Dr. Conor Brady, Nick, and Brendan answer listener questions about raw, dry, and cold-pressed pet diets. They discuss Clostridium perfringens and dysbiosis, whether frozen meat loses calories when thawed, and what they learned at the London Vet Show about fresh food advocacy.
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Good evening, everybody.
How are you all? How are you doing? How are you? I'm very good. How are you guys doing?
Yeah, good.
Thank you. I showed you this little— I showed you this smell thing that I've got in my room. So if I told you about all that already, it's backwards, my friend.
Ah, bloody hell. As always. I'm glad that it's like running a primary school after all our failures.
Mei Chang oil. Didn't you show us that a few weeks?
I saw that already. Okay, I'm plowing through it.
I'm using a lot.
It does smell gorgeous, yeah. And then you can kind of smell it off yourself when you leave the room. So I'm now going around like an incense burning hippie, and I love it. But like I said, nobody else in my family do, but I like it. I like it sitting there burning away. It's a nice little look, little elephant that's holding up a cup. But anyway, that's how I'm feeling. Sorry about the lateness, everybody. We are Raw Pet Medics, and you will find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics for those that can afford it. We do deeply appreciate, and we see you So price of a cup of tea or coffee keeps us going and doing our thing. But if you can't, don't worry, we're going to be here anyway. Anywhere you listen to your podcast, Facebook, YouTube, all that kind of stuff. Tonight is frequently asked questions because it's the last week of November, which means we're going into December already. Can you believe a whole other year is coming?
Christmas is coming.
What is the story? I just cannot believe it's the end of November. I mean, I remember thinking all the things I was going to have done by the end of this year, and I'm looking at my long to-do list, it's like, oh no, I'm knocking things off it now. But Yeah, do you set yourselves any, do you set yourselves things to do for the year when you go through New Year to January? Do you have your New Year's resolution kind of list?
Get through the day.
Get through the day, okay, right, nice.
Especially when it's so dark and grim for so, you know, that's the thing, isn't it? You get up in the morning to walk the dogs and it's just so dark outside.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's it. You can't even get a bit of a sunrise. It just doesn't.
Guys, remember your thingies.
Oh yeah, I'm live. You are?
Okay, I'm not.
Oh dear, sorry, sorry.
I put up a nice rising post yesterday just to stir the waters, as I like to do now and again. And it did, yeah. And the image I used was a man throwing a grenade. I'm not sure if anybody got that, but I put up a picture of a man throwing a grenade and I said, I would rather feed— I would rather eat. What's that say? Eat or feed? I'd rather eat or feed. A good dry rather than a bad raw.
Oh yeah, oh, I saw that.
Yeah, did you see that? Oh, that's great.
And that man with a grenade, I couldn't tell.
It was a posting ghost. I wasn't going to comment on anything. But here's my thinking, right? You've got two choices, right? You're locked in a room for 3 months, guys, right? And you have two choices. No, no, 6 months, 6 months. And you have two choices: a good quality dry, whatever we deem that to be, you know, who cares, you know, a good quality of dehydrated meat and organ and also, or a bad quality raw, let's say high fat, very high fat, intensively reared meat junk raw dog food product. Which do you think your dogs would do better on over 6 months, say 6 months? What would you rather feed in those two?
I'd say you may not see it in 6 months. If you did it 6 years, you would.
A year?
Okay.
Yeah, let's push it on 2 years. You don't push a dog on a high-fat raw or a dry with chelated minerals and a joint pack. He calls me— like a well-made dry versus—
is it, is it dry or is it dried meat? Because dry, I mean, kibble.
Well, you're right. Yeah, he cheated because he suddenly went, oh, maybe I'll cope with the food as a dehydrated.
I did have— I put dehydrated at the start. I said, I said maybe a cold-pressed. I will resort to a cold-pressed, which means a little bit of process, which means a heap of processing. I mean, it's it's pressure treated, and so they can lower the cooking temperature. Let's say cold pressed then, to throw it among the pigeons. Would you like to feed a good quality cold pressed if it exists, and against a high fat, low protein, intensively reared raw dog food product with no bells and whistles added to it?
And availability for my dogs to go and hunt themselves if they wanted to?
No, no, they're locked in a room for 2 years. They're locked in a room for 2 years. What would your answer be then?
I can imagine the pile of— from just me, let alone the dogs.
Yeah, which do you think would bestow quicker nutrition deficiency? Would it be the lack of the good stuff in the raw? I mean, as you shrink down that protein bit, as I keep trying to say to people.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's a big risk.
I think it kind of depends, but you'd have to give more detail on both diets, really.
Yeah, maybe I'll think this through a little more.
You're just painting big blotches and there's not a lot of clarity with what you were comparing.
