Are you following a Paleo Diet?

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@Kindle I've wondered about those BARF diets for dogs (ground bones and raw meat). There are folks who swear by them. I just don't think raw meat is appropriate for a domestic dog in the 21st century digestive system. As well, I would need to buy organic meat (no way I would feed them raw meat that was full of chemicals) and to feed three dogs a diet of almost all meat would be extremely expensive.

I used to be a good mommy and make my dogs' food from whole foods with added nutrients (ground egg shells, fish oil, etc). But I just don't have the time anymore. It greatly concerns me the crap that goes into processed dog food as well as the quality of the "whole foods" that are used -- let's be real, they aren't getting grade A beef roast that is fit for human consumption. The best I can do is to buy organic grain-free dog food for them nowadays.

Do you have any recommendations? Thanks!

Edited March 27, 2015 by My Bariatric Life

[mrs kaje 347]

Any diet/eating plan that "bans" any food type/group always gives me the impression it's a fad, and slightly crazy.

[Kindle 8,667]

To say we should eat like a caveman is like saying we should feed our pets all raw diets because their wolf ancestor do. It's theories like that that keep those of us in the veterinary field in business...mostly due to serious GI infections, recurrent diarrhea, perforated intestines and my least favorite, impacted colons.

I'm not saying that the paleo diet contains unhealthy elements, it's just that it seems incomplete. Paleolithic man was basically limited to eating what was locally available. A caveman living in Europe ate differently than one living in Northern Africa or Asia. And where is horse listed on the paleo menu?....this was a big food source for some Stone Age tribes. And they didn't eat dairy because they hadn't domesticated animals yet, not necessarily because it was bad for them. Like someone else said, it's basically a marketing ploy like so many other fad diets. And to say you eat "mostly" paleo or paleo X% of the time is like a "vegetarian" saying they only eat chicken once or twice a month.

I know all about the hardcore BARF fans. I've just seen too many problems from them. And a lot of times the problems stem from improper handling of the raw meat and dishes, etc. Did you know that in some veterinary hospitals (especially in Canada) dogs fed raw diets are quarantined when they come in and considered infectious because of the parasites they can potentially harbor and pass to other patients? Homemade diets certainly have their place, especially when a dog or cat has food allergies or certain medical conditions. We've worked with a holistic vet and used the Chinese temperature-based food charts to help develop diets for patients with cancer, liver failure, Cushings, autoimmune disorders, etc. But they really should be cooked and making sure it is a nutritionally complete diet is challenging.

As for commercially prepared foods, it's kind of like with us. Read labels. Know what each ingredient actually is (for example, "meal" is not a bad thing) Use common sense. Find out what you can about the manufacturer - any recalls? where are they getting their raw ingredients? Did they conduct actual food trials in determining their AAFCO status? Do they have their own manufacturing plants or are they outsourcing to mass production factories? Recalls often happen not because that particular food is bad, but because it was processed in a plant that also makes another food that was recalled. There are just so many new, smaller, regional dog and cat food companies that offer a good product, that the search for the "perfect" one is certainly daunting. Nutrisource, Victor, Pioneer, Purevite, Go and Now are some of the ones available locally and we recommend to our clients. (But not all of these are organic and/or grain free)

Edited March 27, 2015 by Kindle

[Kindle 8,667]

Oh, and hate to burst your bubble about organic food, but after my experiences with actual organic farmers, I'm reluctant to support them. Here are some examples...

1) two separate clients contracted worms from eating unwashed organic vegetables. We know this because they came to us to have their dogs dewormer, thinking that's where they got the worms. We directed them (and their physicians) to the CDC website where it clearly described that this type of worm is NOT contracted from animals, but instead, from oral-fecal transmission between people. In other words, the organic veggies they were eating were contaminated with human feces.

2) organic dairy farmer had a cow trying to give birth but the calf was presenting breech. The only option was to perform a C section, but the farmer wouldn't let us use the local anesthetic required to do this. Instead, both the cow and calf ended up dying

3) a DIFFERENT organic dairy farmer had a cow with a torn teat that had become infected. He had been feeding garlic to the cow to try and treat the infection which obviously wasn't working. Since we couldn't treat with antibiotics, the teat and part of the udder eventually became gangrenous and the cow was sent to slaughter (and subsequently sold locally as organic beef)

4) an organic farmer who doesn't treat for weeds produced a crop of hay that was infested with a poisonous weed. The hay was fed to a herd of 10 horses, 7 of which ended up dying.

