Questions about Pottengers Work

[TonyaW]

I am reading Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine for a nutrition degree that I am working on. For those familiar with Pottenger's work, you know he did a 10 year study using cats. Some cats ate cooked meat, raw milk, and CLO. Other cats ate raw meat, raw milk and CLO. There were differing variable like some cats ate meats from grass fed cows and some from grain fed cows. Anyway, the cats that ate the cooked foods ultimately stopped reproducing in the 4th generation and had many problems which is paralleled with people eating a refined diet.

Here is what I don't understand: I don't know what cats generally ate during Pottengers time, but I do know that cats today eat dry, dead cat food. Why are cats still reproducing and quite effectively? As a previous cat owner, I know cats have problems now, but reproducing doesn't seem to be an issue.

[janinemh]

Maybe its similar to the processed foods that humans eat in that enough pet food products are fortified with vitamins that it staves off some of the worst symptoms of degeneration?

I definitely see some of the other symptoms of degeneration that Pottenger observed in our own cats.  We have one cat we nicknamed "Frances" because he has the pinched face, allergies and other symptoms of malnutrition.  We're currently in the process of switch all our cats to raw food.

[ghostlykisses]

 I know it is kind of off topic and I don't mean to hijack the thread but would you be willing to share how and what you are raw feeding your cats? Do you have any online resources for information on the subject? My pets never seem full from the commercial cat and dog foods. I know how to make homemade dog food and have read about that but I have never run across much information on homemade food or raw feeding cats.

[janinemh]

Right now, we are just chopping up whole chicken pieces with the skin and bones and adding some chopped organs (liver and hearts) and freezing them in ice cube trays for easy feeding.  We added some of their dry food to the first batch so that it smelled familiar.   I want to give them some raw fish as well at some point and maybe mix in the occasional raw egg.

I researched this a few years ago but we never fully committed---I remember any specific resources to reccomend but if you google raw pet food, I think you will find a lot of info.

[IsaFrench]

when I grew up we had a cat and most of her diet was raw liver which we would buy fresh and cut with cisors ... we would just need to action the cisors 3 times near the open kitchen window and the noise would make her be darting off from the various rooftops (that was inner city) she was lurking in to quickly come in near her plate ...

[TonyaW]

The raw diet for pets is called B.A.R.F.

[AJP]

It most likely is because of vitamin and mineral supplements in modern pet foods.  Not that it's ideal, but cooking (especially the extreme process involved in pet food production) destroys some nutrients that cats absolutely must have.  Taurine probably tops that list, and I've read numerous times people speculating that if Pottenger's cats eating cooked food had been supplemented with taurine then they would have taken longer to degenerate.

[tanyalynn]

Originally Posted by TonyaW 

The raw diet for pets is called B.A.R.F.

There are other models for raw pet feeding.  Another is a prey model, I've only read about doing it for dogs, but it doesn't include any vegetation.  rawfeeding is a yahoo group that uses that model.

[ghostlykisses]

 I did a little reading online and I have started to feed the cats mostly raw. My older cat is hesitant so I am giving him canned food or tuna with a small piece of the raw meat under it to get him into it. My younger cat has NO problem with the raw food, I had an extra beef bone that would not fit in my stock pot and I let him tear the meat off it before the dogs got it, he was in Heaven. He goes all primal and tears right into the meat like he has been doing it forever. They do not seem as "starved" all the time, very excited to eat but not acting like the want food all day.