I should have held up two products then. I should have designed two products. And said, pick and why do you pick? Okay. Yeah. That's what I'm going to do.
A list of 10 ingredients of each.
It annoyed people unnecessarily because I can see some people getting out. It's like, why did I do that?
Usually before Christmas, I've had enough. Why are you doing this to us, Conor?
Unfollow, unfollow. Conor Brady loves dry food.
Now only has 5 followers instead of 65,000.
Yeah. It's like that game, you know, take me out as your followers leave you. Oh, anyway. So that's the sort of stuff I do.
Are we going to do a year's review, say the week before Christmas? Something like that? Hang on. I think Christmas Day is on a Tuesday this year. Is that right?
It is. No, no. Wednesday. Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve is on the Tuesday. We're not going to do a show then, are we?
Come on. I can't even believe that was suggested.
Your kids are loving.
We've got children. So that's. That's a no.
No.
Okay. So the. So the— just before, let me see, that will be the 17th. Should we make that our Christmas show? Yeah, make it a Christmas show. Just review the year, what's been interesting, what's— what are we looking for in the new year, and all that kind of jazz.
Sounds good. Yeah, let's do that. A review of the year would be a review.
I'll put it in the diary.
You have to have some tinsel and some Christmas lights up. All right, so you'll make a little—
yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll make it all Christmasy.
Christmas episode. Okay, cool. That will be the 17th of December. Glad this is how we organize things, guys. Yeah, why not? So yeah, that would be good. I'm hoping to take 2 full weeks off this December. In fact, I want to take 2 and a half, maybe 3 weeks off this December because I work for myself and I want to be able to do this. So it's like, okay, can I have 3 weeks off this Christmas? And I think that's going to be—
Do you know what? I think what we'll do is we may need to get together and just pre-record a few things just so that we can give everybody some stuff. And then we can make sure you've got time with the kids. But all of our followers out there that want a bit of Christmas Eve RPM action, action. Yeah. Maybe we can dress up and sing some Christmas carols.
Interesting.
Okay.
I'll sing. You can dress up.
So we're going to have 3 weeks off over Christmas then, boys. I don't mind dipping in.
I don't mind dipping in with the lads. I just, I meant from work, work. I don't consider this work.
Oh, okay.
This is fun for me.
I think we can dip between Christmas and New Year. Yeah.
If one of them falls on an awkward day— look, we'll talk about this off air, guys. Let's get into some—
Edwin's already saying, don't forget the quiz. Oh, I'd say we should have done the quiz. Oh, we're gonna have to set somebody out there. One of our wonderful fans usually sends in a load of quiz questions.
Well, now we could put it to the fans because poor old Karen's having a hard time at the moment with the, uh, with the, um, the depots are just overrun with Black Friday and it is extremely complicated. Loading up depots, we've lost 2 boxes, and then it's hardcore. So Karen is under the kibosh at the moment. I'd hate to ask her to do a quiz. What do you guys ask?
Yeah, one of you guys, please, could somebody— not too difficult questions because otherwise Conor will cry. Yeah, he will when we beat him, when Brendan and I demonstrate our subject.
I have no subject. It used to be science would be my subject, but then I can't have that subject with here, so I don't know anything about sports.
You're allowed to design molecules, hold them up, and we'll tell you what they are. Conor will love that.
Yeah, but seriously, if somebody could do us a quiz, say 20 questions. Yeah, 20 questions.
Yeah, if everybody posts us in 5 questions, we could take 5, because only 5 or 6 people will actually do it. If everyone sends us in 5 questions, we'll be able to take— oh yeah, yeah, yeah, do that.
Very long quiz as a thousand people decide, oh, my questions can get get on. Yeah, actually, talking of Christmas, I did a little post just for those in case those people haven't actually read it on RPM Facebook page, did a little post. So Christmas lecture. So some of you may not know that there's a Christmas lecture, but the Royal Institution of Science, I think it is that way around.
Is it the Reith Lectures? The Reith Lectures?
Yeah, so they are this year going to be held by Chris van Tullochan on ultra-processed food. So it's all going to be about the impact of ultra-processed food. And just in case you want a leader into that, on BBC Two last night there was one of his things about why are ultra-processed foods so addictive, and that you can relate through obviously to our pets. So really worth a little bit of a watch if you want a heads up. He did a program, I think 2 or 3 years ago in the summer, I think, on ultra-processed foods and the issues around Nestlé sending up that ship through the Amazon and the impact on kids that that ultra-processed foods had. But this is like the follow-on and the real sort of insight. And he even names in the beginning of the program last night the impact not just on obesity, but actually on inflammation and cancers. Okay, and for people that don't understand, that's the severity that ultra-processed foods are. And actually, so many people haven't made that jump that we're talking about this all the time for ourselves, but we're not talking about it for our pets. So just last weekend, I was up in Edinburgh, great conference from the Faculty of Homeopathy, all about functional medicine. So invited loads of people across medicine in very many different sort of aspects of medicine to be talking about the impact of this. And there were so many people had just gone, we totally hadn't thought about it for our pets, you know, where people are, you know, talking about it for themselves and their own health. And then there's just sort of like, it was that click of, oh my God, you know, this is what we see. And what is the second, if not now the primary species in the in the world which is suffering from cancer, you know, it's pet dogs.
