The Sure Way to Balance Your Dog's Homemade Food
To celebrate the launch of the new pet site, bark & whiskers, we're reintroducing one of my proudest accomplishments that takes the guess work out of creating healthy meals from scratch for your dog. As a special bonus, here are five new recipes to help you get started.
Analysis by Dr. Karen Shaw Becker
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STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- To celebrate the launch of the new pet site, bark & whiskers, I’m thrilled to announce a reintroduction of one of my proudest accomplishments: Meal Mix for Dogs and the online recipe formulator
- Fresh, whole food provides most of the nutrients that dogs need, and a micronutrient vitamin/mineral blend like Meal Mix for Dogs takes care of deficiencies that may exist in preparing homemade meals for your pet
- Meal Mix is designed to be part of a total diet plan with recipes and ideas for feeding your dog a variety of healthy, balanced homemade meals
- The accompanying online recipe formulator allows for lots of nutritional variety and works wonderfully for both dogs with no dietary restrictions, as well as those who need to avoid certain foods or ingredients
Today I'd like to talk about a very exciting feature of my new bark & whiskers site: Meal Mix for Dogs, and the online recipe formulator.
With the help of expert fresh food formulator Steve Brown, I developed Meal Mix for Adult Dogs because I know that as a dedicated pet parent passionate about your animal companion's health, you want to provide your canine family member with high-quality, fresh, real food. Since this can be easier said than done, Meal Mix for Dogs gives you the tools you need to effortlessly create high-quality, nutritionally optimal homemade meals for your adult dog(s).
Many homemade and prey-model diets and some commercially available raw diets are nutritionally incomplete. This can cause your pet to become deficient in the correct amounts of important minerals and vitamins, antioxidants, or the right fatty acid balance for skeletal, organ and immune health.
A considerable amount of research has gone into determining what nutrients dogs need to survive, and there is ample evidence showing what happens when they are deprived of the full range of critical nutrients necessary for cell growth, repair, and maintenance.
Fresh, whole food provides most of the nutrients that dogs need, and a micronutrient vitamin/mineral blend like Meal Mix for Dogs takes care of deficiencies that may exist. If you opt not to use supplements, you must add in whole food sources of these nutrients, which requires additional money, creativity, and math.
If you're preparing a homemade diet for your pet, I can't emphasize enough the importance of ensuring it's nutritionally balanced. Making your dog's food from scratch requires you to ensure you're meeting macro and micronutrient requirements. This can be so intimidating that many pet parents never diversify their dog's bowl, which research says is one of the poorest decisions for long-term health.
How Meal Mix for Dogs + the Updated Online Formulator Works
In a nutshell, Meal Mix is a human-grade vitamin and mineral blend that helps take the guesswork out of preparing fresh food for your adult dog. Even better, you can use it with the recipes and feeding instructions provided through the updated online recipe formulator to prepare a variety of customized, nutritionally balanced meals.
Just go to Meal Mix for Dogs, type the requested information into the online formulator (e.g., your dog's weight and activity level), customize your recipe by adding vegetables and/or starches if you'd like, and the formulator will generate a recipe, preparation instructions, and suggested feeding directions. You can also choose from pre-made recipes, if you don't know where to start.
The beauty of Meal Mix for Dogs plus the recipe formulator is that used together, they take the guesswork out of preparing homemade food for your adult dog. All you need to do is add a pre-measured packet of Meal Mix to a measured amount of any raw or gently cooked meat, add veggies if you like, and you have a perfectly balanced homemade meal for your dog.
If your budget is tight or your veterinarian has advised cutting back on the amount of protein in your dog's diet, you can add a source of carbohydrates, such as sweet potatoes, quinoa, or rice.
Sample Recipes Using Meal Mix for Dogs
With Meal Mix for Dogs and the recipe formulator, you're in complete control of every nutritious, delicious morsel that goes into your dog's body. The following are previews (note: these are not complete recipes) of a few of the meals generated by the formulator.
Meal Mix is designed to be part of a total meal plan with recipes and ideas for feeding your dog a variety of healthy, balanced homemade meals.
The recipe formulator meal plans allow for lots of nutritional variety and work wonderfully for both dogs with no dietary restrictions, as well as those who need to avoid certain foods or ingredients. For example, you can create a novel protein diet for a dog with food sensitivities, or a limited ingredient diet for dogs with health issues such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), food allergies, or to create diets using 100% organic ingredients.
We’re celebrating bark and whisker’s Nutrition Week with an exciting giveaway! One lucky pet parent will be picked from each of our social media channels every day from January 16 to 22. To get a chance to win amazing prizes for your pet, all you have to do is follow our official Facebook, Instagram or Twitter page and check out the mechanics for each platform.
Today's Pet Video:
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