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Why is Steve's not just Meat?
Actually
there are quite a few reasons Why Steve’s Real Foods are not just meat! The
main reason is because fruits and vegetables provide natural vitamins &
minerals, along with anti-carcinogen effects.
The
next key point is balance. Just giving your dog or cat a portion of raw meat
is not appropriate. A true raw diet is balanced with specific portions of
meat, fruit and vegetables. In the case of Steve's
Real Foods,
the diet is based on a dog or cat’s “evolutionary diet.” In other words,
it replicates what a dog or cat would eat in the wild—in its natural state.
When these animals hunted prey, they not only ate the meat and the bones but
the digested food of the prey as well. This contained fruits and vegetables.
In round figures, the ratio is 65% meat, 35% fruit and vegetables for the dog
food, and for cats, true carnivores, about 80% meat and 20% fruit and
vegetables. These are roughly
the
ratios
used by Steve's
Real Food for Pets.
We certainly try to meet the evolutionary diets of animals while still
following the nutrient profiles established by AAFCO for all pet food
companies.
Also,
research clearly shows that great nutrition helps to support and maintain all
animals bodies naturally, this is what nature intended. Cancer is the #1
cause of death in dogs And one of the major changes over the past 20 or more
years has been nutrition. Especially being the fact that most peoples
and pets diets consist now of highly cooked and processed foods.
How much protein is in Steve's? 10% protein for dogs and 14% for cats sounds
so low.
All natural diets for dogs and cats are high in
protein and so is Steve's Real Food. On a dry matter basis, Steve’s Real Food
for Dogs is 45% protein, and Steve's Real Food for Cats is 48% protein.
On the package of all pet foods, one can find a
guaranteed analysis. The guaranteed analysis refers to the amount of the product
by weight that is protein, fat, fiber and water. Steve's Real Food for Dogs
is 10% protein by weight.
The natural diets of dogs and cats contain a lot
of water, as does Steve’s. Almost all natural ingredients have a high water
content: Meat is 60 to 80% water, vegetables and fruits are 90% or more water.
The natural method for dogs, and especially cats, to get their water is through
their foods.
Water does not add calories. Therefore the proper
way to look at protein is on a dry matter (DM) basis. Remove the water, and
look at the percentage of the food that is protein. On our label, we
list the percentage of the product that is protein. With natural diets the
two percentages are quite different.
For example, let’s compare Steve's Real Food (listed
as 10% protein and 78% water) to a premium kibble (listed as 28% protein and
10% water). Divide the listed protein percentage by 1 minus the percent water.
Examples:
Steve's chicken, Protein (DM) = .10/(1-.78) = 45% protein.
A premium kibble, Protein (DM)
= .25/(1-.10) = 28%.
Like all natural diets, Steve's Real Food is a high protein food. In contrast,
all kibbles are much lower in protein than the ancestral diet of dogs and
cats. Even vegetables on a dry matter basis are more than 30% protein. In
addition, with kibble much of the protein comes from grain, which is not
a natural or complete source of protein for dogs and cats. There is a considerable
difference in the quality between the protein in real, raw meats and the
protein from extruded grain-based foods.
What is Ash content?
The "ash content" is a measure of the total amount
of minerals present within a food, whereas the "mineral content"
is a measure of the amount of specific inorganic components present within a
food, such as Ca, Na, and C1. Ash is the inorganic residue remaining
after the water and organic matter have been removed by heating in the
presence of oxidizing agents, which provides a measure of the total amount
of minerals within a food. Determination of the ash and mineral
content of the food for a number of reasons:
1.) Nutritional Labeling - The
concentration and type of minerals present must often be stipulated on the
label of a food.
2.) Quality - The quality of many foods depends on
the concentration and type of minerals they contain, including their taste,
appearance, texture and stability.
3.) Microbiological stability -
High mineral contents are sometimes used to retard the growth of certain
microorganisms.
4.) Nutrition - Some minerals are essential to a
healthy diet (e.g., calcium, phosphorous, potassium and sodium) whereas
others can be toxic (e.g., lead, mercury, cadmium and aluminum).
5.)
Processing - It is often important to know the mineral content of foods
during the process because this affects the physicochemical properties of
foods.
What about the calcium and phosphorous content of your food?
I've heard that raw meat is very high in phosphorous and that a calcium-only
supplement is necessary for proper nutrition.
Steve's Real Food for Dogs has about 1.3% calcium
and 1% phosphorous on dry matter basis. Steve's Real Food for cats has about
1.8% calcium and 1.3% phosphorous. Veterinary research has shown that the
ratio of calcium to phosphorous (and, to a lesser degree, to magnesium) is
nearly as important as the amounts of each. Our foods are designed to have
a Ca:P ratio of about 1.3:1 to 1.2:1, which is the optimal value as found
by empirical research.