Yeah, that's it. Metabolic disease, isn't that right? So, and so doctors don't understand that, even, you know, they don't get the link between, let alone the dietary advice that if you come down with a bad diagnosis, you know, and all these different diseases can be treated, you know, not treat, well, require nutritional treatment because they're all, not all, but a very large majority, they're all inflammatory. Yeah, yeah.
And unfortunately, the dietary advice in so many of the national health institutions are still terrible, you know, with high-processed, high-carb diets for some of the most inflammatory of conditions. And it really needs a sea change, what's going on. Although I was pleased to hear— so going back to London Vet Show, because we said we'd talk a little bit about learnings from London Vet Show, and you know, the BVA position, as disappointing as that is, and as, you know, appalling to hear them state the comments that they did up there— and I'll touch on one of those— to hear a past BVA president who was not enamored with fresh foods sit in the audience and ask the question I was going to ask, saying, considering these days that we're hearing for our own health that we should be eating more and more fresh foods. And he asked this question, he said, oh my God, you know, why did the BVA not consider more positive information about fresh feeding for our pets? Okay, and the impact that that would have on them.
Hallelujah, that's fantastic.
So to hear that was great news. I think the next answer was really disappointing from somebody who was in the RCVS knowledge aspect. So she reviews papers that are coming in, and when people make requests for papers, she's sorting out what's, you know, what level of scientific sort of evidence they are and making sure that people are aware of the evidence that's out there. She'll help people with searches for, for evidence. Stated at this point in time, there was not enough evidence to show that fresh was better than the kibble foods.
It's an excuse.
Oh my God, that was just totally inaccurate. There's that— they've just not looked.
Yeah.
And also, we're back to that smoking argument of, you know, they've reversed it round. Of rather than us saying, you guys should be pro— you should be proving that kibble is better than fresh. Yeah, fresh is better than kibble.
The onus is not on us. It's your shitty product. You have to show the safety studies and nutritional prowess of your product. Not that we have to show you the harm, but that's the way it's always been since smoking and bottled milk and butter and eggs. Once they get that tarnish out there, that's it. It's up to us to prove— it's very hard to do because science is really expensive, very laborious, requires, you know, people that are really good at their job, but they're busy doing other things and getting paid to do it. So it's not easy to get that team together to build up enough research to win in usually courts. You know, it's very complicated. So it's very— that's why it takes so long to get these nasty— like, is aspartame good? And what is glyphosate? Is it actually bad for humans? Well, we're feeding billions and billions of pounds of it to ourselves. But, you know, so it's just, it's so convoluted and so much money is involved in making sure that the journals don't produce the goodies. It is, yeah, it's a very dark one that people aren't aware of. But to say there's not enough evidence, I mean, are we talking evidence? Are we trying to balance one side against the other? What I mean it's— that suggests that they have loads of evidence, you know what I mean? It's like, but you've got no evidence. It's, it's so annoying. It's just so annoying, isn't it?
Isn't it?
There's just so much to talk about.
And then, and then to go on from that, you know, sort of like being helping on a stand to talk about Raw, um, within that conference. I mean, it was a little bit quieter than normal, the conference overall, I think, or it was more spread out in the sense of it was a bigger hall I think they chose this year, which has sort of expanded the number of stands and everything that was in there. But obviously it then spreads everybody out, so it feels a little bit less crowded and everything else. But yeah, to stand on a stand and actually the queries and the people coming to, uh, the Bellerin Dukes stand— and I'll only advocate that because that was the only raw stand I could see there— there was fresh food stands. Catkins was quite busy. But for us to stand there, actually the positivity from people truly asking— there was one or two people that were challenging but actually were readily listening to the answers and willing to, you know, change their view, which was great. But there's lots of people coming to truly ask, you know, look, they're really interested in fresh feeding, you know, how would they get started, how do they get that across to to clients that they're willing to listen. So I was really pleased.
And did you get any grief, Brent? Did you get vets coming up saying, how can you possibly feed raw food? That's irresponsible and you're going to kill them?
You know what, over the two days we had three that I can think of that were quite vehement. You know, how can you possibly do this?
Right.
