Would you like your dog or cat to live a longer, healthier life, with lower vet bills? Would you like your pet to live to 15-20 years like pets used to in the 1950s-60s? Optimum Choices offers "wholistic" solutions to help your pet achieve optimal health through holistic pet food. Despite the fancy advertising, many pet foods on the market are detrimental to your pet"s health. As a result, pets die sooner than they did 60 years ago. Dogs and cats commonly suffer from cancers, kidney disease, liver problems, thyroid disorders, diabetes and other problems starting in mid-life. Much of this is due to their poor quality diets. In our holistic opinion, dry kibble is nutritionally equivalent to meat-flavored cookies. We fed our previous dog raw pet food since that is what Nature designed a carnivore (descendants of wolves) to eat. She lived to be 18 years old. We transitioned our 18 year old cat from dry kibble to a raw diet (it took over one year) and put her on our revolutionary holistic bio-algae concentrates. She lived into her 20's and the vets could not believe her muscle tone and how well her shiny black coat looked (we feed no fish oils). We feel a natural, holistic pet food is the foundation for wellness.
Raw pet food or organic pet food is the best but obviously not everyone can afford it or wants to take the time to prepare or buy it. So, we offer affordable alternatives like Life's Abundance pet food (that is delivered to your front door and formulated by holistic veterinarian, Dr. Jane Bick, only available for shipping within the U.S.). For more details, click the green Life's Abundance button below.
Shop Life's Abundance Pet FoodHere are some shocking statistics:
Why has our pet's health and longevity declined over the last 40-50 years? Pet food manufacturers often use poor quality ingredients such as 4D meat (dying, dead, diseased, disabled), by-products (feet, heads, beaks, hides, hooves) and moldy or contaminated grains. The food may then be preserved with BHA, BHT or ethoxyquine, which can cause cancer.
The premium brands of pet food typically use better-quality ingredients but if you feed kibble, even premium brands, it is grain or starch based as that keeps it from falling apart. Dogs and cats are carnivorous (meat-eating) animals. Look at your brand"s label. Meat or meat meal should be the first ingredient, not wheat, corn, soy, by-products or other non-meat items. Look specifically for the words beef, lamb, chicken, liver, etc., by themselves in the list of ingredients. The manufacturer can count the protein in non-meat ingredients towards the total protein of the food even though it is difficult for your pet to digest and absorb.
Even if you buy a high-quality pet food, by the time you buy it at the store, it could be anywhere from 6 months to 2 years old, due to the long distribution channel. Your brand could have the best ingredients on the label but their nutritional value could be severely decreased and the oils could be turning rancid by the time you buy the bag in the local store. Therefore, consider buying food from manufacturers who package it to mitigate this problem (and from a store that quickly turns over its stock) or purchase from a company that ships direct from the factory to you. That's one reason our customers love Life's Abundance. (Only available for shipping within the U.S. through an Independent Field Representative.) The pet food is formulated by well-known holistic veterinarian, Dr. Jane Bicks. The company has been around since 1998 and has an excellent quality control record. The pet food is shipped from one of their U.S. warehouses and delivered direct to your door by UPS.
So, what can you feed your pet to keep it in optimal health? Many holistic vets now recommend a raw food diet for both dogs and cats (provided they are not immune compromised). Dogs and cats are carnivores, designed to eat a diet high in raw meat and bones, with some vegetable matter. The raw food provides the natural enzymes they need to digest the food and raw bones act as natural toothbrushes. It is now possible to buy pre-made raw food diets (frozen or freeze-dried) at many local natural pet stores or on the Internet if you do not have time to prepare it yourself. There are some risks to a raw diet"”there have been reported cases of dogs getting bones impacted in their digestive tracts and of animals dying of food poisoning from the bacteria in raw meat. You can minimize these problems by using ground bones and only feeding the highest quality raw meat. Also, don't mix raw meat with kibble at the same meal so the raw meat will move quickly through the digestive tract, as nature intended. For videos on how to easily prepare a raw food diet for dogs or cats, click here.
For pet owners who cannot afford the time and cost to feed an all-raw diet, Optimum Choices offers super-premium kibble and canned foods from Life's Abundance (only available for shipping within the U.S.) that contain premium ingredients, no by-products, no corn or wheat and no artificial preservatives. Life's Abundance kibble also includes probiotics, to help improve your pet's digestion. Life's Abundance is always shipped direct to your door, for your convenience. We feed our cats mostly raw food but include some LIfe's Abundance canned cat food in their diet, which is recommended by holistic feline vet Dr. Jean Hofve.
For a "wholistic" and nutritional complement to any processed or cooked pet food, check out our bio-algae concentrates product for pets below. It is based on Dr. Michael Kiriac's successful quest to stop the ongoing cancer epidemic in animals in controlled trials in the former U.S.S.R. Click the teal BioPreparation button below.
More BioPreparation InformationOther similar super premium brands may be available at your local specialty pet store. If you are in the Denver area, we can direct you to local stores that sell excellent brands of food and are run by very knowledgeable owners. We provide Life's Abundance online for those customers who prefer to have food shipped direct to their home (only available for shipping within the U.S.) or who may not have a good pet store near them. All Life's Abundance foods are formulated by well-known holistic veterinarian, Dr. Jane Bicks, DVM. They are completely safe and have never been involved in a recall.
