What is the meat to veg ratio and what kinds of vegetables go into the meals?

DOG FOOD

The meals contain 65-70% meat with the balance made up of vegetables & fruit. The bulk of our vegetable portion is made up of spinach, carrots and butternut & pumpkin – no starchy, nor gas forming veggies. Granny Smith apples and papaya make up the small percentage of fruit included. We do not add any grains!

We ferment our vegetables & fruit mix, because dogs are designed to more easily absorb nutrients from pre-digested veg/fruit, as opposed to cooked or completely raw – in line with the state of vegetation they would ingest from the prey’s GI tract when hunting.

Some benefits worth mentioning:

• It allows for truly optimum nutrient absorption, in line with dogs’ biological and physiological make up. The vegetable matter dogs naturally ingest are pre-digested by their prey. With short GI tracts (to prevent unfriendly bacteria settlement), we know the food passes through their systems quickly. Fermented vegetable matter makes the nutrients inside the food more bio-available.
• The fermentation process brings a whole lot of goodness to the table – millions of beneficial microbes (probiotics) that help balance gut bacteria, boosting overall immunity. Fermented veg also acts as a potent detoxifier helping rid your pet’s body of a wide variety of toxins including heavy metals. It produces vitamin C, the B vitamins, vitamin K2 and enzymes that all support healthy metabolic activity. It contains choline that balances and nourishes the blood. And the lactic acid produced by fermentation is a chemical repressor that fights cancer cells without harming healthy cells.
• Thirdly, fermented veg in raw dog food acts as an extremely effective safety agent, as the probiotics attack unwanted pathogens, prohibiting them from growing to infectious levels. Adding fermented veg therefore, is like inoculating the food against harmful bacteria. No chemicals, no preservatives, only beneficial bacteria.

In a nutshell, fermentation is so effective because the lactic acid also produces an antimicrobial agent called bacteriocin – a micro-organism that acts almost like an antibiotic, which combats bad bacteria (e.g. listeria, e coli, salmonella). This is based on years of research in the human food industry. In fact, in the late 1980’s the FDA approved an extracted bacteriocin to manage human food safety.

CAT FOOD

Our cat food contains no veg and no grains – 100% pure meat.