| When you consume or feed dead, cooked food, you put a burden on one of the most important organs in the body, the pancreas. If there are no enzymes to stimulate the digestive processes, the pancreas has to come into action and produce extra enzymes, burdening it with yet another job. It already has enough to do producing insulin and pancreatic enzymes. No wonder there are so many animals suffering from pancreatitis, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity, to name a few.
Each enzyme has a specific duty. For example, an enzyme capable of breaking down fats cannot break down vegetables. There are four main categories of digestive enzymes: protease, amylase, cellulase, and lipase. Carnivores make very little amylase, which is the enzyme which breaks down grains, which leads to the belief that grains are not a necessary part of a carnivore's diet. However, if your dog chooses to eat horse or cow manure, let him/her do so. Those are wonderfully pre-digested grains; grains in their best form. Cooked grains cannot compare to pre-digested grains, so our animals are better off with no grains, rather than cooked. By the way, all grains are processed before they are sold in stores, so do not think you are getting raw grain when you buy flakes or meal. All of those grains have been cooked, and the higher the price, the more they have been processed.
Cats and dogs do not chew their food. Their teeth are for ripping and tearing. They swallow their food in chunks. However, their digestive juices are much more acidic than ours, and the small intestines are much shorter, so meat goes through quickly. Just the opposite is true of vegetables. Raw vegetables must be processed into very tiny pieces, the size of sand or salt, in order for a carnivore to be able to utilize them. In nature, carnivores would get predigested vegetation after an herbivore they captured had already eaten and digested the vegetation. In preparing foods for our animals we do not have the option of feeding predigested vegetables, so we must do what we can to provide raw, ground vegetables, which as a close to what Mother Nature would do as possible.
Some foods that are high in enzymes are: sprouts, avocados, bananas, mangoes, unripe papayas, and pineapples. The sprouts and avocados can be put right in with their meat and vegetable meal. However, all fruit needs to be fed on an empty stomach at least one-half hour before giving regular meals.
During illness and times of loss of appetite, enzymes can often stimulate the palate, so give small amounts of supplemental digestive enzymes (Pat McKay, Inc. ReVive) and friendly bacteria (Pat McKay, Inc., Pro Energy).
Raw meat broth is also very beneficial during illness, especially if your animal is dehydrated from diarrhea or does not feel like eating. Take one tablespoon of RAW ground meat, add to one-half cup of purified water, mash the meat in the water with a fork or put it through your blender or food processor and serve. It's that easy. A tablespoon of Pat McKay, Inc., Aloe Concentrate can also be added to that mixture. A RAW egg yolk (the yellow) mixed with just enough purified water to be soupy is very easy for your animal to digest and will be beneficial during illness and dehydration. If your animal is too ill to eat on his/her own, give the liquid with a syringe or spoon.
The key to nutrition for healthy, happy cats and dogs is RAW food.
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