RawSafe Tuesday night live: Mark Roberts

Buongiorno!

So it's great to see you all. We've got Nick who's just disappeared because his internet's gone down, but it gives us a great opportunity just to say hi. And if you would like to join us at Raw Pet Medics, then please join us at the patreon.com/rawpetmedics. You'll be able to see all of the information we put up It's great to see a few people joining us already. I'm sure in anticipation of our great guest, Mark Roberts, Dr. Mark Roberts, no less. Okay, we're going to build you up here. We've put a few little links on. We're going to be putting a few more of his links to his page because he's got some great little articles on there. And we're going to bring him on. It looks like Nick has fallen at his internet as usual, being out in the wilds of Wiltshire.

So, uh, he uses his phone for internet. I can't believe he uses his phone for internet.

I actually— I, I tell you, I'll tell you what, boys, my— where I live, I used to have terrible internet. Terrible, terrible internet. And then, um, a certain Elon Musk got this Starlink thing going, and it's been amazing ever since.

No way.

Really?

It's been a game changer. It's been amazing.

What is Starlink? I don't even know what it is.

Well, in the US, there's 2 or 3 providers, and basically, by internet providers, I'm talking about the satellites are up thousands of miles above Earth. The problem is there's such a lag by the time it goes up and comes back down, it's terrible internet. So what he's done, he's got hundreds of little tiny satellites that only sit literally, I think it's about 40, 50 miles above the Earth. So you're getting a lag. So literally your internet, your internet is as good as it is. I wouldn't say it was ultra fast, but it's pretty, pretty damn fast.

Wow. Wow. I'm impressed because you, whereabouts you living at the moment, Mark? We'll get a bit of your background now in a second, but where are you right now?

So I am now in the middle of my forest in, um, northern New Hampshire in the area called the White Mountains. Your forest?

As in your forest? You own trees? More than one tree?

Yeah, we— I— yes, quite a few. What?

Hey, I want some trees!

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, we didn't get this invite.

Well, it's one of those. Firstly, I have a lot of dogs, so I don't want to frustrate neighbors by a lot of howling. And secondly, I do like my peace. I do like to go outside and see the leaves blowing, singing. I love that kind of stuff. So that's kind of why we live this life. It's hard in some ways, but I really enjoy it. When I lived in New Zealand, I lived really remote, and I realized really remote wasn't for me. So now I'm in a forest, but I'm also probably 20 minutes away from a reasonable-sized town.

Okay, 20 minutes. But you have neighbors? You can— can you see another house from your house? Is there—

no.

Whoa, whoa.

So I have a— I have about— I have about, um, I probably have about half a mile of my own road before I get to my house, before the nearest neighbor is down there.

Wow, love it. Listen, Mark, tell us a bit about your background and why, just where you, how you got to where you are now. Just give us a quick bit of where you've come from and what you're doing at the moment.

So in a nutshell, and I'll try and make it a nutshell, years and years ago when I was a kid, my dad, I grew up in the UK, my dad used to work for the British Antarctic Survey, and back then they don't anymore, but they did then. They used to have sled dogs, working sled dogs, and he used to talk to me about these dogs that were fed primarily seal meat, and so a very high-fat protein-based diet with obviously no carbohydrate content. And these dogs performed really well in obviously challenging conditions. Years later, it's one of those, no matter how much you don't want to become your dad, you kind of do to a certain degree. I found myself with a whole heap of sled dogs and I was feeding them a sort of pretty standard kibble diet and I just started questioning the whole logic behind it, you know, having a background, nutritional background, I kind of thought this doesn't make sense and just from a very rudimentary common sense perspective, you know, why am I feeding these carnivores a lot of carbohydrates. And that, that led me down the route of eventually switching over and feeding my dogs a meat-based diet and begging and pleading and eventually getting a job in animal nutrition. And then did a lot more begging and pleading and getting funding and being accepted into a PhD program. At Massey University. So, in New Zealand? In New Zealand, yeah. So I completed that, built up the team. This is a real sort of— I'm flying through all the years here.

What was the PhD about, Mark?

So I wanted to be the only— I wanted to do a PhD investigating the benefits of feeding a high-fat protein-based diet versus a high-carbohydrate diet. I wanted to see what, if any, benefits there were or not. Or no, I wanted to look at the whole thing and see, see what I could find.

