What is the BARF Diet?
The BARF (or barf) diet is a diet designed by Dr. Ian Billinghurst for feeding some domestic animals, including dogs, cats and ferrets (the latter two, obliged carnivores).
The barf diet falls into the Raw Feeding category and is based on the selection of foods that are NOT cooked and contain a "physiological" quantity of fifth quarter (bones and offal).
Specifically, the barf diet consists of:
- 60-80% of bones with meat pulp (meat up to 50%), for example chicken neck, carcass, wings and legs.
- 20-40% from fruits and vegetables, offal, meat, eggs and dairy products.
Premise
Bones, Organs and Skin Do Well
In truth, the fifth quarter should be further classified according to the purpose in:
- Food (especially non-commercial meat organs and cuts).
- Industrial (hair, horns, integuments, etc.).
Referring to veterinary feeding, this distinction is conceptually wrong.
It is the animal itself that has to choose what to eat or discard, regardless of the economic interests that gravitate around the food and veterinary industry.
Moreover, let's not forget that carnivores have evolved to digest any animal tissue (in the right proportions, we mean).
Wild predatory mammals (such as felines and canids), especially small or medium-sized ones, do not leave leftovers or do so only marginally. The reasons are two:
- With a scarce availability of food, they always optimize the relationship "energy spent with hunting / energy acquired through predation".
- Leftovers relate only to the excessive size of the meal. In nature, this almost never happens, because hunting large prey always involves an increased risk of injury. Furthermore, advanced food tends to deteriorate and is often stolen by other animals. By being able to choose, lone hunters choose to target many smaller victims instead of just one big one. The gregarious species can behave in the opposite way.
In short, in the right quantities, the fifth quarter is considered an integral part of the diet of the mammalian hunters.
Only exception
These conditions are valid ONLY for wild animals, while small domestic carnivores are often fed with large portions of meat obtained from animals much larger than normal (pork, beef, horse, tuna, ostrich, etc.).
With these raw materials, it is inevitable that the diet of the domestic carnivore entails a significant difference.
These are: horns, bones, nails, skin, feathers, fins, scales, etc. from large animals that are not the natural preys of small and medium-sized domestic carnivorous mammals.
Often, certain components of the fifth quarter are worked in such a way as to increase the palatability (especially for chewing) and preservation; the most used methods are grinding and cooking.
From the chemical nutritional point of view, these devices have the advantage of increasing the edible part of large preys, but at the same time they have the disadvantage of sacrificing certain useful nutrients (amino acids, vitamins, etc.).
BARF principles
The Viewpoint of the BARF thread
Supporters of the method believe that the Barf Diet is a natural diet.
Compared to commercial food and also to cooked meat, bones, raw meat and organs are richer from a nutritional point of view.
A "raw" food program, that is natural, gives the animal several health benefits including:
- Healthier mantle.
- Clean and strong teeth.
- Not bad breath
- Reduction of the risk of overweight, metabolic diseases or organ failure (diabetes, kidney disease, etc.).
The Criticism
Those who dispute the barf system state that it can increase the risk of:
- Nutritional imbalance.
- Intestinal or other intestinal tracts.
- Food poisoning and parasitosis (also zoonoses transmissible to humans)
In this sense, contraindications could overcome the advantages.
The claim that barf food can be intrinsically better as natural has been challenged above all by commercial promoters of pet food (they may have acted out of economic interest).
objectively
The number of veterinarians supporting the adequacy of the barf diet is constantly increasing.
In 2014, in the United Kingdom, the "Raw Feeding Veterinary Society" (RFVS) was founded, an organization that organizes conferences or discussions concerning nutrition and other topics related to veterinary medicine.
The advantages offered by the barf diet are incontrovertible; no one who has experienced the method for an adequate time can argue the opposite.
Regarding the disadvantages, we must remember that:
- The risk of nutritional imbalance is easily reduced by the distribution of muscle, fat, organs, bones and skin in suitable quantities.
- The risk of perforations exists only for animals that have NEVER eaten bones and therefore cannot chew them. In this case it is good practice to initially avoid those of birds, fish bones and pieces too large that can be progressively increased. It is possible to grind them but in this case the beneficial effect of chewing on the health of the teeth is waived.
- As far as food diseases are concerned, it is sufficient to use products deriving from certified and NON-wasted farms. It is possible to buy and freeze them.
Why avoid Commercial Food?
Commercial food, especially for cats and ferrets, can be harmful.
According to the experience of many veterinarians, pathologies most frequently found in felines owe much of their onset to the consumption of dry food, rich starchy flours (cereals, legumes and tubers) and unhygienic.
The problems in question are:
- Overweight.
- Diabetes.
- Caries.
- Blocks of the urinary tract.
- Cystitis.
- Kidney stones.
- Inflammatory diseases of the intestine.
- Tumors.
Let us not forget that obliged carnivores (such as cats and ferrets) are not predisposed to the correct digestion of plant foods and proteins in particular.
Furthermore, the organism of these creatures regulates blood glucose autonomously without the need to introduce carbohydrates with foods that, being in excess, cause various diseases.
Most people believe that anyone can benefit from cooking in terms of digestibility; indeed, although this has a denaturing effect (see the article "Cooking Protein") on proteins, it seems to negatively change the smaller structures, ultimately hindering the digestion of some animals for cats 1.
Furthermore, cooking inactivates the amino acid taurine which is essential for the cat. Feeding it only with cooked meat not added in taurine dramatically increases the risk of the animal becoming seriously ill2.
Bibliography
1 Heat Processing Changes the Protein Quality of Canned Cat Foods as Measured with a Rat Bioassay - Hendriks, WH; MMA Emmens; B. Trass; JR Pluske (1999) - (PDF) J. Anim. Sci. 77 (3): 669–76. PMID 10229363. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
2 CALL OF THE WILD Amy Graves, The Boston Globe. March 16, 2003.
