These diets tend to be highly palatable to most dogs.

Some of these products may contain more fat than is healthy for dogs who are overweight and/or sedentary, or who are intolerant of fat (such as dogs who are prone to pancreatitis). Keep in mind that if you don’t include carbs in a diet, only protein and fat remain. (Remember, dogs don’t require carbs they can live on fat and protein alone, as long as they get the vitamins and minerals they need.) The outliers are products from Earth Animal and some of The Honest Kitchen’s foods. Most (not all) of the products in this category have a very low carbohydrate inclusion. The resulting diets are highly digestible. Some claim to contain as much as 95%! The inclusion of organ meats (such as heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, beef tripe, and chicken gizzards) is common, as is the use of fresh ground bone. Many of the companies claim that their products consist of 80% or more of meat, organs, and (ground) bone. But the methods the pet food companies use to manufacture these foods vary quite a bit – with freeze-drying, air-drying, or dehydration processes – and the offerings grow more eclectic every year.Īs disparate as they are, the products in this category share these attributes: Today, this category of food hangs loosely together by one main attribute: a high inclusion of raw meat. When some manufacturers began freeze-drying their raw, frozen products in order to create shelf-stable products that were light and inexpensive to ship, a whole new industry was born. But these diets required constant freezing and reliable, fast, expensive shipping.

Billinghurst’s original goal was to empower dog owners to prepare their dogs’ food themselves, the immediate popularity of this type of diet created a market for commercial raw pet food, usually sold in frozen form. Billinghurst made a case for the benefits of feeding dogs a diet that was similar to what their ancestral predecessors ate, namely raw meats, organs, and bones, improved by the addition of minor amounts of other foods (vegetables, fruits, grains).

This category of dog foods is an outgrowth of the “raw diets for dogs” revolution that was sparked in 1993 with the publication of Give Your Dog A Bone, written by Australian veterinarian, Dr.

Freeze dried dog food raw