Question: In the video, you indicate that pH is important for the dog's digestion process; isn't that the same as for people, that too low pH gives heartburn?

Answer: No, absolutely not! The dog's carnivore stomach should have a pH as low as 1 or 2 - compared to 5 in our stomach and 7 being neutral. This means that the concentration of acid in the dog's stomach is 10,000-100,000 greater than in our stomach! This calls for a completely different chemistry. The digestive enzymes in our stomach would not work in a dog stomach, and vise versa. It also means that dogs don't contract diseases and infections and parasites through their stomach! Most of those bugs will simply die when exposed to such strong acid. This is why dogs can eat garbage that would, literally, make us sick.

 

Question: Why do you insist on serving the food raw?
Isn't it much more safe to cook it?

Answer: No, by cooking, you chemically change many of the fundamental nutrients so they become indigestible for the dog, so by serving cooked food all the time, you malnourish your companion…

There are at least 30 fundamental nutrients known that are just as important for the dog (and for your cat) as vitamins are for you, yet these nutrients get destroyed as soon as they get heated even slightly. The real problem with these nutrients (often called "missing links") is that we know about 30 of them - but there is no way of telling how many there really are, so you cannot solve the problem by adding those few we do know of….

The best reference I can give for this is Pottenger's famous study from 1932-42. It is titled "POTTENGER'S CATS" (ISBN 0-916764-06-0) and is available from:

Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Inc.
P.O.Box 2614
La Mesa, CA 91943-2614
Phone (619) 574-7763
Fax: (619) 574-1314.

I remember paying about $10 for my copy - and it is most certainly worth it! Even though Pottenger worked with cats and demonstrated very clearly that they thrive far better on raw food than on cooked food, there should be left no doubt in your mind that the principles are the same for dogs, even though a comparable study never has been done. Pottenger was thrown into his study by accident when he could not get fuel for cooking, but I would have a hard time doing a similar experiment with dogs, knowing what kind of suffering they would have to go through by being feed exclusively cooked food… And remember this: all kinds of kibble or canned dog food have been cooked at some point in the processing…

If you want to dig into the chemistry behind this, I wrote this little article about digestion and how cooking interferes with it. It is written in a way that also a non-chemist can understand - it is truly not a scientific mystery!