Yeah. Cool. What did you find? Such an open question.

Well, I'll try and I'm trying to really summarize all this. So the first thing I wanted to do was see what a dog wants to eat, because as we all know, dogs have evolved from wolves. Wolves would eat a meat-based diet. Nowadays, a lot of dogs, most dogs, are fed a carb-based diet, and I wanted to see what it was they actually wanted, wanted to eat. There's actually a couple of researchers, David Ramahaim is one, He's based in, I think he's at, I think he's in Sydney University, University of Sydney, and he does a lot of work in something called nutritional geometry, which in essence involves providing an animal, and it's not just dogs, he's done it with a whole heap of different animals, basically a buffet of different foods to choose from, and what he's found is that when you allow an animal to choose what it wants to eat, as in protein, fat, carbs, and he's also looked at certain other minerals as well. But essentially, when you look at what they want to choose, there are health benefits behind what they want to intuitively consume. So that was my first thing. Let's see what dogs want to eat. So I gave them a buffet, a buffet of different foods to choose from, and I found that they wanted to consume on an energy basis, on an energy basis, around about 35% protein, 60-odd percent, 63-64% fat, and 2% carbs. Which, if you want to look on a dry matter basis, and it all depends on how much ash is in the product and all the rest of it, but you're looking at roughly around about 53% protein, around 40% fat and just a smidgen, a couple of, couple of percent, 1 or 2% of carbs. So that's what I found. So then my next step in my research was, well, I really wanted to push the boundaries here. Well, were they just selecting this amount of protein, fat, and carbs based on the ingredients I used? So for example, I use a lot of green tripe. Maybe they were just consuming a lot of protein because of the green tripe. So essentially I gave them two different diets with different ingredients but with the same macronutrient composition. So if they consumed one or the other, you know, if there was a preference, then obviously we could, we could determine that the ingredients were the key thing. But, but basically there was no, there was no difference in the amount they consumed between the two. I also did the same study but with two carbohydrate diets because I wanted to say, well, they didn't want to eat carbs, maybe it was just they hated the carb that I was using in the initial study. So I think I used rice and I used, um, extruded maize, I think it was, for the other one. So I did again two diets, two high-carb diets, the same macronutrient ratio but with a different carb ingredient, and again there was no difference. So this reinforced to me that dogs do indeed target a certain level of macronutrients. One key point just to throw in there in the mix as well is that what I found is that dogs consumed a lot more fat initially for the first day or two, and this dropped off, dropped straight off thereafter. I could waffle all day about why that is, but that's what I found, is they did really want to consume a lot of fat for a day or two, then that dropped off. This, I believe, I'll just give you a little insight. I think it's just down to that concept that I think a lot of carnivores, they intuitively want to get all the calories in quick, you know, in that feast and famine mentality. And thereafter they'll kind of settle into that sort of more, that ratio that I described before, which is kind of like sort of a third of energy derived from protein and two-thirds from fat.

Mark, if you're feeding a lot of, a lot of, a lot of fat, how much pancreatitis did you see with the dogs that you were studying or with your own dogs? That's, that's a question that I get asked quite a lot when I start talking about fat, and I'm a big fat fan and I'm not a cereal carbohydrate fan, as you can imagine. So where, where did you— what are your thoughts on pancreatitis with this type of diet?

