Why your pet needs digestive enzymes
In the wild an animal’s diet contains: protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, probiotics and enzymes– at every meal. To keep our pets healthy and thriving, we give them the best quality pet food we can find. (For more information, see our last post, What Nutrients Do My Pets Need?) How can we make that commercially manufactured food more like their natural prey type diet? Just replace what is missing, the enzymes!
Why Add Digestive Enzymes To Your Pet’s Food
With a quality commercially cooked pet food you can give your pet all the nutrients needed, but ALL cooked food like kibble, canned, roll or home cooked meals have no enzymes to digest that food like a natural raw meal. A pet’s digestive system is not set up to digest cooked food at all. A dog’s saliva does not even contain any amylase to digest starches like we humans do.
Digestive enzymes break down food in the stomach which makes the food easier to absorb and they continue all the way through the intestinal tract. When the food is completely digested, the body is able to absorb nutrients from the food more completely. This makes for a better nourished and healthy pet. Without enzymes we could be forcing our pet to process a lot of unnecessary calories just to get the basic nutrition. This can make the pets pancreas work overtime needlessly.
There’s another component involved to make cooked pet food more like a natural prey type diet. Stay tuned to find out what it is and how your pet can benefit from it.
