One of the most popular questions I get asked is, “Why do you cook your food and not serve it raw?” People often have a hard time accepting that our fresh dog food is cooked and not canned! They think that every kind of holistic, natural food for dogs must be raw.
Are you comfortable eating raw food like steak tartare?
There are multiple reasons why we have decided to cook our fresh dog food and the first one boils down to plain old perspective. There are a lot of people out there who have difficulty eating sushi or steak tartare, and therefore, they have difficulty feeding raw ground beef, etc. to their dogs.
Plus, lots of dogs have sensitivities in today’s day and age, and raw fresh dog food can certainly irritate a dog’s stomach. It’s much neater in the long run to go for a cooked food.
Not to mention the fact that our natural food for dogs smells better. So many dogs are picky eaters nowadays, and by gently warming our cooked food (a big no no with raw food), aromas are released to entice your puppy to eat.
Pathogenic bacteria can be found in raw foods
Raw food is certainly a much healthier alternative to dry dog foods, but you still have risks associated with them that you don’t have with cooked fresh dog food. Testing needs to be done regularly as there is always a risk of contamination by pathogenic bacteria in raw foods. The cooking process is a great way to eliminate this risk and to destroy a variety of chemicals that exist in raw meats. You even need to be careful with organic all natural food for dogs as they are often exposed to chemicals which have not been neutralized (as they would be during the cooking process).
Another advantage to feeding your dog our cooked fresh dog food is that it is much easier to control the levels of fat your dog is ingesting. Lucky Dog Cuisine gently cooks ground, all natural food for dogs and then we drain the fat off. That is not an option with raw food, so your dog is eating all of those empty calories. A pound of raw food is not the same as a pound of cooked meat where the fat and moisture have been drained off. We actually lose about a third of the volume of our meats during the cooking process and we do not add ground bone, meaning your pup is actually eating more meat from our cuisine vs. a pound of raw food.
Want to learn more about raw foods and potential blood sugar spikes? Then check out our FAQ page for lots more helpful information.