So there's a couple of a little cheeky little studies that I did in between, but I eventually came to that same thought process that you did, which was what is— what would be the number one objection, um, primarily from the veterinary community, but also from the sort of the— well, I guess it is from the veterinary community that sort of filters downstream to Joe Public. And pancreatitis was that poster child that I wanted to investigate. Yeah, so what I did was, um, I basically got, um, a whole heap of dogs and they were fed a standard, um, a standard kibble, um, for I think about 6 weeks. And then I measured the fasting, uh, pancreatic lipase and I measured triglycerides, um, triglycerides being associated with the development of pancreatitis in dogs. I then exposed them to a high-fat meal, and the high-fat meal I gave them just so happened to be the same one that the dogs had selected, the same ratio. So they all had this meal. This was only 24 hours after they'd had the high-carb commercial one before. They all ate it, and then I measured 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, and 24 hours after they had consumed that meal plasma triglycerides, and I measured pancreatic lipase, and I wanted to see how, how these dogs would get on as a baseline. After that, for 8 weeks, half the dogs remained on this high-fat diet, the exact same diet, and the other half were put onto a high-carb diet, but it was a high-carb diet that I'd made myself, so it involves certain raw components, you know, essentially to give me the majority of the protein and fat. There was an extruded carb in there as well because I wanted to have the carbs more or less the same. I think there was maybe a couple of percentage difference between that and the commercial diet at baseline, but it's pretty much the same. Did it for 8 weeks, and then again I gave them that high-fat meal, that high-fat meal tolerance test that I, I mentioned at the start of the study. So what I found was that at the beginning, fasted, fasted, as in from on the back of being fed the commercial carbohydrate-based diet, their levels fasted were significantly higher than the high-fat diet. So on a fasted level, the dogs that have been fed a high-fat diet which one would assume to be indicative of pancreatitis, had lower levels. Now, all these levels were within range, they weren't dangerous or anything like that, but still they were higher in the baseline carb diet than the high-fat diet.

And the two things you were mentioning, Mark, in that point was when you said blood triglycerides, that's essentially blood fat, that's the fat in the blood, isn't it? And the lipase is the enzyme that the pancreas produces to digest all the fat. So that's historically, we're worried that when those spiked, they blamed, well, they're spiking because you're eating fat.

Okay.

Is that—

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right, mate. So I think now is a good time, if I may, just to take a little bit, you know, step back and say, well, how have we come to this, you know, this assumption? And you're absolutely right on it. Which assumption? The assumption that high-fat diets lead to pancreatitis.

Good, yeah, great.

So again, I won't go into massive amounts of detail, but essentially, dog— this is the assumption— dog eats a high-fat meal, their triglycerides— this is called triglycerides, blood fat, for argument's sake— they go high. The triglycerides get carried in the blood by lipoproteins, like kind of— imagine these triglycerides are like being carried around on little boats in the blood. And they end up at the pancreas. There's so much fat that the pancreas can't deal with it. It starts producing a lot of pancreatic lipase. So basically what lipase is, is it breaks down the fat, but the pancreas is working feverishly to try and break down this fat. It's working like you've got your handbrake on, you're putting your foot on the accelerator in your car, your pancreas becomes stressed. and that leads to pancreatitis.

And that is worse in the high-carb group given the high fat than the high-fat, high-fat group.

Is that correct? In a fasted level, in a fasted level, all the levels were in the normal range. Yeah, but it was significantly higher nevertheless in the, in the kibble high-carb diet at the start. Okay. In comparison to the high fat. So if you look at it from the outside in, it kind of makes, you know, you can see the logic behind it. Now if we add on to that, and it's like a lot of things in science is that, and I love science, but sometimes it can be very frustrating. There were some studies in the '70s where they got dogs and they infused the dogs with saline. Nothing happened. So they then infused some dogs with saline, but I think it was about 18 millimoles per liter of triglycerides, which is quite a lot. And they did it over 4 hours, and the pancreas put on a whole heap of weight. There was edema, there's all this kind of stuff, you know. So again, this just added more A B C, you know. They came to this conclusion. So when I did this and found that this wasn't the case, you know, um You know, I obviously— well, I didn't wonder why because I already had an idea behind because I spent a lot of time reading up and studying it. So I kind of had a feeling this might have happened. But before I go into that, let me just explain another interesting finding I found, which was this, is that when I actually— at the start, when the dogs were fed the kibble, those levels over those 24 hours, the triglycerides went up and came back down, which you would imagine have been cleared. But what I found at the end is that they were much lower in the high-fat group over that 24-hour period, but also perhaps even more interestingly, they were also much lower in the high-carb-fed diet, the one I put together that consisted of raw products and extruded, extruded carb. They were still much lower than at the beginning. Bear in mind, like I said, the, the, the kibble at the start had a very similar macronutrient profile. So basically, that is pretty much the same amount of carb, protein, and fat, near as damn it. But at the end, when they were given a high-fat meal challenge, they were much lower on the kibble.

And what's the significance of that, do you think?

Well, what that says is that there's something about a kibble diet that when you give a dog a high-fat meal thereafter, there's something in kibble beyond just the amount of carbs that seems to elect more of the markers, high-level triglycerides, than another diet with exactly this. Well, not exactly, but like I say, a couple of percent different. Difference using raw products in combination with carbs. So it's not just carbohydrates.