5) an entire farm's pigs died from a preventable disease because the farmer wouldn't vaccinate. The owners actually asked if it would still be OK to butcher them.....REALLY? The neighbor's pigs, who were in contact with the sick ones were vaccinated and none of them even got sick

I was raised on my mom's home garden produce and our neighbor's home-raised chickens, eggs, pigs and beef, but when it comes to today's commercial organic food, I'm a bit leery. We see a lot more sick and parasite-ridden organic animals than non-organic ones. For me it's a matter of weighing the alleged potential of harmful chemicals in the food I eat vs animal welfare. (Sorry about hijacking this thread with my rant)

Edited March 27, 2015 by Kindle

[Flygirl123 150]

@ Kindle thank you for sharing your knowledge! That's a lot of food for thought :-). We don't have pets because of allergies. But, I spend a lot of money on organic food. You have really opened my eyes. I guess it's not that simple, I need to do more research.

[Kindle 8,667]

Yea, it kind of sucks. There are always pros and cons to every choice we make. There's really no simple, healthy answer short of growing/raising/butchering all your own food. Which is pretty much how I grew up, but oh, how times have changed!

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@mrs kaje that's what the USDA has preached for years, but as a person who has developed celiac disease (gluten intolerance) and lactose intolerance and diabetes type 2, I just don't buy it. There are people who eat from all food groups who are healthy, of course, but I am not one of them. This is confusing to me, really. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why there is not a one-size fits all diet that we, who as humans are born with the same biological and physiological makeup, can follow for optimal health. Thoughts anyone?

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@Kindle I have an idea! You should develop the "farmer diet." That probably makes more sense than the caveman diet. Think of how many people you'll help and how much money you'll make, too!

[mrs kaje 347]

@@mrs kaje that's what the USDA has preached for years, but as a person who has developed celiac disease (gluten intolerance) and lactose intolerance and diabetes type 2, I just don't buy it. There are people who eat from all food groups who are healthy, of course, but I am not one of them. This is confusing to me, really. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why there is not a one-size fits all diet that we, who as humans are born with the same biological and physiological makeup, can follow for optimal health. Thoughts anyone?

I recognise it does depend on each individual's requirements, so everything has to be changed to suit yourself. I didn't mean to imply I thought everyone should be able to eat everything. - I was more thinking of the other angle that the diet dictates what you do and don't eat, not your own circumstances, if that makes sense (e.g. a diet may tell me not to eat something that my body is perfectly happy to accept and process without any issues).

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@Kindle no apologies needed. The conversation takes us where we are meant to go.

When I went organic, I lived in NJ where I had access to lots of quality locally grown organic and raised on pasture without hormones or antibiotics food sources. I got my veggies and fruits and herbs from my CSA where I could go into the fields and picky my own or take what was already picked. I got my fowl and eggs from the farmer's market butcher who sourced it from farm in NJ and surrounding states. I got my fresh fish from the farmer's market fish monger who sold only wild caught fish. And in time one of the things I noticed was how incredibly my sense of smell increased. I also noticed a huge improvement in the flavor of these foods. Commercially prepared chicken and eggs, even if they are organic certified, simply do not compare in taste.

Additionally there is so much scientific evidence that links chemicals in our food and environment to very serious diseases. Do you know that cancer is caused 90-95% from environment and lifestyle. Every single one of my dogs died from cancer. My daughter had thyroid cancer. To me, this all the warning of the canary in the coal mine.

