What do we mean when we say Evolutionary Nutrition for pet dogs and cats ?  Basically, this means feeding our pets the kinds of food that they’ve evolved over thousands of years to require, for their successful survival as a species. Even though we cannot exactly duplicate any animal’s evolutionary diet, we CAN come as close as possible by mimicking it. In essence, we can try to achieve a theoretical ideal of a complete and balanced diet.

Let’s ask ourselves, what do we desire to achieve when we feed our beloved pets ?

The simple answer is that we are feeding for good health and supreme wellness. Logically, this leads to longer lives for our pets and less visits to the vet ...... Yes ? 

BARF is nutritionally sound because any given species of animal requires foods that are whole and raw, not cooked or processed by heat. Animals require food that is biologically available and appropriate to them i.e. can be fully digested to provide proper nutrition. 

BARF is also nutritionally adequate because it contains most, if not all, the nutrients that animals require for optimal health. It is based on the range, the type, scope and the approximate balance of (nutritionally sound) foods eaten by animals during their long process of evolution. 

We will not attempt to convince you that Evolutionary Nutrition is a 100% complete and balanced diet because it is not possible to produce such a product for the following reasons :

a)       Nobody knows the exact nutritional requirements of any animal species on this earth (and 

      probably never will) despite whatever they try to tell you.

b)       Individual dogs have their own nutritional requirements.

c)       If you follow the evolutionary concept of how dogs have been fed throughout their long history,

      then the only correct assumption/answer is that nutritional adequacy is achieved over a series of

      meals.

d)       From the same evolutionary concept, it is NOT a biological necessity for dogs and cats to have

      every meal to be ‘complete and balanced’. That is if that can even be achieved at all.

e)       Dogs and cats (even human beings) have never evolved to require nutritional adequacy at every

      meal.

For many years, pet food companies have attempted to deliver a ‘complete and balanced’ diet at every meal and it has failed enormously in terms of proper nutrition for our pets. Besides the above-mentioned reasons, the other major factors for their failure :

a)       The totally unsuitable nature of the ingredients used in their products – grains, low quality

      cooked meats and their by-products, additives, chemical preservatives. That is, they are NOT

      nutritionally sound.

b)       The cooking process of the ingredients used in their production – extreme pressure and

      temperature causes significant loss of nutrition because of damage to individual nutrients and

      chemical reactions between the ingredients. The resulting substances spawned are foreign to

      our pets’ bodies (causing allergies and ill health) and the nutrients are also rendered unavailable

      for assimilation and digestion.

Conclusion

BARF involves feeding a wide range of food items, which are whole and raw. Such foods contain organic nutrients, are in biologically available forms and are very difficult to unbalance. It is a diet that has been shaped by evolutionary forces that operated over the millennia that it took our pets to evolve. 

On the other hand, processed pet foods contain nutrients that have been made unavailable/indigestible by cooking. They also contain highly rendered fat (mutagenic and carcinogenic), cooked starch (exacerbates cancer and diabetes) and added artificial sources of minerals (which are assimilated differently by pets’ bodies and can cause bone problems). Pet animals eating them have been demonstrated rising levels of degenerative diseases at increasingly earlier stages of life! Yet, pet food companies insist on telling us that these products are ‘Complete and Balanced’. 

Bottom line is that processed pet foods are nutritionally unsound and nutritionally inadequate and have no evolutionary basis. A BARF diet will definitely be closer to being ‘Complete and Balanced’ in a biological sense. A properly constructed BARF feeding program or Multi-Mix patties WILL BE by definition - nutritionally sound and nutritionally adequate.

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