For more information on commercial pet food and pet nutrition, see our Articles Page. For an excellent CD audio series by nationally renowned holistic veterinarian and pet food expert Dr. Jean Hofve and award-winning author Jan Rasmusen, click How NOT to Kill Your Cat or Dog.
The pet food recalls continue to happen. Many pet owners are confused about what is safe to feed their pets. Their assumption that commercial dog and cat foods are both safe and healthy has been shattered. Many owners are learning that the pet food industry is unregulated, unlike the human food industry. While there are standards for how ingredients are listed on labels (such as listing them by weight), there are no standards for the quality of the ingredients in pet food. In fact, the pet food industry exists, in part, to make a profit on the food that is not fit for human consumption. It is no coincidence that most pet foods are made by huge conglomerates that also produce human food products.
What is happening to our pets' food? Why all the recalls? There have always been problems with pet foods. It was inevitable that one day these problems would become widespread and the sources of these problems exposed. We feel the reason these problems have suddenly reached critical mass, in part, is due to the easy dissemination of information with the Internet and the ability to sort through massive animal cases in a national database. Also, people are more concerned now about what their pets are eating, due to the increased status of the family pet. Pets are no longer "just a dog" but a full-fledged member of the family. Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald (Animal Planet) stated that a survey was conducted in 1957 posing the question: Do you consider your pet(s) a part of your family? The same survey was repeated in 2004. Here are the results.
Clearly society's values have changed. If people think of their pet as a member of the family, then why are we feeding them food unfit for human consumption? It is no longer acceptable to have even just 10-15 pets die from contaminated food any more than it is to have our children's school lunch snacks contaminated. So, what can you do to safeguard your pets' food?
Learn what is really in pet foods. Educate yourself from Dr. Jean Hofve, a retired veterinarian specializing in the dietary needs of companion animals, on her website LittleBigCat.com.
Research what Nature designed our dogs and cats to eat to be healthy and feed biologically appropriate food. This is not necessarily the cheapest or most convenient food (such as dry kibble). Read our e-Book: Save Your Dog or Cat.
Find a trusted manufacturer that uses high quality ingredients in its pet food and uses no by-products, wheat, corn or soy products or any artificial preservatives. If they outsource their manufacturing, find out if they provide their own ingredients to the manufacturer and if they test the final product. Even some super premium pet foods may be outsourced to manufacturers as it is cost-prohibitive for every pet food company to build their own manufacturing plant.
Always make sure your pet's immune system is 100%, to help your pet tolerate less than pure foods (these can be unavoidable at times, no matter how carefully you select your pet's foods). We give our pets a bio-algae concentrates type product to balance their immune system and help them process toxins.
Dr. Jean Hofve (www.LittleBigCat.com) recommends avoiding wheat or corn products of any type when selecting pet foods. They can be contaminated with pesticides, molds and other toxins. Also, corn is commonly genetically modified. Following this rule increases the safety of what you feed"”many recalls involve contaminated grains. For instance, the Menu Foods recall in 2007 involved wheat gluten contaminated with the plastic melamine. A Diamond Foods recall involved contaminated corn. We do not feed our pets any food or treats with wheat, corn or soy products in them.
Dr. Jean Hofve also has an excellent series of audio books on how to feed your dog or cat: How NOT to Kill Your Cat or Dog - What the Heck Do We Feed Them Now? Go to this page to order: How NOT to Kill Your Pet.
Dogs and cats are both carnivores, designed to eat whole prey animals, not grains. However, grains are widely used in pet foods because they are cheap fillers and sources of protein. Despite what the commercials say, pet foods were not invented to improve the health of dogs and cats"”they were invented for our convenience and to make money. They have only been widely used since the middle of the 20th century. We now think that feeding dry kibble is the "normal" way to feed our pets and anyone who does otherwise is coddling their pet or just plain weird. Even many veterinarians scold their clients for feeding something other than an "approved" commercial pet food. However, commercial pet foods have been fed for less than 100 years out of the thousands of years that humans have had pets. How did our pets survive before then? Dogs were fed raw bones from the butcher and table scraps. Cats typically lived outside and hunted and were fed table scraps as well. If they lived on farms, they also drank raw milk, a very healthy food. In other countries where pet foods are less widely used (such as Italy), people often cook for their dogs, just as they do for their children.
Cats were domesticated by the Egyptians to protect their granaries from rodents. They were the perfect animal for the job since, as pure carnivores, they ignored the grain and feasted on the rodents. And yet today we insist on feeding these descendants of the African wildcat dry kibble that contains more grain than meat because it is cheaper and more convenient. In fact, people think they are "spoiling" their cat if they feed it canned food rather than kibble. For an excellent reference on why cats should not eat dry kibble, read Dr. Jean Hofve's article Why Cats Need Canned Food. While dogs are more omnivorous than cats (obligate carnivores needing 70-90% meat), their diet should still be 60-80% meat with limited grains. So, why are we feeding dry kibble, which cannot be manufactured with more than 50% meat because it literally gums up the kibble making machines? Dry kibble is nutritionally equivalent to feeding meat-flavored cookies to our pets.