Have We Surrendered the Health of Our Pets to Convenience Food?
By 1960, Pet Food Companies Were Mass-Marketing Kibble
Sad but true: our pet population provides a place for recycling waste from the human food industry.
Grains that fail inspection, uninspected pieces and parts of waste from the seafood industry, leftover restaurant grease, deceased livestock and even roadkill are collected and disposed of through rendering — a process that converts all sorts of human food industry waste into raw materials for the pet food industry.
In the late 1950s, a U.S. pet food company developed a way to create kibble from boiling cauldrons of meat, fat and grain scraps — it’s called extrusion. Pet food manufacturers purchase the raw materials and then blend the rendered fat and meat with starch fillers.
Because poor-quality raw ingredients and the manufacturing process itself cause significant nutrient depletion, bulk vitamin and mineral supplements are added, and then the mix is extruded at high temperatures, creating all sorts of toxic reactions including advanced glycation end-products and heterocyclic amines.
This is what passes for pet food and it’s sold to consumers at a tremendous profit. This “advancement” in manufacturing allowed pet food companies to capitalize on the popularity of kibble.
Now they were able to mass-market the type of pet food most popular with U.S. pet owners due to its convenience and low cost.
Today there are hundreds of kibbles, canned and semi-most dog and cat foods to choose from. This is remarkable, given that not 60 years ago, commercial pet food was almost unheard of.
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I add to my morning menu always a small amount of Alfalfa, Spirulina, and Kelp (a powdered mix) and in the evening they get finely shredded leafy vegetable added to their meats; also only in small amounts. 