One was vegan. And actually, you know, truly advocated vegan food and was totally dismayed that we didn't have a vegan option and that, you know, it was that and I explained why, you know, and that it's not appropriate for cats and dogs and, you know, of course if we wanted to produce something for rabbits it would be biologically appropriate and that would be vegan but that's, you know, just the way of it. And then so many people of course do respect that even if they are vegan. They respect the need of their dogs and cats to require a meat diet, so they will go down there. I think from the other side, bacterial-wise, there was a couple of queries as to, you know, what the testing is like and that side of things, and then nutritionally, just understanding you know, balance, you know, balances through variety, the advocation for a variety of foods, not to stick to one thing. The risk of excess or deficiency comes from eating the same thing over and over again, and it doesn't individualize for the requirements both in the cycle of that individual, but also that that individual is separate from every one of its colleagues or, you know, other cohorts. So that actually to overcome that you've got to give some degree of variety. And, you know, although optimization is also there, you know, you've got to look at, as Conor was trying to allude to in a very complex fashion with his post, that actually these excess fat diets to build up calories can actually, you know, become nutritionally deficient. Of course, that's a complaint about modern foods, is that we've concentrated in farming and producing calories, calories but often at the expense of nutrition. And what does that mean? That it actually drives us to overeat because we are nutrient deficient. So we're there seeking further nutrients as one of the drivers for our hunger, and we're eating calorie-rich foods, and that creates its own metabolic dilemma. So, yeah, so look, you know, lots of information in a roundabout fashion there. So I think it's worth— we do need to get through to some questions, I think, because I've got one here, guys, if you fancy.
This is from Henrietta L, and she's— it's an interesting question. I haven't read the second part, but the first part is, does a raw diet create a favorable environment in the intestines for Clostridium perfringens, specifically alpha toxin and enterotoxin, to thrive? Is there research to support this assumption? Ah, now, and do you want the second part now? I'll give you the second part just to give me— may give us some context. Or would a raw diet in these cases be considered beneficial, as raw-fed dogs have a lower pH in the gut than kibble-fed dogs? Okay, there's quite a few little bits you can go at there, but let's do the first part first of all.
Well, that was the, the microbiome stuff was really interesting at London Vet Show as well. More London Vet Show, because, uh, the information coming through from many of the companies that are now doing microbiome research, um, and actually some of the research that was being shown in the lecture theaters. And I love the fact that FMT are now doing it the way that we have proposed it over the last couple of years of being conscious, using what they now call these gastric tubes that they'll tend to use, which are very much like lamb feeding tubes, that they create a soup and that, you know, they effectively are instilling it in a conscious dog through one of these tubes up into the upper colon, and that's simply that you can do it and you can repeat it every 7 days. They're even thinking that they need to reduce the primary bacterial overgrowth. However, the grating thing is they were considering using antibiotics to do that before they'd instill this, rather than actually using something like a Trantil to then repopulate a lowered bacterial overgrowth. So it was a bit disappointing to hear that little bit, but they did say 3 days of antibiotics can cause significant dysbiosis in dogs and even worse in cats. So they are absolutely advocating for diarrhea. Antibiotics is absolute last resort. Do not use that in any circumstances unless you are absolutely out of options. So, but coming back to then, Clostridium perfringens, see, really interesting that actually some of the Clostridiums are really important.
Yes.
So, you know, the— is it Hyeronellensis, which is the Clostridium that actually promotes change of your primary bile acids into second bile acids and act as an anti-inflammatory in your bowel. So they actually will reduce colitis. And if you don't have them, you're predisposed to colitic episodes. So, so that, that was one that was there that sort of like has pinged up. And that was both in one of the lectures and also in Biome 9's little lecture on research and stuff. Um, so, so But just in case, in case Bio-9 are listening, I loved your little presentation out on the sort of floor that they have, these little lecture theaters, just doing sort of 20-minute sessions. But it really grated on me when you showed the stomach as the area for all of the bacteria and everything to be in as a diagram, and then you move the stomach into the back end of the dog. Oh my God, it's almost like a grating.
I don't really like that. It must be a vet thing.
It was just anatomically just so gratingly incorrect that it was just— anyway.
