Let’s take a look at the chemistry of food and the biology of dogs. Most people know very little about either topic, but they should, as they’re both interesting and informative.
Let’s start with where most food chemistry happens.
The chief chemical changes in food are not caused by “extruding,” as some dog food fadists imagine, but by the grinding and heating of grains, vegetables, and meat *prior* to extrusion.
Grinding and heat are two of the chief processes in processed food, and combined they work to break the cellular structure of grains and unfold complex proteins in meats, increasing their digestibility.
The entire history of man, from caveman to today, is about processing foods, one way or another, 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 also 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, oats, and meat into safe 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 various types of meat 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 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 grinding and heating food?
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 to increase digestibility releases *huge* amounts of calories for both human and canine access. It is “manna from heaven” for both hungry people and a wide array of other hungry animals, from wolves and dogs to bears, raccoons, fox, rats, and horses (to name just a few).
“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.
Just as you put butter on your bread and steak sauce on your steak, so too do dog food makers put in similar stuff in the form of chicken or beef fat and palatants that improve smell.
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.
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