Homemade dog food is gaining popularity. With pandemic, people are finding more spare time which they are spending with their loved ones.
Preparing homemade meals is one of the best ways to show your love for your dog. The article discusses the benefits of homemade dog meals in detail.
1. Fresh ingredients with best nutritional value
Homemade dog food has an advantage of fresh ingredients which means you get all the possible nutritional value out of the food items. Fresh also means the food is in its best state of smell and taste too. A big plus for yummy dog food recipes.
Since fresh food are not processed yet so they preserve their nutritional value too. Commercial dog food on other hand go through high temperature processing in which they lose a lot of their nutritional value.
Consider this: The availability of Cysteine essential amino acid drops 15% in chicken when it is prepared with retorted way of cooking as compared to just steaming.
2. Full control on quality and type of ingredients
You can exercise full control on the quality of ingredients you choose. And also, you can mix and feed as much variety of ingredients as you wish. Both have their advantages.
Variety ensures you do take care of your dog's nutritional and taste needs. Why should only humans have all the fun ?
Full control on quality means you may not only procure high quality food but ensure the meal is gluten free, GMO free, grain free and what not. On other hand, there is no way to check the quality of ingredients in commercial dog food. We need to trust the brand and pay high prices for the same.
If not all, most of the low or average quality commercially sold kibbles use plant based or animal by-product as major source of proteins. Also, these commercial dog food are generally filled with filler which make your dog feel full but do not fulfill their nutritional requirements.
3. Highly customizable as per dog's needs
Homemade dog food are highly customizable as per your dog's needs. So, if you have a dog who is picky eater, you can make meals as per your dog's liking. Customized homemade can be prepared for their therapeutic application also. For example, dog with diabetes type 1 should be fed moderate protein, low fat, and high levels of complex carbohydrates and fiber.
Now, one can always buy kibbles for diabetes or subscribe to vet provided food. But don't we know how much they cost? This can be economically done at home with some efforts.
4. Safety
Fresh meat items do require proper handling and safety measures but it is not something that cannot be done. Anyways, we do it for ourselves. So, why not for our dogs?
5. Cost
Depending on your sourcing of meat and other products, the cost of homemade dog food may vary. However it can never compete with mass produced low quality kibbles in cost and convenience.
There is always a little extra price we pay for good habits and high quality. I feel it is worth in case of high quality homemade dog food.
6. Emotional benefits
Our dogs can feel the love which go behind preparing homemade meals. With 100,000 better smelling than us, they can smell you in their food. That helps build a better emotional connect with your dog.