What do think of this diet on Oprah today?
- Thread starter Barb04
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2006
- Messages
- 80
- Likes
- 0
- Points
- 0
Of Carnivores, Omnivores, Teeth, and Science
There are two ways to look at the issue of diet for a species.
03 November 2004
I call one of them the empty bowl method. You ask yourself what you need to fill that bowl with to assemble all the nutrients that the species needs and will thrive on, and then you do your best to get all those various substances together in the right amounts and make it palatable. This is the method used to formulate kibble.
I call the other the evolutionary model. You ask yourself what the species evolved eating during times of abundant habitat and high reproductive rates, and then seek to reproduce that.
In the real world, people tend to fall somewhere between those two approaches, with most landing very, very far over toward the "empty bowl" method, and those of us in the holistic camp falling substantially closer to the evolutionary method end.
If we want to feed according to the evolutionary method, we have to ask some basic scientific questions:
What species is the dog? What animal's evolutionary history do we look at to determine its natural diet? (And by the way, "natural diet" is not a marketing term, it's a scientific term meaning the diet the species eats in the wild during times of abundant habitat and food supply, and without the intrusion of humans. In other words, just because bears raid trash cans does not make nacho cheese-smeared paper part of their "natural diet.")
In what ways did the natural diet change over time and geographically?
What non-diet elements, such as hibernation and normal activity levels, might interact closely with diet and thus impact our understanding of the data?
What effects do scientists observe as indicating poor habitat/food availability for this species? In other words, when researching this species, what things seem to happen that tell scientists there was trouble in paradise as far as food supply goes?
Taking dogs as our species in question, we have to answer, what species is the dog? Dogs are a domesticated variant of the grey wolf, canis lupus. Their taxonomical classification is canis lupus familiaris. They are the same species as the wolf. They can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. They are more similar by far to the wolf than any other canid species, such as the coyote or the fox.
Wolves, including the domesticated wolf we call the dog, are classified biologically as being in the order carnivora. There is absolutely, positively no scientific debate, dissension, or discussion on this issue. Why, then, do so many “experts” say the dog is an omnivore?
The only reason any "expert" would ever say a dog is an omnivore is because he or she is an "expert" in a field other than the taxonomy of a species. No wildlife biologist or zoologist would ever tell you a dog or wolf is not a carnivore. But pet food manufacturers will tell you dogs are omnivores, because to them, "omnivore" means an animal who can eat both animal and plant foods. The problem is, if that were the scientific definition of "carnivore," there would be no carnivores on this earth. Why, then, is there so much disagreement on this issue?
I believe it is because we don't share a common definition of our terms. Scientifically, the species of the dog is canis lupus familiaris. The dog is a grey wolf. The grey wolf is a carnivore. Those things are crystal clear in a scientific sense, but hearing this distresses many people, because they are using the more common meanings of those words, and in common usage, obviously a dog is not a wolf and they are not "carnivores." In common usage, a "carnivore" is an animal that eats only meat, and a wolf is a wild animal. And so we go round and round arguing, and getting nowhere.
Going back to our list of questions, we now look at the natural, evolutionary diet of the grey wolf. To do that, we look at the research and writings of the most respected, best-known wolf researcher in the world, David Mech. We crack open his book The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species, where we find that worldwide, all evidence tells us that the wolf, today and in the past, ate mostly large ungulates (deer, gazelle, and similar prey), with a small amount of hare and beaver filling in seasonally and regionally. They ate almost no vegetation, not even the stomach contents of their prey, although "almost none" is not "none."
Some carnivores eat a lot more vegetation than the wolf, and a few, such as the big cats, eat less. One carnivore eats only the trace amount of animal protein that comes with the bugs that live on the vegetation it eats... the panda bear. Pandas took an odd evolutionary turn as they adapted to their vegetarian diet, but this quirky adaptation has left them extremely vulnerable in their environment, and the only carnivorous mammal that literally eats every waking hour. They are an anomaly in their order, but they do go to show that the scientific definition of "carnivore" obviously is not the same as the popular definition, or a panda bear couldn't be a carnivore. More here:
http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2004/11/of_carnivores_o.html
MBG
There are two ways to look at the issue of diet for a species.
