Veterinarians know far more about nutrition than most doctors. Pets generally don't have health insurance, and it's much cheaper to prevent disease in your pet through good nutrition than it is to treat it with drugs and surgery down the road. Veterinarians both understand good nutrition and preach it to their customers. Veterinarians also understand the direct correlation between the foods a pet eats and the chronic diseases they will exhibit. For example, vets know very well that if you feed your
dog leftovers of human
food, you will probably end up giving your dog chronic diseases like obesity,
diabetes and heart disease.
Now there is an interesting indication. If leftover human food will kill your dog, what's it doing to you and your family? We'll look at that a little bit later, but here's a hint: pet food is actually more nutritionally balanced than human food. And there is a very good reason why, which will be discussed in detail later on.
If you feed your pets lots of white rice for example, you will end up giving them diabetes. In fact, if you're asking a veterinarian who has been practicing for twenty or thirty years, they will tell you that they have recently seen a skyrocketing increase in the number of cases of diabetes in dogs. That's due to changes in the nutritional makeup of cheaper dog food products today that are using a lot of white rice as a filler (because white rice is cheap and makes the dog foods more profitable). But just as in human beings, white rice causes diabetes and obesity because it's a refined carbohydrate offering little more than "empty calories."
When you look at pets, there is a direct relationship between foods and disease that is quite apparent. Part of the reason this is so apparent is because pets age much more quickly than human beings. Of course, we're all familiar with the phrase "dog years" and the idea that dogs age approximately seven times faster than human beings. This allows you to notice the relationship between nutrition and health seven times more quickly in your dogs than you might notice it in yourself or in your family.
In other words, if you start feeding your dog foods and food ingredients that promote disease and cause nutritional deficiencies (i.e. most human food), your dog will start to show symptoms of those deficiencies seven times more quickly than a human being would.
So one of the reasons that human beings don't catch on to the links between nutrition and disease is because it happens so slowly. It can sometimes take years or even decades for a disease to show up that has been caused by a dietary habit. Yet, in animals, you can quickly see this appearing far more quickly.
Now it would be highly unethical to do this, so I'm not suggesting that you do. This is for a mental experiment only. If you were to take two dogs that were genetically very similar (from the same litter, for example), and you brought them into your house from the time they were very young then fed one dog all the processed foods that human beings eat, while feeding the other dog outstanding nutrition from the more expensive dog food formulas, you would see a tremendous difference in the health and lifespan of these two dogs.
The dog fed human food, which would include refined grains, white flour, added sugars, chemical food additives and other toxic ingredients would have a much lower quality of life than the healthy dog. It would also have a shorter life span and sky-high health care costs associated with the treatment of the chronic diseases it would undoubtedly experience.
The healthy dog, on the other hand, would live longer and would be more vibrant, more emotionally stable, have greater lean body mass and lower body fat. It would have a healthier cardiovascular system, healthier teeth and would express a much higher degree of health than the other dog. It would also probably die someday from so-called natural causes, without all the medical costs associated with the unhealthy dog. So once again, I don't recommend doing this (because it would be unethical), but if you were to take two dogs and feed them radically different diets as an experiment, it would be apparent to anyone that nutrition is a powerful influencer of health in mammals.
You could also do this experiment with guinea pigs or rats or mice. But once again, I think even that would be unethical, because mice are mammals too and it is downright evil to torture a mouse by feeding it human foods. Now some people might find that statement shocking. But I think the really shocking thing is that as a society, we are feeding each other and our children the exact same foods that would be considered inhumane if you fed them to a pet, or even to a mouse.
Our nation's public school systems feed our children foods that would be unethical to feed to lab rats -- that's the real shocker here. And the primary reason the effects of those foods are not apparent to everyone is because there is such a long delay between the cause and the effect. It takes human beings years or decades to show the full effects from these poor dietary choices. The other reason it's not so apparent in human beings is because poor dietary practices are so widespread that both the public and members of the medical community think that unhealthy, obese, chronically diseased human beings are now the norm. There are so few examples of people demonstrating outstanding health that we are walking around in a society where we actually believe that human beings are supposed to be fat and depressed and have plaque in their arteries and so on. If practically everyone is diseased, suddenly that qualifies as "normal."
But if you live in another country for any length of time -- a country that doesn't suffer from any chronic disease and chronic obesity -- and then come back to the United States, you will be shocked to observe the level of disease found in everyday people. If you walk around any airport, for example, and just take a look at all of the faces and bodies walking past you, you will see a population that is chronically diseased. You can see liver disorders written right on their faces in terms of skin coloration and huge bags under their eyes. You can see internal organ problems based on skin composition and tone. You can observe energetic disorders by looking at peoples' posture and the way they carry themselves. And of course, it's very easy to see observe what an overweight population we are.
But these are not the norms. This is not the way that the human body was designed to be. This is only the result of feeding an entire population disease-promoting foods that now sadly, pass for "three balanced meals a day."
This article is an excerpt from the book, The 7 Laws of Nutrition by Mike Adams.
About the author: Mike Adams is a consumer health advocate and award-winning journalist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,800 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is a trusted, independent journalist who receives no money or promotional fees whatsoever to write about other companies' products. In mid 2010, Adams produced NaturalNews.TV, a natural health video sharing website offering user-generated videos on nutrition, green living, fitness and more. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. He's also author a large number of health books offered by Truth Publishing and is the creator of numerous reference website including NaturalPedia.com and the free downloadable Honest Food Guide. His websites also include the free reference sites HerbReference.com and HealingFoodReference.com. Adams believes in free speech, free access to nutritional supplements and the innate healing ability of the human body. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
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Sunday, December 05, 2004
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