I have a bit on Clostridium in the book, okay? And there's not a whole lot of studies on Clostridium in meat eaters, you know, and what's the normal level of Clostridium in a meat eater or a hyena or a vulture or cheetah? And, you know, how normal is it? You know, the biome of a vulture is hideous, it's dangerous. If you were to touch it, it would, you know, you will die quick. It's like trying to drink Ganges water. And because it suits them for the lifestyle they have. So it's quite a convoluted question because first of all Just as Bren was saying, I believe every species of bacteria has a benefit, bar the very tiny few that we have unfortunately snuck into the meat chain by feeding inappropriate foods to cows and sheep and chickens and inducing some pretty pathogenic E. coli and salmonella species. Although there's hundreds to thousands of them and most of them very beneficial to you, now they get a bad name because one or two species, because of our husbandry practices, So when it comes to Clostridium, there is some benefits to some Clostridium species. As Brian said, there's quite— there's a few different types. And also, I bet you in a few years they'll look back on Clostridium perfringens and say in tiny amounts, perhaps it has some benefits, uh, competitive exclusion, uh, and a few other bits and pieces pop up. Uh, the problem is when it grows out of whack, it releases these toxins and whatnot. And a tiny bit of Clostridium is enough for anybody. If that grows in numbers, it can it'll toxify you, it'll make you sick. And so if, and perhaps if you're on a meat diet, that will be a thing. But there's only one good study comparing raw and dry-fed dogs, and they looked at hundreds of dogs and they found that the raw-fed dogs had Clostridium in there, but they didn't tell you what the other dogs were eating. But if they weren't raw, we assumed they were dry-fed, and all those had Clostridium too. So we know dry-fed dogs are walking around with Clostridium too. Didn't your vet tell you So if your vet was— I'm not saying, Henrietta, this came from your vet, but if vets were really genuinely concerned about Clostridium, you wouldn't have a cat in the house because these eat prey animals. And so you're going to be picking up these bits of this bacteria. They eat poo, they lick each other. Like, this is quite a normal part of a biome for these animals. It's when it gets out of whack. So it's suddenly a dysbiosis. Well, why did you have a dysbiosis? It's not the diet's fault. It's like, how did this happen? So I believe that Clostridium, like all the rest of the bacteria, probably gets a bad name because when it grows in a certain situation it can cause trouble because of these toxins that are being released. But it's to say that raw food is causing that— and by the way, only one case of drug-resistant Clostridium perfringens has ever been found in a human, and it was linked to dry pet food, not to raw. One case only ever linked to human pet food was from dry pet food, not from raw. So, so far it's all the dry food, you know. So it's just, it's the wrong— it's another red herring to focus on this particular species and raw, in my opinion. What do you reckon, Nick?
I would go from an evolutionary perspective and just say that, that if a raw food diet, which is the closest we can get within, you know, within a modern kitchen, was evolutionarily inappropriate and was growing, you know, hideous numbers of Clostridium perfringens, then dogs would not have evolved. They would have just stopped millions of years ago because, you know, if you've got that overgrowth. So I would take it, but I think Brent's point is absolutely correct and Conor's point is equally. But I think you can just be a lot simpler than that and just say if you're feeding the real deal, if you're feeding the species-appropriate diet, which means a microbiome appropriate device food, then the Clostridium will look after themselves at an appropriate level by definition. And especially if there is a minimum of antibiotics around, which it would have been in any dog pre-Alexander Fleming in the mid-1930s. Yeah, so I would just say there may be Clostridia there, but is a— I think the subtext is that, is a raw food diet going to grow Clostridium in the gut? And I just don't think it would if it's fed correctly and appropriately. And you've got to think of the bigger context. Is the dog being over-vaccinated? Is the dog having a lot of toxins by mouth or put onto the skin, which would also alter the microbiome of all these areas?
Glyphosate and things like that.
Glyphosate from crappy food.
Yeah, totally. Especially what we need to look at for Henrietta, that she specifically talks about alpha toxin and enterotoxin. These are toxins in the wall of the Clostridia. So if you get a poor diversity in the gut of different bacteria and you get an excessive overgrowth of Clostridium, and then there is a dietary change or there is a change that kills off a load of that Clostridium in one go, that releases those toxins which actually irritate the gut wall and cause the body to pull the chain and flush out a watery diarrhea. And that can be intermittent as the fluctuations of overgrowth of those Clostridial bacteria occur, and then they effectively die off, and then they start to regrow. So that's why you'll get these changeable diarrhea episodes. So if your dog or cat is suffering from diarrhea and ill symptoms, then of course, and they find excessive amounts of that Clostridium perfringens with those enterotoxins within them, then yes, that needs to be dealt with because you need to look at something like a Trantol. You need to protect the gut while you're doing that reduction of overgrowth because those enterotoxins will be coming out. So you need to do that protection, but you must, so must then immediately consider instilling a probiotic, even an FMT, a fecal microbial transplant, to overcome the excess growth of those Clostridia and actually come back to a more balanced, diverse, enriched microbiome.
And to tag on to the second bit that Hernieta said, like, you know, maybe raw is protective. Yeah, well, studies show raw produces a more varied and rich biome. We know fresh food bestows this better biome. Look at the guy that promotes Zoe and, you know, what's his name? Good fresh food, good fresh food with lots of varied diet and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. So like that. And also, studies show that dry food drives gut disease, gut enteropathy. So, you know, when you get this gut disease, you're going to get an upset in the bile. Maybe that's the chance for Clostridium to grow. So I would feed the food that's protective of those situations, that keep the environment correct, because it's all about the terrain. So, you know, it's quite a convoluted one, but that's the second person to ask about Clostridium.