What is that, do you think?

I think there's, I think there's, uh, I think there's a few factors that are involved. I can't say definitively what it is.

Yeah, so on that front It looks like the internet's gone, so just one second. Let me see if we can reset and get those guys back. That's interesting. We just had a lightning strike.

Did you? Are you serious? It'd be funny if Nick's hair was sticking out sideways, smoke coming from his head. If I could break down what Mark is saying just before Mark comes back on, what vets— before Mark's research, people assumed that when they looked at dogs with pancreatitis, there was fat in the blood and the lipase was up, and they thought that eating fat caused these high blood fat readings. And so they assumed, like, eating fat made you fat in the '70s, and so they made low-fat meals and higher sugar diets. This pancreatitis which was absolutely wrong. This time they assumed that it was the fat, that if there was blood, if there's fat in the blood, excess fat in the blood during pancreatitis, and the pancreas can't digest it properly, well then therefore it must be the fact that you gave the dog a bit of sausage, but, and that's what put the dog on the table. But what Mark's research is showing is the absolute opposite. So what Mark's research has shown is that high carbohydrate diets have higher blood fat and blood lipase readings, which is the stuff the pancreas is using to try to break it down. So very paradoxically, he assumed going into this, although he was testing this, he is— the assumption by the veterinary community was that the high-fat diet would have higher blood fat readings. But that's not what he found at all. The opposite was found. It wasn't explosively high, but the high-carbohydrate diet had more, more blood fat, more lipase. So if you were worried about—

to understand that a little bit more, there are some graphs on a link that I've put on Facebook to one of his talks that we had back in 2018 at one of the conferences for the RFVS, and the graphs are on there to show those differences in the levels from that talk. And there's also some great information on Mark's own Facebook page, which we've put a link through to as well, which he often will go through about do dogs need carbs. And I think we should ask him about this whole thing that's been thrown at us that dogs are now generating genetics to allow carbs and stuff and see whether he can—

Yeah, guys, so why do you think that— why do you think that the profession, uh, still thinks that fat gives you high blood fat? Dietary— high dietary fats gives you high blood fat. Why do you think? Because this stuff has been known in humans for 30 years, 40 years. And in dogs, you know, uh, Mark is showing very, very distinctly the opposite.

Do you not think, Nick? You know, we're seeing, you know, how many books have we talked about in the last year, let alone Mark's papers and stuff, on this whole thing of fat doesn't make you fat? You know, the whole stuff on Obesity Code, the whole stuff on, you know, uh, right at the beginning we were talking about the South African sort of studies on whether, you know, young babies should have fats or, you know, appropriate meals made up for them. And, you know, he was going on about, you know, it's all of those glucose and, you know, carbs that you're sticking in that are more problematic. And, you know, we've talked about those diets around obesity, you know, we've talked about that so many times, and yet still I mean, literally last week I had another vet still not believing that it's the carbs that are making the dogs fat.

Would it be because Ronald McDonald's is giving them the nutritional lectures and there is a certain interest in not giving out the right information? Mark, could I just come to the point about your research? Okay, so you found rather paradoxically that high carbohydrate diets were spiking blood fat. Is this because— this is my very simplistic understanding of it, but I appreciate your insight— is this because the body is happy to burn carbohydrates? This glycolytic energy system is— why would carbohydrates spike blood fat? That's the complete opposite to what you would expect. I don't blame the veterinary industry for believing the other way, but now that your information has been out for years, I do blame them for not picking up the ball. So why do high-carb diets spike blood fat?

Oh, we just need to, uh, reboost your sound.

Yeah, you can't hear you, mate.

It's the Elon Musk, uh, yeah, it's not so good now, is it?

Yeah, send him an email, elon@tesla.com.

Because, because if you look at car— if you look at carbohydrates, um, they go through a certain number of pro— so imagine you— let's just keep it simple. You consume carbs and they get broken down to glucose.

Yeah.

