Processed Foods Made Dogs... and You

If you ask folks railing against “processed” foods what the process is, they’re likely to just blink and fall silent. They have no idea. In fact, they have probably never even thought about it. 

In fact, almost every food we have ever eaten is “processed”. 

Tomatoes are ground into sauce, wheat into flour, beef into hamburger. 

Water is processed by the addition of chlorine to kill contaminants and fluoride to protect teeth. 

Salt is processed by being cut from mined blocks or distilled from ocean water before being ground into sand and having iodine added (to this day *lack* of dietary iodine is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities, affecting about two billion people worldwide). 

Coffee is processed by separating bean from fruit, drying and then roasting the bean, grinding the bean into powder, and then running water over the grounds. Into your coffee may go milk or cream which has been processed through homogenization and pasteurization and which has likely been further processed to increase or lower the fat content, as well as to add vitamin D (to prevent rickets). Sugar may be added — typically processed from sugarcane, sugar beets, or corn. 

Any time a food is ground, dried, canned, coated, cut, pressed, frozen, cooked, smoked, steamed, or extruded, it is processed. 

Any time a vitamin or preservative (even a natural preservative like Vitamin E or C) is added, it is processed. 

Olive oil is a processed food, as is beer, and most fresh fruit (dyed for color, coated to preserve, and gassed to speed ripening). 

Meat is deboned, eggs are washed and candled, fish is filleted, and nuts are shelled. 

Grains and fruits are fermented, and meats are mixed and ground into sausage. 

The entire history of man, from caveman to today, is about processing foods to increase yield, improve storage, decrease costs, improve taste, release nutrients, and eliminate contamination. The “processes” used include fire, water, knives, grinders, radiation, freezing, steaming, drying, smoking, canning, extruding, bottling, and baking. It has included mixing, colorizing, coating, and filtering. 

So what does this have to do with dogs? Simply this: Without “the process” used to convert rice, wheat, corn, and oats into high-yield food, we would have neither civilization nor dogs. 

Dogs were literally *created* by the “process” of converting grains to feed through crushing, steaming, and baking. 

Dogs — the first domesticated species — came into existence with rice and wheat agriculture for a reason, and their physiology has evolved with grain. It was only when humans discovered the “process” of steaming rice, and grinding, steaming, and baking wheat, oats, and other grains and beans, that they had the extra food to start raising wolves and dogs as a ready supply of meat. 

Yes, you read that last sentence correctly; 15,000 years ago dogs became associated with the first human settlements growing rice, and these dogs were consumed as *food*. 

Eating dogs in parts of Asia is not a *new* thing, but a very *old* thing — older than raising domesticated chickens, pigs, or sheep as food. 

While the “process” of grinding, steaming, and baking rice, wheat, oats, corn and other foods has enabled global human population to explode from 10 million to over 8 billion in the last 10,000 years, this same “process” literally *created* the dog, or “domesticated wolf” that we know today. 

As Science magazine notes, when researchers compared wolves to dogs they discovered: 

Dogs had four to 30 copies of the gene for amylase, a protein that starts the breakdown of starch in the intestine. Wolves have only two copies, one on each chromosome. As a result, that gene was 28-fold more active in dogs…. More copies means more protein, and test-tube studies indicate that dogs should be fivefold better than wolves at digesting starch, the chief nutrient in agricultural grains such as wheat and rice. The number of copies of this gene also varies in people: Those eating high carbohydrate diets — such as the Japanese and European Americans — have more copies than people with starch-poor diets, such as the Mbuti in Africa.” 

So is “processed” dog food fine for dogs? 

Is grinding wheat, rice, oats, and corn, and then steaming it and mixing it with left-over bits of meat, fat, bone, and vegetables a “new” thing? It is not. It is not only a very *old* thing, it’s what created the dog — a Darwinian tale told in the animal’s own DNA, as well as your own. 

So what’s the problem with processed foods?  None. 

The problem is not the process, but the calories. 

You see, grinding and steaming does not do the same thing to all foods. 

Grinding and steaming coffee beans adds no calories, but makes a delightfully stimulating drink. 

Grinding and steaming green beans makes them slightly more digestible while removing a few vitamins — a fair trade. 

But grinding, steaming, and baking wheat, rice, corn, beans, chickpeas, or rice releases huge amounts of calories for human and canine access. It is “manna from heaven” for both hungry humans and a wide array of other hungry animals, from wolves and dogs to bears, raccoons, fox, rats, and horses (to name just a few). Horses? Yes horses — look up “horse bread”. 

“Processed corn” in dog food is simply corn that has been ground and heated with water to break down complex carbohydrates so they can be more easily digested, same as “processed wheat” is ground and heated with water to make bread. Just as bread is further processed by adding vitamins and natural preservatives, so too are vitamins and natural preservatives added to dog food. Just as your meat is heated for hygienic reasons, so too is the meat used in dog food. 

While your own weight may balloon due to unfettered access to an uncalibrated and untested diet of beer, ice cream, pretzels, hamburgers, candy, and pizza, dog food is carefully balanced and calibrated so that fats, carbohydrates, proteins, fiber, minerals, and vitamins are presented in a known, fixed, and provably healthy (and FDA-approved) diet that is absent the kind of sugar-salt-and-fat binges that typify human consumption patterns — including yours. 

So is your kibble-fed dog eating better than you? 

Almost certainly.

Are all those CALORIES good for you or the dog?  Probably not.  More on that in a later post.