Yeah. And remember, you know what these guys were saying? It's a good fresh food. So it's something that's got lots of different anthocyanins and polyphenols in and things like that, which promotes that diversity of gut flora. If you have just chicken breast meat and you're feeding that all the time, that actually hones down the gut flora over time, okay, as well. So you've got to have that diversity of food that's going into the diet.
Yeah, and if you think about kibble has chemical preservatives in it, that napalm's the gut flora as well, you know. You're feeding tiny bits of antibiotics Essentially, there's a hot one going around tonight, Nick, and are you happy to— can I delve into this one?
This—
yeah, we can look into it.
Yeah, we just touch on this just because it popped up. Okay, Rita Hogan, who has— did you get your book from Rita Hogan, guys?
Oh yes, I did. Oh, I'm halfway through reading it.
Check it out, guys. Fantastic.
It's not allowed yet though, guys.
In fact, actually, we is coming out, I think, beginning of February, and we have Rita on, on the 21st, I think it is, of January. She's going to come on, she's going to talk all about the book and talk a little bit more about what the book's about and the benefits of herbal medicine.
So phenomenal, the layout of it, there's tables and everything, it's glorious. It's like for the nerds that want their information, oh my God, my tail is wagging furiously and I've just flicked through it.
It's a hell of a pre-order, I believe.
I think— oh, this pre-order, awesome. Yeah, it's, uh, I'm gonna give it a— I'm gonna give it a good read over the next few days and then, and then get back to you. It's just, uh, phenomenal. I'm, uh, it's just— she's knocked it out of the park, honestly. I'm not just saying that. It's a phenomenal book. It's, uh, it's going to take a while to get through it. But, um, Reid had mentioned something about, um, uh, frozen food. And you know you're starting to have an effect, Reid, when you say something and then all the Facebook groups are lighting up, uh, in controversy and the question was the effect of frozen food and is it okay for dogs? Is there any harm? Is there a downside to feeding frozen food to dogs? And in there is a whole convoluted mess of questions. How much frozen food are we talking? When? In the summertime? I mean, no problem with an Australian dog getting, you know, a bit of frozen duck. You know, are you talking about Your dog's eating it all the time. Are you feeding just pure frozen food to your dog? Like, so there's such a variation, and half-tawed food, and how did you thaw it? But here's my tuppence worth just on this. I jumped into Rita's page just to have one say on one bit.
You didn't do another grenade?
No, no, this was a sensible one. I meant— well, no, I was trying to help with this one. But like, listen, this is what I understand, okay? Like, You know, if you eat cold frozen food, that has to be brought up to temperature, okay? It's got to get to, you know, above 35, 36, 37 degrees before the enzymes will work. So if you're eating frozen food, that heat process, like heating the battery of your car or anything, has to come from somewhere, and it comes from your body. You've got to heat that food up, okay? So you can draw in the latent heat from the stomach, which is why it's like an ice pop cools you down in the summertime, but that heat has to be replenished because the stomach wants to stay at 37 degrees, not at plummeting temperatures to fix your ice cream load. And so you are burning calories. Heat is the hardest thing to produce, okay? So it burns calories trying to produce heat. So if you eat a frozen meal— the only study I could find was snakes. I thought there was snakes and ferrets. I can't find the ferret one, but there is studies of snakes. Now snakes are weird. They, they can change their organ weights and all sorts of things very quickly in response to huge meals that they meat. So could be a poor example, but they're the only ones I've seen that have been fed frozen meat and normal temperature meat. And through the, you know, miracles of science, they can tell how many calories the snake lost getting that frozen food up to temperature. And the figure was 10%, that the snake got 10% less calories out of that food getting that frozen rat up to temperature to start eating. Now that makes sense to me. And so if you were in a period— if you're just a regular dog, 10% calories, who gives a damn? We could all do with eating 10% less calories. Nobody gives doesn't matter. Yeah, so, you know, it's irrelevant. It's irrelevant to most dogs. But if you're plummeting in weight and you're, you know, you're cancer sick or there's something where we're really watching our calories, yeah, suddenly those little things can make a difference. And then it's like, how often are you feeding these frozen meals to your dogs? That was the first thing I wanted to say. The second thing was, it turns out how you freeze and thaw meat makes it less digestible. Did you know that a chicken breast, when you freeze and thaw and freeze and thaw, the more you do it, the less digestible it becomes. And the reason they think is because ice crystals form in the meat. And if you particularly, if you freeze it rapidly, but all freezing will do it, ice crystals form. You know that, you know, stuff gets denatured in the freezer a little bit. You can see the water collects on the plate when you defrost meat. It's the cells have been destroyed, but they actually deform the protein a little bit. And so when you defrost it, the protein is still a