Protein is THE most important component of your dog and cat’s food. And, how much protein in dog food or cat food must be balanced with what kind of protein, which is as important to their good health.
What exactly do I mean? Let’s break it down.
- Why is protein so important in food
- How much protein does a dog need
- What kind of protein is best
- Diversity of protein and its importance
- What does a protein deficiency look like?
Why Is Protein So Important in Your Pet’s Food
Amino acids are the building blocks responsible for all the functions in your pet’s body. They are made of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Of the 22 found in the body, 10 of them are considered essential, meaning your pet can’t produce them him or herself. They must be supplied through the food and that is through the protein in the food. Those ten include:
-
Arginine
-
Histidine
-
Isoleucine
- Leucine
- Lysine
- Methionine
- Phenylalanine
- Threonine
- Tryptophan
- Valine
The 22 amino acids in the body are responsible for everything from signaling between cells to critical reactions in the body like enzyme and energy production and cellular transport. Your dog or cat couldn’t survive without them. They are the main component of your pet’s cartilage, ligaments, tendons, its muscles, skin, hair and nails and blood proteins like hemoglobin, albumin and globulin. Any excesses are stored and used as an energy source.
How Much Protein Does My Pet Need?
While we’ve domesticated our dogs and cats, so they now sleep in our beds and travel with us, their digestive tracts haven’t changed since ancestral times. What sustained them as hearty animals then, sustains them now. That’s why kibble, which is subjected to very high heat to make it dry food, is a poor choice for the health of a dog or cat. All of the nutrients that would have gone into the body to create, fuel and run the body, are killed. They’re replaced with synthetic vitamins, minerals, amino acids that are not nearly as bio-available (able to be synthesized by the body) and, in some cases, are downright unhealthy for your pet.
In addition, all sorts of nasty ingredients are added to that dry food to make it irresistible to your pet. Flavor enhancers called palatants like putrescine and cadaverine (you can’t make this stuff up, folks!), colorless chemicals produced naturally by the breakdown of proteins, are largely responsible for the revolting smell of rotting flesh – and cats love them. They’re often actively added to cat and dog food, either as offal extracts or lab-made additives. Road kill, euthanized animals and other things your pet shouldn’t be eating, makes their way into commercial dog and cat food. See the list below and get ready to be sick.
Wet or canned food isn’t much better. Those same nasty ingredients make their way in. The one better thing is because there’s a lot more moisture in wet food, your pet’s body isn’t put into a constant state of dehydration, which causes it’s own health issues over time.
Home-cooking, with a clear understanding of the balance of the proper nutrients so your dog or cat gets all of the vitamins and minerals they need to be healthy, is a great choice.
Even better, is feeding raw. Why? No heat has been used in preparation, which kills nutrients. And, a properly balanced raw diet is what your dog and cat’s bodies were designed to eat, from all those years ago.
So, how much protein does your dog or cat need? If you go by AAFCO standards (the Association of American Feed Control Officials), 18% is sufficient for a healthy adult dog, 22.5% for puppies and 26% for cats. And, most dry food falls within this. But, this is truly a minimum standard and extremely low when you look at what dogs and cats would eat instinctively.
Here’s a breakdown of an ideal diet for a healthy dog. For cats, the vegetable percentage can be a bit less, 5-10% and organs can be a bit more.
- Muscle meat from a variety of protein sources (roughly 68% to 70%; oily fish is part of the protein you feed to balance the fats)
- Bones (roughly 10% to 12%)
- Body parts such as feet, heads, necks, etc. Also referred to as Raw Meaty Bones, these are great for keeping the balance of phosphorus and calcium in the body, cleaning their teeth, stimulating their gums and they’re having fun while doing it.
- Organs (5% liver and 5% non secreting organ)
- Vegetables, grasses and fruits (8-10%)
Why A Variety of Proteins Is Important
Not all protein is created equal. Different proteins contain unique amino acid profiles. So, beef muscle meat will have a different nutritional profile than chicken. Even different cuts of meat from the same animal can have different amino acid profiles. Crazy, right?
Remember the 10 amino acids that are essential, meaning your dog or cat can’t produce them on their own? Here’s a small example of how different types of meat are high in different amino acids:
- Beef – high in lysine, leucine, threanine and valine.
