Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat
- ISBN13: 9781439166420
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Human nutrition expert and author of the critically acclaimed What to Eat, Marion Nestle, Ph.D., M.P.H., has joined forces with Malden C. Nesheim, Ph.D., a Cornell animal nutrition expert, to write Feed Your Pet Right, the first complete, research-based guide to selecting the best, most healthful foods for your cat or dog. A comprehensive and objective look at the science behind pet food, it tells a fascinating story while evaluating the range of products available … More >>
Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat
This is an excellent book, but not at all what I expected. What I wanted was a practical guide about how to read labels and how to decide which dog food to buy for my dog (as well as a discussion of diet-related health issues). What I got instead was an academic study about the pet food industry (with the history of tainted food, etc), common industry practices and a discussion about the regulatory framework for pet food and labeling. These are all worthy subjects, but not particularly relevant to the questions I face: am I feeding the right dog food to my dog? The good news is that Chapter 26 does summarize the most important points of the book: that most commercial pet foods are adequate and appropriate, and they are pretty much alike (nutritionally speaking). Nestle’s final conclusion is that the diet you provide for your pet should depend more on your own values than on nutritional needs (because most commercial pet food is adequate). i got more out of that chapter than the rest of the book. That said, I appreciate Nestle’s description of ingredients and food labeling requirements. But I was surprised that Ms. Nestle does not talk about climate change in this discussion. (There is a spurious meme going that pet ownership leaves a carbon footprint equivalent to owning an SUV; I’ve seen it debunked several times — most recently by Clark Williams-Derry on the Grist website). If the authors were going to talk about pet food production, wouldn’t it have a good idea to address the climate change issue more directly?
As a reference guide, this book is very useful — especially Appendix 1 which gives facts and figures about the pet food industry. Chapter 3 gives a discussion of which nutrients are needed by animals (Omega 3s, vitamins, etc?). I am satisfied with Nestle’s conclusion that a vegetarian diet is not harmful for your pet. I would have liked more practical advice about pet behavior– i.e., is it stressful for a pet to switch pet foods? Under what circumstances should you switch the pet food for pets? Nestle went out of her way to state that her credentials are in nutrition and industrial science rather than being a pet expert. That’s unfortunate, because I suspect that an animal expert might have shed more insight into the behavioral problems associated with diet.
By the way, I read this as an ebook on my ipad. The formatting for all the tables was completely messed up! (annoying, but not terrible).
IN SUMMARY, an in-depth academic treatment of the pet food industry. This may give more detail than most pet owners will want to read. But as a reference guide, it’s excellent, and Chapter 26 is a must-read chapter.
Rating: 4 / 5
The authors of this book clearly don’t understand the difference between human-grade ingredient dog foods and dog foods that use by-products. This book is highly misleading. A much better resource on this topic is “The Whole Dog Journal”, which is a great magazine that reviews dog foods annually and does not contain any advertisement.
Rating: 1 / 5
Whether you’ve got two legs or four, nutrition professor Dr. Marion Nestle is a stickler for good science who sifts through studies, fads and theories and diligently analyzes labels to get to the truth about what constitutes an optimum diet, as New York Times’ health columnist Jane Brody recently noted in her review entitled “The Truth About Cat And Dog Food.” If you truly want to understand your dog or cat’s nutritional needs, read this engaging, painstakingly researched book with the same open-minded, inquisitive spirit in which Dr. Nestle and co-author Malden Nesheim evaluated all the commercial pet foods on the market, along with the DIY, made-from-scratch alternatives.
Sure to please populists and ruffle some feathers on the fringe, Feed Your Pet Right refuses to prescribe a dogmatic, one-kibble-suits-all formula.
Nestle and Nesheim, who holds master’s and doctoral degrees in animal nutrition and is professor emeritus of nutritional sciences at Cornell University, teamed up to delve into the origins of the commercial pet food industry (worth roughly $20 billion annually), how it’s evolved, and where it stands today. Nestle and Nesheim assess studies, marketing hype, and anecdotal evidence; scrutinize pet food production firsthand; and explore the disturbingly cozy relationship between pet food manufacturers and veterinarians.
