Content Warning / Educational Disclaimer: This article post contains sensitive topics and reflects A Students opinion for informational purposes only.

The Perils of Kibble:

Kibble is a widely available pet food, used as the default food for many dogs. In my role as a dog groomer, I have seen many health issues that can be traced back to poor diet such as flaky skin, parasites, yeast infections, rotten teeth and poor coat condition.

Dog Nutrigenomics is an approach that looks at managing and preventing many health conditions via the understanding of how cell expression and the development of illnesses and diseases are affected by nutrition.

Although kibble is a seemingly convenient source of food that affords owners the comfort of not having to think about what is actually being served, through an understanding of nutrigenomics, we are beginning to see that the clever marketing and seemingly ‘easy’ choices when it comes to pet food are actually a false economy and a sure-fire way of guaranteeing lifelong conditions that are otherwise avoidable. As a dog groomer, my perspective in researching Dog Nutrigenomics was forged through caring about the health and welfare of my customer’s dogs.

I began to converse with my customers about health issues that I was spotting and as I was being asked for advice, I found that I felt unable to offer much direction or support and some of my customers were finding themselves weighed down by vet bills and long-term prescriptions of medications that masked their dog’s symptoms and did not treat the cause.

Just as I found myself struggling to offer as much support as I would like to have been able to offer to my customers, my own dog started having immunological responses to an allergen and was permanently covered in hives. I visited my veterinarian.

I was told by my vet that she was suffering from food related allergies and I was advised to buy an expensive kibble for dogs with allergies from my vet. I decided to begin educating myself in order to learn how to manage my dog’s health issues through the careful management of food triggers. I have managed to avoid her flare ups and she is now happily fed a wide variety of locally sourced raw, whole foods.

We have ascertained that her allergies are beef and chicken, so we avoid these and now I have a very healthy and happy little almost six-year-old dog. 2 Kibble is a food that came about during World War II when metal was required for the war effort and so the necessity for a dry food that could be packaged in paper became apparent. The need was filled and it seems that due to the extremely low production costs and ease of transport, people continued to buy this food for their pets.

Kibble is made by cooking meat derivatives at very high temperatures. These derivatives are below the standard set out by the FDA for human consumption, for example meat derivatives from diseased, dying, dead or disabled animals. The process of over cooking kills any harmful pathogens, but also destroys any nutritional value that may exist.

Fillers like corn, wheat, rice and soy are used to increase quantities and also synthetic preservatives to extend shelf life.

The ingredients in kibble that are not easily digestible by dog’s cause inflammation on a cellular level and this inflammation ends up leading to many health conditions and diseases that affect the quality of life but ultimately, the longevity of the lifespan of the animal. In genetics, there are a small number of gene codes that can be affected by our environment and by what we eat.

This is the same for dogs and the Dog Nutrigenomic approach aims to direct us towards an understanding of which foods have a negative effect on the Dog epigenome by ‘turning on’ certain genes linked to ill health. Conversely, there are also foods that have a positive effect on the canine epigenome by ‘turning off’ genes linked to chronic diseases.

There are a few studies that have shown that the ingredients in kibble cause inflammation and hinder the body’s ability to detox and repair damaged cells. Synthetic vitamins are more difficult for the body to recognise, making it harder to absorb and utilise the intended benefits of these lab produced chemical compounds. Whole food sources are designed by nature and over millions of years, dogs have developed in order to be able to utilise every available bit of nutrition from these sources. It has been shown through many studies that where there is little to no processing and where the correct foods are given, cell expression is largely unaffected and the animal is healthier and happier. Kibble is known to cause inflammation on a genetic level as this inflammation leads to cell damage and even destruction. There is a plethora of studies that indicate the inappropriate nature of kibble when it comes to feeding our pets.

Pet owners have been lulled into a false sense of security by incredibly clever marketing that convinces them that kibble has been designed by nutritional experts with pets in mind and because they don’t see immediate negative effects, they think that they are doing a good thing for their pets that cannot be matched by feeding any other way.

The requirements that are described in advertisements of store bought 3 pet food are over complicated and this is done in order to make owners feel like they don’t have a solid enough grasp on the subject and would do their beloved pet a disservice if they didn’t give them the food that was designed by specialists in nutrition and veterinarians. Over time, kibble has a negative impact on cell expression and this is where inflammation and disease begin to occur.

Several veterinarians have begun to raise concerns regarding the long-term use of kibble and their insights highlight health risks associated with the processing methods, nutritional values and the additives that are found in brands of commercial dry dog food.

Since beginning my own journey in understanding the value of species-specific nutrition in combating issues that my own pet dog was encountering, I have learned that kibble, as any kind of component in canine nutrition, significantly affects the body’s ability to perform as it should for the life of the dog. Had I not already been a dog groomer who was seeing similar issues with my customer’s dogs, I may not have been so driven in investigating and digging for more information than was being drip fed to me via my veterinary professional. I feel that this information should be more readily available and that the health of our pets should not be in the hands of unscrupulous companies whose only directive seems to be making as much money as possible from as little output as possible.

My hope for the future is that as nutritional knowledge and understanding increases in the food we eat as humans, so does our understanding of the human food industry. With a greater understanding of our own nutritional requirements, people will then naturally become more aware of what is good for their pets. In the 21st Century, everyone is more able to access good quality and well sourced information and so my hope for pets is that people are learning to not blindly trust the first piece of information that they see but to be a little more critical and to understand that they actually have a huge part to play in the long-term health of their companion animals.

In all of this, I think it important to remember that dogs are resilient and that it is never too late to change bad habits, the benefits will always improve your dog’s quality of life.

Author: Z Mallia.

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