Now what happens is, is, um, these carbohydrates then go through another level, another few steps of processes, and there's a few enzymes that break down things, and you end up with fatty acids, and the final end result is triglycerides. Now I'm not going to bother with all the names, fatty acid synthase and all the rest of the stuff that goes on with it, but, but, but essentially carbohydrates— I mean, this isn't even, like I said, I mean, this isn't massively complicated, you know, is that there's no doubt at all. This isn't me trying to make it up. There is no doubt at all that, um, carbohydrates can get converted into, into triglycerides. It's just a fact, you know. Um, that's not me trying to spin it. It is what it is, you know.

It's a biochemical pathway.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's right. It's not— I'm not, I'm not trying to— like, I'm not anti or pro. I know I, I'm pretty sort of in the middle and everything. I like to think I am, apart from Manchester United winning the Premier League next year, which I'm not sure. But I mean, that aside, that aside, this is, this is, um, you know, this is a fact, you know. So And I think that's— I think the problem why we've got to this position is, is one, old studies, the one I mentioned, which actually was correct in what they did. But on the back of that, we had 5 or 6 studies which were very poor studies in terms of we gave dogs loads of scraps of food and came to this conclusion, or the diets were so deficient in a lot of other nutrients that they gave the dogs pancreatitis for other reasons. And it's just one of those that once you've got a bit of momentum behind it, that becomes the norm. So then to try and book the trend, you know, you, you're, you're, um, uh, you've got to be pretty solid in what you're saying. And that's, that's kind of, honestly, Conor, that's why now I'm in this position where I just want to share my stuff to people so they can kind of understand it, you know, and get a better feel for it. You know, it's— I think it's— I think that's the reason why we've got it. Number one, it's it kind of seems counterintuitive. And number 2, the, the science ball of logic has kind of gathered speed and now everyone believes that, you know, which is just silly. I mean, if you want to look at, um, there's a lady called Elizabeth Parks, uh, who's done heaps of research in humans, heaps of research. This has been shown in humans for years. I mean, I'm talking 20, 30 years. But for some reason just using good old common sense, we, you know, we are of the belief that, that a carnivore like a dog somehow that's different. We can give it loads of carbs and it's going to somehow be indifferent, you know, which is just silly. So, um, I find it, um, I find it frustrating, but it is what it is. But the other thing as well to remember as well, like I said, is there's something— before we got, we got cut off— there's something about kibble that sort of preloads a dog when it gets exposed to a high-fat diet that elevates levels higher. So there's something about kibble that— now, whether it's something to do with, um, it being drier, whether it's something to do with some level of gastric enzyme, um, whether it's to do with some sort of enzyme like lipoprotein lipase might be a good example. And if it's any of those factors or a collective group of those factors that leads to it almost preloading the dog that's then exposed to a high-fat diet to run a higher risk of developing pancreatitis. All the dogs I used in my study, none of them developed pancreatitis, but there were some of them, the levels were that— I guess I would describe them as being a worrisome range. You know, you wouldn't want to leave a dog like that for a long time. So I think it's a mixed bag of how we've got there, but if you're asking me honestly, if I wanted to reduce the risk of a dog developing pancreatitis, I would definitely put it on the diet of this, of this type. Now one other thing I will, I will say is I also, and I had a few people ask me about this, is what about, you know, the likes of Miniature Schnauzers and other breeds that are predisposed to pancreatitis? I once did a, this is a little bit of an in-house study I did in New Zealand with a practice up in Auckland where they had some SNOWs that were just on crazy levels, crazy, crazy levels.

Levels of what, of Trigs?

Yeah, Trigs. Yeah, I mean, they were, they were, I don't know what they were, but they were really high, right? And I said, and basically in the clinic I said, listen, I don't, I can't guarantee this is going to bring them down. I have no idea. But there was such a stage the dogs where they were just— the owners were willing to try anything, you know, they were so high. And we tried it. I think we gave it about 2 weeks and it made, um, no difference. There was no difference at all in terms of bringing them down. My honest belief is this, is that we don't know exactly with those breeds what— there's some clear level of genetic predisposition to obviously developing the condition, and we don't know exactly what. There's a whole concept behind whether it's clearance or overproduction or whatever it is. Um, I would— my view on this is still, and I can't, I can't say this 100%, but my gut instinct based on just understanding, you know, these pathways is I would still put them on a diet of that type. But I think once it's gone to the point where it's so crazy, it's just too far, it's so far gone, it's kind of hard to bring it back.