You may be surprised to learn that from a purely nutritional perspective there’s not much difference between the premium pet food brands that command top dollar and the cheap stuff on the shelves at big box chains. My own smug expectations were thwarted; I was counting on this book to give me the ammunition I needed to prove to my friend who feeds her precious purebred a cheap brand of dog chow that she was doing her Cavalier King Charles a royal disservice.
Nestle, who never hesitates to take on the big food companies over practices and products that she finds dubious, was surprised herself. “We expected to be appalled by the contents of commercial foods,” Nestle and Nesheim admit. And, as they note, some truly unappetizing ingredients once found their way into the four-legged food chain, including road kill, euthanized pets, and wild horses. More recently, we had the melamine scandal, as documented in Pet Food Politics, Nestle’s previous book.
But though Nestle and Nesheim acknowledge that today’s low-budget chow compares pretty favorably with the pricier boutique brands, they also observe that there are many other factors to consider that have less to do with nutrition than with the desire to purchase products that reflect our own preferences. As the authors note:
“We prefer our own foods to be natural and organic; free of pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones; and fairly, humanely, sustainably, and locally grown and raised. And we are willing to pay more for our food to support those values. You too may be willing to pay more for pet food to accommodate your own value system, personal dietary preferences, or lifestyle.”
Nestle and Nesheim also note that commercial pet food provides a valuable ecological benefit, since the pet food industry relies primarily on the by-products of our own consumption of animal products that would otherwise go to waste.
But what if your own values compel you to choose a vegetarian diet for your pets as well as yourself? That’s OK, according to the authors, as long as you ensure that your dog or cat’s food includes all the necessary nutrients (which is somewhat trickier for cats than for dogs, but eminently do-able.)
Would you rather make your pet’s food from scratch so you can control the ingredients and eliminate packaging waste? That’s fine, too; there’s an entire chapter on how to cook for your dog or cat that eliminates any mystery about how to meet their nutritional needs.
Like What To Eat, Nestle’s indispensible guide to human nutrition, Feed Your Pet Right makes it easy to look up whatever aspect of dog or cat nutrition you care to research. It’s a thoughtful, honestly written reference guide, complete with useful charts and some satirical cartoons thrown in for levity, that provides all the information you need to choose wisely from a wide range of options.
Rating: 5 / 5
I have read “What to Eat” and loved it. I was excited to read this book as well. Unfortunately, it did not deliver. I have a degree in Animal Science and agree that by-products are not what a lot of people think. Unfortunately, they are not always handled properly before being turned into dog food. The other thing is they did say that studies have not been done on the bioavailability of some ingredients. So if the company is using feathers to up the crude protein level, it is false because the dogs and cats cannot make use of that protein. I have had dogs for over 20 years. I have fed Ol’ Roy when I couldn’t afford anything else and those dogs did not do as well as the dogs that have been fed recommended foods from the Whole Dog Journal. While they made some correct assumptions, they also fell very short of the mark on others. And, your dog and especially your cat do need more protein than you do. Poultry and hogs are more in line with our protein needs. Having said that, I do not agree with only feeding dogs meat. Dogs in the wild are scavangers and eat more than just meat.
Rating: 1 / 5
I have read Marion Nestle’s Bark Magaizine articles and her “Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine” and I had very high expectations for this book. I was disappointed. While I appreciate all of the scientific data that the authors have dug up and reported on, their conclusions make me wonder if they were maybe getting some kickbacks from the pet food industry. I have fed many different dogs several different dog foods (dry) over the years and am very well-educated on dog food. I can assure you that they are not all the same! Some dog foods left my dog’s dull and lehthargic, while others (the stuff usually labeled super premium) with “Whole Dog Journal”-approved ingredients have made my dogs so much healthier with very healthy coats and less poo in the back yard.
I am also a dog trainer by profession and have had several client’s dogs change almost overnight from hyperactive to focussed simply by switching them from Pedigree, Beneful, and the like to a higher quality food. Shame on Nestle and Nesheim for not noticing or bothering to explore that aspect of pet foods. Asking owners how their dogs performed on each category of food should have been the first place to start!
I don’t understand how a lack of scientific evidence could lead to some of their conclusions- things such as how it doesn’t really matter which diet you feed your dog (dry, canned, home-cooked, raw, etc)- but they admit no one has done a study comparing these diets. Lack of research should lead to a lack of a conclusion not the conclusion that they are equal!!!
Crystal, CPDT-KA
Rating: 3 / 5