IS COOKED FOOD BETTER THAN RAW FOOD???
There have always been two different feeding philosophies in the community: raw and cooked. Let’s find out together with BTM PET SHOP.
We never dismiss any other feeding approach, because what really matters isn’t the eating method itself, but the nutritional balance between the ingredients that make up the meal.
That said, a lot of people always insist: “Cooked food is better than raw!!!”
This is a frequently debated claim. Many people believe a raw diet is dangerous because of bacteria, etc., and the solution they propose is to cook the food. So is a cooked diet actually a viable option?
Setting aside the complicated formulas, let’s go with a pretty solid one: 80% meat, 10% bone, 5% liver, 5% other organ meat (this is a formula recommended by most canine nutrition experts worldwide when feeding fresh food).
So what happens when we cook that same formula? How is it different from leaving it raw?
First, cooking alters the proteins, vitamins, fats, and minerals in food. Cooked protein can change enough to trigger allergic reactions in dogs, even though it’s the exact same meat that wouldn’t cause a reaction when fresh (Clark, W.R. 1995. Hypersensitivity and Allergy, in At War Within: The double edged sword of immunity, Oxford University Press, New York, p. 88).
Fat also becomes more harmful when cooked (The American Society for Nutritional Sciences. April 2004. Meat Consumption Patterns and Preparation, Genetic Variants of Metabolic Enzymes, and Their Association with Rectal Cancer in Men and Women. Journal of Nutrition. 134:776-784.)
Second, cooked food lacks all the nutrients found in fresh raw food, including enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. Cooking at temperatures above 50°C destroys or significantly alters most of these nutrients (with a few exceptions — lightly steamed broccoli or tomatoes, for example, don’t show any nutrient loss or change).
That’s exactly why supplement companies exist — to add back what you just cooked away. (This part is kind of funny: you buy food that’s nutritionally complete → cooking depletes and reduces it → you spend more money buying something else to make up the difference.)
Vitamins and minerals can be added back into cooked food, but finding the right balance is extremely difficult. Synthetic vitamins and minerals often don’t have the same three-dimensional structure as their natural counterparts, meaning that while the supplements you buy do work to some degree, they never quite reach the perfect balance found in nature.
For example, calcium supplements are usually inorganic — and excess inorganic calcium actually reduces the natural absorption of iron, copper, and zinc (Lonsdale, T. 2001. Raw Meaty Bones, p. 88).
Let’s say you can calculate exactly what’s missing from your dog’s food after cooking, and you compensate by adding other things like vegetables, grains, and dairy products to the diet (an already complicated formula). At that point, every meal you prepare for your dog costs quite a bit more money and time. But keep in mind that no matter how you try to simulate it, nothing quite matches the natural diet that’s inherently suited to a carnivore like a dog.
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