So I would say, wouldn't you Wouldn't you want them on longer than just 2 weeks, Mark? If they've been on, on, on, you know, kibble for 3 years and they've been on raw for 2 weeks, you'd want to give it a bit longer, surely?

Yeah. I mean, that might work. That might work. My feeling is it was— my honest feeling is I'd rather get to them before that's even developed, you know? And I would— what I would do What I would do as well is I would, um, I would measure, um, pancreatic lipase fasted, and probably about— because you tend to find that the, the trigs are kind of high about hour 5 postprandial, so after they consumed a meal. So I would measure, I would put them onto a diet like this, and I would get that lab work done, the, the fasted lipase, fasted trigs And then hours 5, after consuming the meal, I would— I know this is a lot of hassle, maybe this isn't practical, but hour 5, I would measure the triglycerides again, and hour 6, the lipase, just to see how the lipase has been kicking in to reduce those trigs. And I would do that maybe once every month, and then, you know, I don't know for how long, just to the point I knew the dog was okay, you know. That's how I would deal with it.

Do different quality fats, like what about rancid fat? What about like the, you know, filthy kind of deep fat fryer fat that can be in some kibbles and not in the EU and various, but like do different quality fats do different things to dogs when it comes to blood sugars?

In terms of pancreatitis, I honestly couldn't say. I looked at different levels of different types of fats. The only fat I can tell you that actually does help in terms of reducing this is, is, um, your, uh, so you basically, your EPA and DHA do actually, they do show if you take about 1, uh, 1 gram of, um, EPA/DHA, the omega-3s. Yeah, yeah, you do actually find that, that there's actually papers been out there on that, that they do decrease the actual level of triglycerides, of plasma triglycerides in dogs. Now, we don't know why that is, but I suspect, I suspect it's probably to do— you know, I said those carbs go down that chain and there's all these enzymes and you end up with triglycerides. I think what they do is they interfere with those enzymes en route to the actual triglycerides. I'm reasonably confident that's what it is. They ultimately, they somehow prevent the actual conversion into triglycerides.

That sounds positive.

The human side. And in the human side, they split all of the triglycerides down into, you know, the densities and the cholesterols into the density.

Yes.

Have you found in the dog stuff, you must have found that there's a similar sort of spread of densities of lipids that will come into the bloodstream.

Is that right?

Yeah. So if you look at triglycerides, Essentially, there's two lipoproteins we want to look at. So for example, you've got VLDL, which is derived primarily from adipose, bit of fat tissue, but mostly from the liver. And they synthesize through something called de novo lipogenesis. So they can— they basically— this is what makes the triglycerides from non-carb sources. And then you've also got— and they carry them to the pancreas. And then the other way is You've got another type of lipoprotein called chylomicrons, and they're intestinally derived. And again, they carry them to the pancreas. And I think there's two things going on with why dogs— and it's the same with humans, really— is why these triglycerides are high. Firstly, there's more in these VLDL, so there's been more that are synthesized. And there's also, I think, there's delayed clearance. They're not being cleared as quickly as what they should be. And I think those are the two main factors of why we see elevated triglycerides in the body.

The body, would you say it's not being cleared? Do you mean the body's not burning off the fat? Is it like busy burning off carbohydrates? Is it like the difference between petrol and diesel?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a— I mean, I've got my working dog stuff is based on the same concept, is that if you— I think a real simple way of thinking of it is that if whatever you give your body or the dog has, it's going it doesn't really matter actually in that regard. It's going to burn most. So if you, if you, if your body's relying on carbs, it's going to work off carbs. You give it fat, it's going to work on fats. So it's where you want to, you know, it's, it's pick your choice, you know. But what I'm saying is my research is, is based on that. I think having a lot of carbs in a dog's diet, and it's not just pancreatitis, it's other stuff as well. I, I think that, that, and there's a lot more research that has to be done, no doubt. But it's more detrimental to the health of the animal, um, than it is, um, you know, a dog that's based on just, just fat and protein or the absolute minuscule amount of carbs.

Yeah, well, one last question on this before we get to, uh, the implications for this for sporting dogs, but, uh, what about the fact that, uh, dry pet food is very high in omega-6? The 6:3 ratio is completely out. Is that— does that have any effect on downstream of with like even with pancreatitis, really, is that not a factor? So omega-3 in dry pet food?

