holistic pet health 101
At Holistic Actions! we believe that your pets’ diet plays a central role in their health.
The more vital the food you feed them, the easier it is to restore, promote, and maintain a balanced system. But not all food for pets is created equal. That’s why we created the Food Vitality Scale to share which food choices our vets feel are best for your pet.
food vitality scale
The difference that a fresh food diet can make to your pet’s health is remarkable.
Just by adding one fresh food meal per week to their diet, you will often see improvement in their BEAM (Behavior, Energy, Appetite, and Mood.) And by phasing out commercially prepared foods altogether, you’ll see even more powerful benefits that include…
- Shinier, smoother, thicker, more odorless coat
- Reduced shedding
- Ears that never need cleaning
- Reduction or elimination of tear stains and discharge in the eye corners are gone
- Fresher breath and reduced plaque formation
- Hairball formation and vomiting slows and stops
- Sociability with people and other animals increases
- Stiffness and limping resolves
- Activity levels are boosted
- Training tends to progress more rapidly
- Weight and interest in food normalize
- Current allergies or illness improve or resolve
- Stool volume decreases
- Heightened enthusiasm for meal times!
Many serious ailments can be resolved simply by transitioning your pet from a commercial diet to a fresh one.
Drs. Tom Lonsdale and Ian Billinghurst (who share 75+ years of experience between them) provide compelling evidence for how a raw meaty bone diet (RMB) can result in dramatic health enhancements for both dogs and cats. Furthermore, research studies and case studies both demonstrate a RMB diet can prevent and eliminate most dental dis-ease in pets.
Every animal is individual, so you will see different results in each one.
Gail Pope of Bright Haven sanctuary is a valued faculty member of the Holistic Actions! Academy. For 20 years, she adopted cats 16-years and older, giving them a permanent home. She found that almost all of them could be fully transitioned to a strictly fresh food diet, and she credits this approach with playing a critical role in helping many of them to age 30 and older.
Fresh food feeding makes sense. The results speak for themselves!
How to start
These are the three words to keep in mind about fresh food feeding.
FRESHNESS
Fresh food is living food that has not been stripped of its vitality through commercial processing. The fresher the food, the greater the vitality. The greater the vitality, the greater the health benefits. Feeding only fresh foods to your pet allows you to safely steer clear of hidden and potentially harmful ingredients (like melamine) that are all too common in commercial pet foods. It also makes it easy to avoid the Three D’s: Dead, Dying, and Dis-eased. You no longer need to worry about metals and toxins in the packaging. Feeding fresh gives you peace of mind by knowing exactly what your pet is eating.
variety
Some pet parents who are new to fresh feeding wonder if it can provide all the nutrients their pet needs. The answer is, absolutely! In fact, a fresh diet that includes a wide range of foods fed throughout the week far exceeds the energy and nutrient value of commercially prepared foods. In, Rationale for Animal Nutrition, veterinary nutrition specialist, Dr. Randy Wysong, discusses this in detail. Here’s the summary:
- Nutritional “requirements” are based on averages, not individuals.
- Even the guidelines of the National Research Council (NRC) are prefaced by a statement that the recommendations are not definite and will continue to be modified.
- To know what an animal or person needs nutritionally, one must have a complete knowledge of each food ingredient (which can differ among individuals), complete knowledge of nutrition (we do not have that), and a complete knowledge of the digestive process of your individual animal.
For example, liquid diets for people and dry food diets for cats are touted as “complete and balanced”. They can indeed keep people or animals alive, but that’s hardly what we’d call optimal nutrition, nor even a baseline for such.
If you are feeding commercial kibble, canned, dehydrated or frozen raw, please rotate the brands. This is good for the microbiome and a buffer if a company goes out of business or changes quality of ingredients.
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