Supporters of raw food claim the potential benefits to be:
- Shinier coats
- Healthier skin
- Improved dental health
- Increased energy
- Smaller stools
The idea is to feed dogs how they’d eat in the wild — is how that’s still relevant in dogs today, a species we’ve essentially created ourselves, since they were first domesticated tens of thousands of years ago. Commercial dog foods have only been around for about 100 years, and for the thousands of years before that, dogs of all sizes survived on scraps, refuse, and by hunting. In fact, it wasn’t common practice to feed dogs commercially made processed or even cooked foods until the mid-20th century.
A raw dog food diet commonly consists of:
- Muscle meat
- Organ meats
- Whole or ground bone
- Raw eggs
- Fish
- Dog-safe fresh fruits and vegetables
- Some dairy, such as yogurt
To create a balanced raw diet, we strive to replicate the meal a dog would get from killing and consuming a prey animal — their healthiest-possible food source. A lot of meat, little fat (these being wild animals), plenty of bones, then a few organs and whatever may have been partially digested in the prey’s stomach — a few veggies, basically.
Note that the natural formula doesn’t include grain, soybeans, corn products, or any of the other awful garbage that most commercial dog foods are made from. The other big idea with the raw diet is to feed your dog the healthiest human-grade food you can afford. Meat and other ingredients intended for the dog food industry doesn’t have to pass the same quality or health standards present in the human-food supply chain, so is often just disgusting. Hence all the poison.