- Chicken breast – high in lysine, histidine, tryptophan and phenylalanine.
- Fish – high in lysine, histidine, leucine and phenylalanine.
And, so on. So, providing your dog or cat with as much variety in the types of protein, as well as the types of organs, is important. Every organ, also, is high is certain types of vitamins and minerals. Liver, across the board, is packed with nutrients, so including liver from as many different types of animals is a good idea. You don’t have to feed every meal; not necessary. You don’t want to overdose your animal on Vitamin A, which liver is high in. But, you can feed every day in one meal and do that for a week or so then take a break for a week or so. I tell my clients you don’t have to get crazy about feeding different proteins in the same meal or getting it all in in one meal. As long as it all works out in the wash, meaning over the course of the week or two, they get a few different kinds of proteins, different organ meats, raw meaty bones and some organic veggies, you are doing really well!
Case in point. Because different types of meat contain different amino acid profiles, feeding your animal only one or two kinds of protein for years can contribute to developing food allergies to that particular protein source.
Finally, grass-fed, organically raised animals are more nutrient dense than grain-fed ones, and the pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and hormones used in most, if not all, factory farmed animals is not something we want going into our pets’ bodies.
Plant-Based Proteins…Are They Truly Healthy For Your Animal?
Yes, they are. And, your dog is best served by adding plant proteins to animal proteins found in muscle meat (where the highest protein concentration can be found), organs and seafood. Cats are obligate carnivores and don’t need any vegetables in their diet to thrive.
Plant protein is digestible and does contain amino acids important to the health of your animal. Vegetable proteins are also beneficial for reducing what’s called nitrogenous wastes (the waste products generated as the end products of protein metabolism. Nitrogen wastes are excreted from the body, along with water in the form of urine). This has a positive effect on a pet with liver and kidney issues, because they have trouble excreting waste from the body.
Certain plant-based proteins to steer clear of unless fed in conjunction with animal proteins, since they are incomplete:
- Peas
- Grains
- Lentils
- Chickpeas
What Does A Protein Deficiency Look Like?
If, for some reason, your dog or cat is consistently getting too little protein over time, what could it look like, so you’d recognize it? Here are some symptoms that can be attributed to protein deficiency:
- Anemia
- Brittle fur
- Poor hair coat
- Anorexia
- Slow growth rate
- Infertility
- Decreased milk production
- Muscle atrophy
- Lower blood levels of albumin, transferrin, thyroxine-binding protein and retinal-binding protein.
Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Protein?
For my dog, Sophie, who you may have followed here through her diagnosis of congestive heart failure and our journey around what we’re doing to address it, her levels of protein needed to decrease due to her simultaneous diagnosis of hepatic microvascular dysplasia, a congenital condition we never knew about where her body has a harder time digesting protein. She still gets a fair amount.
Kidney dis-ease is another condition where it is often prescribed to put the animal on a low protein diet. We’ll cover this in another post; there have been studies that proved the studies recommending this to be flawed and many cases of dogs with chronic kidney dis-ease doing better on high protein diets than their counterparts. Again, for another day.
When feeding a raw diet, excess protein is stored and converted into energy. However, synthetic amino acids, commonly found in commercial food, can cause problems in excess.
Summary
Protein is the most important ingredient in your pet’s diet. And, it’s not only how much protein in dog food or cat food that matters (although it very much does), it’s also the quality and types of protein that matter.
The amino acids in the protein sources is what the body converts to energy to perform functions like cell signaling, critical reactions involving cellular transport, enzyme and energy production, creating your pet’s cartilage, ligaments, tendons, its muscles, skin, hair and nails and blood proteins like hemoglobin, albumin and globulin. Any excesses are stored and used as an energy source.
Fresh food is best, with a raw diet if your pet can handle it and takes to it, which is the way their bodies were designed to eat.
Different types of protein provide different amino acid profiles, so diversity in what you feed is important.
A protein deficiency over any period of time can have serious effects on your pet’s health.
Excess protein from a fresh diet gets stored and used for energy, but protein derived from synthetic amino acids in commercial foods can be overdosed, creating health problems.
I hope this gives you a better idea about protein, why it’s so important and how to think about providing it for your dog or cat.
To their best health ever!
Jody