I do not shun pharmaceuticals. I have working in pharma marketing my entire career and I am honored to market products that improve quality of life, extend life, and in some instances save life. I've also worked at Merck AgVet the world's largest animal health company, which includes products for production animals. What I am against is the greed of corporate food manufacturers who, for example, cram dairy cows into unnatural living quarters so that they are standing knee deep in the feces of hundreds of cows, at the same time being injected with growth hormone so their udders grow super-sized filled with milk, and then these same cows have to be prophylactically over inoculated with antibiotics and parasiticides because they now have big teets dragging in piles of sh*t and at risk for developing coliform mastitis. I am against, for example, Purdue who genetically modifies chicken so that they develop unnaturally large breasts, so large in fact that the chickens fall forward onto their breasts because they are top-heavy. I am against, for example, eating grain that has been grown from round-up ready seed so that crop dusters can plaster it with herbicides that kill everything but the grains that have been engineered to withstand the poison. Personally, I do not want to eat frankenfood. I don't want to eat food from a manufacturer. I want to eat it from a farmer... unless it is fish, which I then want to eat from the ocean or stream.

Most of America has an illusion of where their food comes from. We see rolling pastures with a small herd of cows or cattle and we think it goes from there to our plates. I have yet to drive past the feedlot, the middle man between that rolling pasture where the cattle spends its first 6-mos of life before it is shipped to the deplorable conditions of the feedlot where it is essentially force fed an unnatural diet of GMO corn so it fattens unnaturally quickly (cattle do not eat corn, they eat grass), and barely allowed to move because it is standing in pens that are as crowded as a NYC subway at rush hour (in dung as mentioned earlier), for the next year of its life until it goes to the disgusting conditions of the slaughterhouse. And BTW if they weren't slaughtered at 18-mos their stomachs would soon explode from the corn and silage they are fed. And all of this process is done to keep a few food conglomerates rich at the incalculable expense of our health.

So now we both have ranted!!! I value and respect your opinion and do not want you to think I am arguing with you. For years I have been passionate about this topic of our food sources and chemicals in our environment because of all the research I've done since having my gastric bypass in 2003 and having to learn what it means to eat healthy. I was shocked (horrified) when I learned the truth about factory farming and CAFOs and corruption within the government and food manufacturers and chemical companies! With the examples you've cited it certainly shows that there are many flaws with organic food, too. And we haven't even discussed the food conglomerates who are now capitalizing on the organic food movement! A rant for another day, perhaps?

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@mrs kaje I hear you. There are parts of the Paleo diet, such as banning legumes for example, that don't seem to have a solid reason for prohibiting them. For me, with so many things being "off" my diet, either due to my food preferences or intolerances, it is just easier to follow the Paleo diet. It just takes all of the figuring out away from me and makes it less complicated for me to know what I can and cannot eat. I want less stress in my life, not more! Thanks for a good discussion!

[My Bariatric Life 764]

@@Kindle that's all good advice. I've read the labels and done research but you have given me some other points to consider. And yes, it was a lot of work to nutritionally balance my dog's food when I made it. I followed Dr. Pitcarin's advice for that. One of my dog's actually is allergic to grains. She gets a nasty ear infection and lots of gunk in there. She'll scratch her ear to the point of it bleeding.

[MisforMimi 760]

I had trouble loosing on Paleo presurgery....I know I need to get rid of the artificial sugars and dairy. ...Maybe when I get to goal weight I can meet with a NUT to help me stay bariatric friendly....

[MisforMimi 760]

Because I'm bypass, I think I still need to stay SF options for me sweet tooth. I'm not a fan of stevia and dates would probably make me dump...

[Kindle 8,667]

@@My Bariatric Life. I mostly agree with you. And KNOWING exactly where your food comes from is definitely the way to go. I try my best to buy local from producers I feel comfortable with. As you can see from my previous post, not all of them are ones I would patronize. I shoot my own deer and elk. My beef is local grass fed angus. My turkey and pork are purchased from 4H kids. Fresh trout comes straight out of Jackson Lake or the Snake River. Clients give me more free farm eggs than I can possibly eat. If I could stand the taste I could have all the goats milk and goat cheese I want, but...Yuck! Being in Idaho, I am, of course limited to seasonal fruits and veggies. The rest of the year I buy whats commercially available in the grocery store, but don't always go for the organic. Seafood, of course, is the big missing link and, again, I'm stuck with what's commercially available.

But all in all I'm much better off in knowing the exact source of my food than I think a lot of people. And from what we've both shown, unfortunately there is rarely a perfect choice.

Edited March 28, 2015 by Kindle