Most of the calcium and phosphorous in Steve's Real Food chicken and turkey
varieties comes from ground up chicken backs or turkey necks. We use a variety
of calcium and phosphorous supplements in order to reach optimum levels
of nutrition. Many raw meat-based diet advocates overestimate the levels
of phosphorous in meat. Meat and pure calcium supplements alone do not provide
adequate levels of phosphorous. We found through extensive nutrient analysis
that we had to add phosphorous in conjunction with calcium. We use several
pure calcium sources and calcium/ phosphorous sources to fine-tune our food's
nutrition.
For example, our frozen beef dog food uses bone meal (all human grade, not
from the skull or spinal column, lead content less than 1 ppm), which has
about equal amounts of calcium and phosphorous. Our chicken dog food supplements
the ground up chicken backs with natural dicalcium phosphate (from chicken
bones), with roughly equal amounts of Ca and P, as well as egg shell powder,
which contains calcium but has no phosphorous.
What's
the caloric content of Steve's Real Food for Dogs?
There is approximately
10 calories per nugget, 150 per cup and 600 per pound, but this is not an easy question to answer. The actual numbers: Steve’s Real
Food for Dogs contains about 500 kcal per pound as fed. This equates to
about 830 kcal of grain-based foods. Why the difference? There are two reasons.
First, AAFCO (Association of American
Feed Control Officials) defines kilocalories as metabolizable energy (ME)
using modified Atwater factors: 8.5 kcal per gram of fat, 3.5 for protein
and carbohydrates. Human food uses Atwater factors: 9, 4 and 4. The reasons
pet food manufacturers are required to use modified Atwater factors is because
the ingredients in pet foods are not of the same availability and digestibility
as human foods. The ingredients are not as usable. Except Steve’s Real Food.
Steve’s uses all human-edible, highly digestible ingredients.
The second reason is that ME is the energy available to the dog or cat
before the energy needed for digestion. The more energy the pet spends to
digest the food, the less energy available for metabolic purposes. Dogs
and cats require more energy to digest grains than raw meats. In addition,
the enzymes in Steve’s reduce the dog and/or cat's need to manufacture its
own enzymes, further saving energy.
What's the caloric content of Steve's Real Food for Cats?
Our
cat food has about 1800 kilocalories per kilogram. This is about 200
kcal per cup. See the above discussion for more information about caloric determination.
What are enzymes and why are they so important?
Enzymes are specialized
protein substances that are involved in all the pet's activities. There are
thousands of enzymes in the dog and cat's bodies. Enzymes are destroyed at
temperatures above 118° to 170°F. Real, raw foods contain natural enzymes
that help the breakdown and absorption of that food in the pet's
body. With the processed pet foods of today (produced at 300° F), the natural
enzymes in the foods are destroyed. Freezing is the best way to preserve food.
Heat, air and light accelerate the oxidation of vitamins. Steve's Real Food
for Pets contains natural digestive and metabolic enzymes.
I've heard that dogs
and cats have digestive problems when you change their diet. But you
promote dietary variety. Will my dogs and cats get diarrhea?
Like
humans, dogs and cats who are accustomed to variety can handle new foods
with ease. Introduce new foods slowly to dogs and cats that are
not used to variety.
One should feed a variety of food to
puppies and kittens. Once they are accustomed to variety, they
will accept new foods with ease.
Why
do cats need taurine?
Taurine is a
colorless, crystalline compound which is found in the free form in
invertebrates and in the bile of mammals. It promotes the intestinal
absorption of lipids (fats) as cholesterol.
Taurine is an
important part of the feline diet and is essential in preventing a disorder
in cats called "dilated cardiomyopathy" (which is a failure of the
heart muscle whereupon the heart tissue itself swells to try to meet the
animal's circulatory needs), as well as being very significant in helping
feline reproduction and prevention of a progressive retinal disease called
feline central retinal degeneration (FCRD) which will cause blindness if
left untreated.
In queens that have
taurine-deficient diets, there are more still births, fewer live kittens
born, and ultimately fewer kittens that survive to the weaning stage.
In the wild, rodents
formed a large part of the feline diet, and the rodents had significant
levels of taurine in their brains.
When we began to
domesticate cats and feed them commercial cat foods instead of their wild
diets, taurine deficiency started appearing.
This was of great
concern, especially in the 1970's, when it was proven that many commercial
cat foods on the market at that time contained an inadequate amount of
taurine.
Cats are different
from other animals in that they cannot make enough taurine internally to
meet their needs, and they must have enough taurine supplied to them in
their food.
Since these studies
came out, most major pet food companies revised their pet food formulas to
include taurine. Interestingly enough, not all taurine is equal, and some
commercial foods need to have even more taurine added to their formulas to
allow for proper feline absorption and utilization of the taurine in their
foods.
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