Posts Tagged ‘dog food’
Food for Fido- All Are Not Created Equal
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
We’ve all been made aware that obesity is one of the leading problems in our society today; but what about for your pets?
According to a recent study, obesity in domestic animals is on the rise as well- as much as 20 percent of dogs and cats in America are obese. This is a 1 percent increase from 2007. Part of the problem is that even a small weight gain for a pet is a significant increase.
Ok, so obviously there has to be some sort of correlation. American’s aren’t getting enough exercise and, therefore, our pets aren’t either. But, as the owner of a dog who has recently put on quite a bit of weight, I know that there are other factors at play.
Our 4 year old Welsh Corgi, Nitro, has always been very slim and active. He can and will retrieve an old tennis ball for hours without any signs of slowing- but within the last year we started to notice an excess of tummy dragging on the ground. His exercise habits had not changed- but his food had.
Nitro the Corgi
About a year ago, we decided to buy him a type of dog food that is supposed to be all-natural, super healthy, holistic, etc… All the reviews raved that it was the best type of food to give your pet, made only with the finest ingredients. We felt we were doing Nitro a favor by being such good “parents” and buying this healthy (and expensive!) dog food.
6 months later, at a routine trip to the vet, she informed us that our little dog had put on a hefty 6 pounds! She warned us that all dog foods are not equal; even the ones that say they promote healthy weight management may contain more calories (or kCal) per serving than the dog (or cat) should be having. She reminded us that it is very important to always check the nutritional content- just like you would buying food for yourself.
This was news to me. I had no idea that I should be checking the caloric content of dog food. And sure enough, even though Nitro was on a Weight Management version, the calories per serving were twice what he should be having as a daily intake.
Lesson learned. Don’t just go for the fancy stuff. Be sure to talk to your vet about what’s right for your pet.
FYI, we have since switched him to a lower calorie (and lower priced) food and, sure enough, he seems to be losing weight!
– Jennie Whistler
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
To everyone who started their weekly diets yesterday (bikini season is just around the corner, after all):
It is now only Tuesday morning, and if your throat is already starting to constrict at the thought of another celery stick or mouthful of sawdust (that Fiber One bar in your desk drawer) then check out the following links for some motivation.
None of them offer recipes for magical low-cal elixirs or links to celebrity workouts that promise chiseled buns in just four minutes a day! No, these links will do you one better. Click through them and watch your appetite disappear.
Photo by The Pug Father/Flickr.
Homesick Swine Flu Bug Hitches a Ride to Visit Canadian Relatives
Rationally, we all know that we can’t get swine flu from eating pork, but the pig=death connection still gives us pause no matter how hard the pig PR reps work to rename it H1N1 (does anyone else secretly pronounce it “hiney”?). It certainly doesn’t help that, as CNN reports, the flu virus can seemingly hop from pork to person and back to pig again, like a transient vagabond:
Canadian officials on Saturday said they have quarantined pigs that tested positive for the virus — scientifically known as 2009 H1N1 — at an Alberta farm in what could be the first identified case of pigs infected during the recent outbreak. They said the pigs may have been infected by a Canadian farmer who recently returned from a trip to Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak that has sickened nearly 660 people.
Thanks to this news flash I now picture swine flu as a microscopic flea, jumping from animal to person and perhaps onto my dinner plate where it takes cover among the bacon bits in my Cobb salad. Delicious!
Which one would you rather eat?
In a Separate Study: Blindfolded Dogs Ravenously Consume Everything
A group of researchers asked 18 willing participants to pick out a dish of dog food (admittedly the premium Newman’s Own brand) from a selection of commonly eaten people foods, ranging from SPAM to liverwurst to duck liver paté. Each sample was ground up into a homogeneous meat paste to rule out the variable of texture.
Of course, the inevitable happened. Fifteen out of 18 participants failed to distinguish the puppy chow from the other USDA-sanctioned foodstuffs.
Goldstein said the tasting demonstrated that “context plays a huge role in taste and value judgment,” even though researchers warned the participants that one of the five foods they were going to taste was dog food.
The moral of this story is: Do not attend cocktail parties thrown by people who hate you. You never know what is spread on that Carr’s water cracker.
I don't think I realized how much coffee beans look like cockroaches. Photo by lifties/Flickr.
Caffeine: Not the Only Thing That Gives Coffee Legs
Dreaming of picking up a calorie-packed Iced Frappuccino instead of picking at the boring green salad you packed for lunch? This story’ll make you leave your Starbucks card in your wallet.
CHOW contributer Joyce Slaton quotes a bio prof at U. of Montana, Douglas Emlen, from yesterday’s NPR broadcast on beetles:
“Preground-you know, your big bulk coffee that you buy in a tin-is all processed from these huge stockpiles of coffee … that get infested with cockroaches,” says Emlen. “And there’s really nothing they can do to filter that out. So it all gets ground up in the coffee.”
Maybe you should get today’s caffeine fix from a nice glass of calorie-free iced tea. Tea leaves, thankfully, aren’t featured in this FDA list of foods with predetermined maximum levels of “natural or unavoidable defects” (that is, “insect filth” or “mammalian excreta”) that Slaton so helpfully reminds us of in the same article.
– Christina Lee