little bit deformed inside, and that makes it harder for the enzymes to get at all the protein and digest it down, and you lose a little bit of the digestibility of the meat, which is interesting. So maybe that's where the calories are being lost in the animal, I don't know. And then my final point was everyone always throws in the northern breeds live on frozen meat and huskies and the kitas and stuff, and you say, well, I wonder how— like, I can't find any examples of free-roaming dogs in polar regions, for example. They happen in warmer climates and places where there's lax feeding laws and where there's food, you know. So I think any of the animals that would have been brought— this is just pure, I'm just chatting here, by the way, I've gotten— this is based on absolutely nothing— but I believe if you were a husky, you were living with people because there is no other option out there for you. You're not going to be bringing down seals, you're not going to catch a fox. It's hard to catch prey. I don't believe a husky could maintain himself a group of animals, a pack of animals up in polar regions without living with humans. So maybe they lived beside hunter-gatherers, these dogs were brought up to these really cold conditions and if that's the case they were eating very little thawed meat or frozen meat because in, you know, northern tribes and Inuits and they don't eat frozen meat, they eat thawed meat, they eat freshly killed meat, heated up meat, cooked meat, you know, so how much frozen food would actually have been on the table? Now a little bit definitely, I mean you bring down an elk and these and and half of it is left on the ground. So I can understand that.
Yeah, I would say, yeah, because that's where I'm coming from with this. I would be looking at, you know, wolves up in the tundra, Arctic tundra. They bring down an elk, okay? You've got, you know, it's -40 up there. It's not going to take long for that carcass to become frozen. Do they revisit it the next day?
Yeah, much.
I think they probably would. Yeah, I don't think energy to go and kill another one just because it was warm. I think they'd go back and finish off the carcass. Um, but you know, that's, that's that. And I believe that that probably engenders those dogs and those husky types to actually be warmer constitutions. You know, they, they are naturally like, like the monks that do all the breathing exercises and get used to it, and they're up in the Himalayas and they're drying wet towels off the back of them, you know, while they're meditating, because that's what they learn to do, how to generate heat, you know, as part of your metabolic change. That's what you can do. So this is the— so it's doable. You have to be in a certain phase or a certain constitution to be able to do it well. Um, and obviously if you're sick and you've got a cold constitution and you need the calories to get over that illness and you're really down, drawn down, feeding cold foods, especially chilled and frozen, is just going to accentuate that issue with the illness. But actually, if your constitution is you're burning up, you're really hot, you've got an excess of internal heat and you're able to cope with that, feeding cold foods, unchilled and frozen, may not actually have that much effect on you. And I think a lot more work needs to be done across and looking at all of those individual constitutions. And I know there's a lot of this is our experience, sometimes our collective experience, but it's then how that's told. And unfortunately, in this day and age, that needs a lot more study and actually facts and figures behind for people to be able to get it across the line as far as there's evidence to show that. Um, and I think that's the difficulty at the moment. We've got a lot of texts that will go through individuals, some great individuals in the past that have had great success as treatments, you know, from centuries ago. But ultimately it comes down to that can be swayed by your personal experience. And sometimes even literally your personal experience of, I ate it this way, I felt terrible, therefore all my patients would have felt terrible, is not a great piece of science.
Yeah. What about you, Nick?
A couple of things. The first thing is there's an amazing book called The Cruelest Miles. Can't remember the authors, but it's called The Cruelest Miles and it's all about huskies and huskies saving the day in Alaska 100 years ago.
Okay.
And they talk about feeding them frozen frozen stuff. So number one, that's what they used to do. Don't know what they do nowadays. Number two was, I think it's not very difficult to take the meat out of the fridge, put it in the bowl, put the rest of it back in the fridge, and then allow that meat, you know, and you'll add a bit of this and a bit of that and what have you, and then just leave it for half an hour to come to temperature. I think that's a pretty easy thing to do for most dog owners who are feeding raw food. So I think that there's some wisdom in that. If during the summer you feed some, a little bit of, uh, frozen, I haven't really got a problem with that. Yeah, because I think dogs can cope with a bit of it. And the final fun fact of the day is that if you freeze bread, hopefully it's really good bread, it will actually increase its— it— the resistant starch within the bread, and it will be more beneficial as a a prebiotic to your bugs than unfrozen.
That's interesting about the starch. I saw that as well at the end of the protein bit. I didn't understand this. I didn't get the starch.
Yeah, you know, feed your bugs.
