For the sake of trademark legalities, we shall refer to this “keto mix dog food” as Dr.H “p”
This has been a long overdue project of mine to fully explain to members WHY this product is not all its chalked up to be. There are NO shortcuts in doing a PROPER Raw Fed, Properly balanced Ketogenic Diet for your dog. If we want maximum results we have to be willing to roll up our sleeves, take the extra effort, step outside our comfort zone sometimes.
First and Foremost. This product is not a dog “FOOD”, it does not create a balanced meal. it is nothing more than a base mixture to use IN a meal. I can’t stress this enough. I see it all the time where pet owners are referring to this stuff in sense that its “dog food”. It’s only a base mix
General rule of thumb is ANYTIME you see a “recipe” that allows you to “mix and match” or swap/substitute ingredients, run for the hills because this is NOT a balanced diet. Each food ingredient contains it’s own unique micro nutrient profile. i.e. beef does not contain the same nutrients as chicken, olive oil differs from butter so on and so forth.
It also advises that you can feed either raw or cooked protein. The issue here is that the nutritional macros on calories change between cooked and raw. 10oz of cooked chicken is not equal to the same calories as 10oz of raw chicken. If I were to substitute 10oz of raw 90/10 ground beef for 10 oz of cooked 90/10 ground beef, that can be almost 150 calorie difference right there. That’s a pretty big swing considering dog diets are calculated on a 1,000 calorie scale. So one could be either overfeeding or underfeeding when we lose tract of things like this. Now, if we take into account the differences between red meat and poultry, we can have a HUGE swing in calorie differences in the overall meal between whether or not we’re using poultry or red meat. So we really have no idea if the dog is getting the right amount of daily calories that it should!
So if we’re following feeding guidelines for a product that are allowing you to arbitrarily mix and match whatever foods you wish, we know right from the start that this is not an accurate way of feeding our canine companion.
Another key point is that this mix does NOT make the diet properly balanced. Nowhere on the website or packaging does it claim your dogs meals will be balanced to meet AAFCO min nutrient standards. This could be easily overlooked by a pet parent !
It’s downright misleading. They use phrases such as “(it) can work with a Ketogenic diet”
followed by another sentence stating “Holistic vets agree that a low-carb or Ketogenic diet may be helpful in the management of canine cancer” Now, I don’t know about you, but to me they are blurring the lines a little bit here. Twinkies can work with a ketogenic diet too if we throw them in the trash bin
statements such as “…..which makes an ideal foundation for a nutritionally complete Ketogenic diet.” this is simply untrue as we’re pointing out in our examples here. They’re choosing their words very carefully. Sure, it make “make” for an “ideal foundation” if you’re well versed at formulating canine diets and know exactly how to use this stuff. But based on the very loose guidelines give, you will absolutely NOT get a “nutritionally complete Ketogenic diet”
But lets go one step further and actually get down to the nitty-gritty and see where this product falls into place in comparison to what we really want out of a therapeutic Raw Ketogenic Diet.
Sadly, the majority of dog owners looking to put their dog on a ketogenic diet are doing so because of cancer. That being said, we want to be using a 2:1 ketogenic ratio (2 parts fat for every 1 part protein+net carb).
So, following this products feeding instructions listed on their website for a 50lb dog they advise 4-5 scoops of their product, 3.5-4 scoops of water, 8-10 oz of protein so for our experiment lets pick 10 oz, and 4 teaspoons of oil.
So, lets choose Chicken breast and we’ll use olive oil as our pick for the oil.
After crunching all the data, analyzing all the micronutrient content* of this product combined with the micronutrient content of the chicken and olive oil this is where we wind up:
Ketogenic ratio .2:1 yes, that’s right .2:1 this doesn’t even come close to where we want to be with our ketogenic ratio. In fact, its 10x lower than what we would want.
let me repeat that. It comes in 10x lower of a ketogenic ratio than we would be using in this group.
So what does this mean to the layman who may not be up to speed on all the keto “lingo”?
It means we’re feeding way more protein than we’d want and we’re feeding way less fat than we would want.
And why does this matter? well, for cancer we want to restrict protein and increase fat. Or even in the case of a dog with epilepsy for example, we would want to restrict protein and feed more fat
Sadly, Following this products suggestions we are doing exactly the opposite of that
Net Carbs: 29.93% total dry matter net carbs of this recipe. This is about SIX TIMES higher than where our net carbs would typically be with our home prepared version of a ketogenic diet! SIX TIMES HIGHER!
Now lets move down the list of all of our vitamin and mineral levels of the diet*
-Iron levels are almost triple where we’d want them to be
-Copper levels are almost double where we’d want them to be
-Manganese levels are double what is advised
-Zinc levels are just BARELY meeting min levels by a mere .07mg way too close
-Iodine levels do not meet min levels
-Selenium levels do not meet min levels
-Vitamin D levels do not meet min levels
-Vitamin E levels do not meet min levels
-B12 levels do not meet min levels
-Folic acid levels do not meet min levels
-Choline levels do not meet min levels
-Linoleic Acids are just meeting min levels and should be much higher
-EPA&DHA do not meet our standards either
(just how important are all of these nutrients in a dogs diet? click here for more details)
And I know there will be pet owners who may say “I’ve fed this and my dog loves it and did great” , and that my be true. But the same can be said for any numbers of unbalanced home prepared diets. Take for example a dog thats been fed kibble its entire life, now that dog is switched to a fresh raw food diet. In almost every situation the dog will show improvements. but it doesn’t negate the fact that the diet still isn’t right. And following this companies very loose guidelines under the pretense that you’re on your way to feeding a ketogenic diet, is VERY misleading. To quote their website they make claims of just how simple this all is, “makes it easy and safe to prepare fresh meals in a matter of minutes” it may be “easy” but it isn’t accurate.
The Ketogenic Dog Group strives for much more accurate ways of feeding keto we do not take short cuts. Either do it 100% right or don’t do it at all is my motto.
The bottom line is that this product is misleading to unsuspecting pet owners who may not know all these details, and it does not fall within the standards of feeding an Accurate Raw Ketogenic Diet for our Canine Companions.
When we know better, we can do better!
*All nutrient levels of our example recipes were calculated based on nutritional information provided by Dr.Harvey’s for their product combined with the nutrient data supplied by USDA for the food items used.
KetoPoweredK9.com 