03 November 2004
I call one of them the empty bowl method. You ask yourself what you need to fill that bowl with to assemble all the nutrients that the species needs and will thrive on, and then you do your best to get all those various substances together in the right amounts and make it palatable. This is the method used to formulate kibble.
I call the other the evolutionary model. You ask yourself what the species evolved eating during times of abundant habitat and high reproductive rates, and then seek to reproduce that.
In the real world, people tend to fall somewhere between those two approaches, with most landing very, very far over toward the "empty bowl" method, and those of us in the holistic camp falling substantially closer to the evolutionary method end.
If we want to feed according to the evolutionary method, we have to ask some basic scientific questions:
What species is the dog? What animal's evolutionary history do we look at to determine its natural diet? (And by the way, "natural diet" is not a marketing term, it's a scientific term meaning the diet the species eats in the wild during times of abundant habitat and food supply, and without the intrusion of humans. In other words, just because bears raid trash cans does not make nacho cheese-smeared paper part of their "natural diet.")
In what ways did the natural diet change over time and geographically?
What non-diet elements, such as hibernation and normal activity levels, might interact closely with diet and thus impact our understanding of the data?
What effects do scientists observe as indicating poor habitat/food availability for this species? In other words, when researching this species, what things seem to happen that tell scientists there was trouble in paradise as far as food supply goes?
Taking dogs as our species in question, we have to answer, what species is the dog? Dogs are a domesticated variant of the grey wolf, canis lupus. Their taxonomical classification is canis lupus familiaris. They are the same species as the wolf. They can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. They are more similar by far to the wolf than any other canid species, such as the coyote or the fox.
Wolves, including the domesticated wolf we call the dog, are classified biologically as being in the order carnivora. There is absolutely, positively no scientific debate, dissension, or discussion on this issue. Why, then, do so many “experts” say the dog is an omnivore?
The only reason any "expert" would ever say a dog is an omnivore is because he or she is an "expert" in a field other than the taxonomy of a species. No wildlife biologist or zoologist would ever tell you a dog or wolf is not a carnivore. But pet food manufacturers will tell you dogs are omnivores, because to them, "omnivore" means an animal who can eat both animal and plant foods. The problem is, if that were the scientific definition of "carnivore," there would be no carnivores on this earth. Why, then, is there so much disagreement on this issue?
I believe it is because we don't share a common definition of our terms. Scientifically, the species of the dog is canis lupus familiaris. The dog is a grey wolf. The grey wolf is a carnivore. Those things are crystal clear in a scientific sense, but hearing this distresses many people, because they are using the more common meanings of those words, and in common usage, obviously a dog is not a wolf and they are not "carnivores." In common usage, a "carnivore" is an animal that eats only meat, and a wolf is a wild animal. And so we go round and round arguing, and getting nowhere.
Going back to our list of questions, we now look at the natural, evolutionary diet of the grey wolf. To do that, we look at the research and writings of the most respected, best-known wolf researcher in the world, David Mech. We crack open his book The Wolf: The Ecology and Behaviour of an Endangered Species, where we find that worldwide, all evidence tells us that the wolf, today and in the past, ate mostly large ungulates (deer, gazelle, and similar prey), with a small amount of hare and beaver filling in seasonally and regionally. They ate almost no vegetation, not even the stomach contents of their prey, although "almost none" is not "none."
Some carnivores eat a lot more vegetation than the wolf, and a few, such as the big cats, eat less. One carnivore eats only the trace amount of animal protein that comes with the bugs that live on the vegetation it eats... the panda bear. Pandas took an odd evolutionary turn as they adapted to their vegetarian diet, but this quirky adaptation has left them extremely vulnerable in their environment, and the only carnivorous mammal that literally eats every waking hour. They are an anomaly in their order, but they do go to show that the scientific definition of "carnivore" obviously is not the same as the popular definition, or a panda bear couldn't be a carnivore. More here:
http://www.doggedblog.com/doggedblog/2004/11/of_carnivores_o.html
MBG