Yeah, make them resistant by chilling them and stuff like that. But they, um, but that's also true, I think. You, so I have advocated, you know, if you boil kettle and you let it cool to, you know, 80 degrees, the normal herbal tea temperature, so not at the boil, and you're really stuck and you've got a dog that can't cope well with frozen foods, i.e., you need to look at, you know, something that's slightly warmed, I just pour, just tell them to pour on some of that hot water onto the food to bring it up to a nice body temperature.
Love it, love it. Yeah, but test it first before you give it to the dog because you don't want to scald anybody's mouth.
No, but if you're pouring it on a very cold food it's very quickly gonna come down to a nice sort of—
I do think about it at wintertime. I take the stuff, you know, you forget to defrost it and it's half thawed and it's wintertime and it's dark outside. And I listen, Dudley would eat poo on a stick, he doesn't give a damn, more than happy to get it. He will eat all day anything. And so I don't, but I do kind of think, oh, you know, I wouldn't mind that was a bit warmer for you know, I've actually got this little heating plate, everybody. I've talked about it before. I don't sell these, but I really should because I promote the shit out of them. For everybody on podcast, I'm holding up a tiny little plate about the size of the bottom of a regular saucepan, and it heats up my coffee, you see, on the USB lead. And you could have that plugged in in your kitchen. It's a tiny little heating plate, 75 degrees Celsius. I like my coffee, it turns out. And you leave your little tin bowl on that, and so that would bring it up to temperature, nice gentle heating, so you don't have to bang it in the microwave. Let's face case that we've all done it. I bet you Nick hasn't put stuff in a microwave for his dog. Have you?
Have you? We haven't got a microwave.
No. Yeah, you're right. You don't have a microwave either? Oh, bloody hell.
The thing is, Conor, if you put it on a heating plate and leave that for an hour, you've got 3 generations more bugs in that bowl of food, whereas if you put 80 degrees water on it, you come to the same the same temperature-ish, and you've killed a load of bugs, and you've got food at the right temperature.
Now you're feeding a minced up product for the most part, ground meat. Yeah, so if you're feeding— if that what you said there would hold true if you were feeding a lump of meat and the hot water went all around the outside of the meat where the bugs are. The problem with minced products is that you minced up and the bugs go inside, so you would heat up the meat and the bugs on the inside would multiply. You wouldn't touch them with the hot water. So that's the whole problem with, with, with minced up products when it comes to trying to sterilize them.
Yeah, but you're not going to heat the entire thing up to 75 degrees. You're going to heat it up to 37 degrees.
Yeah, either way, I like those bugs, by the way. I want those bugs. So I'm a bit more bugs about it.
You've disturbed us to how to get this across the line. And what I would just say, I'm not sponsored yet, yet. You have a Nespresso machine so you can get hot coffee at the touch of a button.
I'm back to my cafetière thing now.
Cafetière.
I grind my own beans. That's why you need a hot plate. I've turned into a posh git because Mark from Bell Duke started annoying me about it. You don't keep your beans in the freezer. And I was like, oh, he's a real longevity dude. And I'm like, I don't know who keeps their beans in a freezer. He goes, you know, what was this?
Does he grind each one by hand?
Yeah, that's it. And you praise all of them as they have to go in there. That's just like— I know I did it anyway because I just assumed it's going to help me, but I'm not sure. What's the, what's the next question, guys? I've got a couple of them on my page. Have you got something from the Patreon? Oh, it's 1952. Should we do it?
It's 1952.
Let's, let's pop over because we, we've got a meeting at 10 past 8.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, let's jump to Patreon.
Yeah, we'll try and answer some of those questions. I know there's a lot about vaccinations and, uh, and that side of things, especially with Christmas coming up. They want to know, you know, they should be using— what's new in the Lepto vaccine world. I've got some, um, news to share on that. So, uh, did you see, did you see—
oh, the 365-day— is it Provecto? 365-day?
Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it on Patreon.
Okay, yeah.
If you want to join us over on patreon.com/RAWPETMEDICS, you can find our videos there. It's always good to hear from you guys, so come over to that page. Listen to the podcast as well on all available podcasting stations from Spotify to Amazon. So we're available everywhere, so you can listen to us on your dog walks as well, although they are a little delayed. They come out a little bit later, so you'll listen to this session and it'll probably be the end of November into December, in fact, end of December, weren't it? So there we go, be good to see you all. Okay, great, we're going to call it there. Sorry for the slight delay in starting, computer issues, but we're back here and we will see you next week. What's next week? Quickly, Nick.
I've talked to Penny, so I'll see if she'll come along to see us. We will get some, some, some, some, something wonderful.
Yeah, we'll have questions about zoo, zoo animal nutrition. Nutrition that we need to get answers, and Penny's the girl for that. So hopefully she'll say yes next week. If not, she'll be the week after. But, uh, yeah, hopefully next week.
Okay, that's great. Brilliant. Take care, guys.
See you all next week.
