? Humans can live a hell of a long time eating garbage. The developed world is dealing with insane levels of obesity, diabetes, and other metabolic syndromes because we eat shit. And we’re feeding our pets shit too, but since they can’t complain we ignorantly carry on like nothing’s wrong.
If an animal (human or otherwise) can live a long and happy life on some diet, by what standard do you call that diet shit?
And dogs are omnivores, too. They lean a bit more towards meat, just as we lean a bit more towards plant matter, but pretty much anything a human can eat, a dog can eat, and vice-versa.