I think it could be for the, the, the factor I mentioned, you know, in terms of the— might be because the imbalance is so high that this might have some, some effect. It might be that just because the, the N-6s are so high that there might be some inflammatory assault that's actually leading to this. I don't necessarily believe that that's what's leading to it. It may in some way encourage the pancreas. Yeah, in combination with what I just mentioned, possibly. Um, but, um, I mean, don't get me started on that. That's, that's another whole kettle of fish. Yeah, about that.

Tell us about your sled dogs, Mark. You have a sled, you have a heap of dogs at the back, uh, and they're huskies. And these are a breed that haven't extrapolated out this gene for amylase production. So if anybody's been keeping track, we've brought this up a few times. One of the things that they— there was a big study in 2014, Alex and a few others, and they found that dogs that have been living beside farmers for the last 5 or 6, 8,000 years have more of this gene for amylase production, which is the enzyme the pancreas produces for breaking down carbs. So it makes sense if you've been living beside a group of people that are producing a lot of carbs, you've got some carb waste, you give it to the dogs. So it seems they've taken a few tiny steps. Darwin would have given his eye teeth to see this evolutionary step towards carbohydrate. It's tiny little steps. But huskies and Akitas didn't extrapolate, didn't breed out this gene at all. I mean, dingoes and wolves have 2, and huskies and Akitas have 4, Labradors have like 32 or something. So you've got this breed of dog out the back that you are working really hard And can you tell us what you feed them?

So I think the first thing I want to, I want to, want to say is I don't— I, I, I'm still a little bit wary of that study, and I still believe, I still believe— I'm going to give some logic behind this— that any dog, any dog, working dog or not, should be fed a high-fat protein-based diet.

Yes.

Okay, so, um And again, I'm probably going to have to go have time to go all the reasons why, why I said and why I say this. You know, there's things such as hydration, there's things such as there's been some pretty good research in terms of epilepsy in dogs and how feeding a high-fat protein-based diet, low in carbs or absent in carbs, can be beneficial for them. But let's just start with the basics again. Like I said, so if you feed, there's 3 ways you can give energy to a dog. There's protein, fat, and carbs. So carbs, let's just do a carb straightforward. Dog eats carbs, glucose, and they store, they store glucose in the form of something called glycogen. But let's just assume it's like a fuel tank of a car in either the liver or the more obvious place, the skeletal muscle. And that's where they store these carbs in glycogen. Now when the dog starts working, then those levels start going down. So once those levels go down, the only way you can replenish those for a dog that's reliant on carbs, doesn't matter whether it's a husky, doesn't matter whether it's a Labrador, doesn't matter whether it's some old pooch lying in front of the fire, wherever it is right now. Once those levels have gone down, the only way you can replenish those is to give the dogs more carbohydrates. Okay, now if you— I'll give you an example. Same with humans. The analogy for humans, or the term they use for humans, you know, when someone's like a marathon runner and they say they've hit the wall? When they hit the wall, that means that they've basically run out of energy, the carbs have all gone, they're goosed, and that's when they start taking these gel packs on or the sweets.

I don't know.

Oops, gone again.

Elon Musk.

So I think that it's, it's really interesting that what you're saying is sort of going down the route.

Here he is, here he is.

Oh, he's back.

We just missed that last bit, Mark.

Just carry on. So if you look at, if you look at a dog that's on a high-fat diet with protein and no carbohydrates, then what you tend to find is just using, looking at glycogen, the fuel tank analogy, then yes, it might be half full, but what you find is it doesn't go right down. So a dog that's full of carbs will have a higher tank, but theirs goes down and that's them. Whereas a dog that's on a fat protein-based diet, it's less, but it doesn't go down anywhere near as much. Now you might say, well, again, it's kind of the same as the fat, the triglycerides, and, you know, issue really, you know, how does a dog that's on a fat and protein diet with no carbs, how does it maintain this level of muscle glycogen glucose when it's not consuming carbohydrate. And it does that by a word called gluconeogenesis, which is a long fancy word but essentially just means converting non-carbohydrate sources to glucose.

So proteins and fats.

Yeah, yeah. So it can do, it can do things like, you may know I mentioned the triglycerides, so tri-3. So you've got the fatty acids are broken away and the glycerol can be used as a glucose source. Good example, a good example with a certain, um, there's certain proteins. So for example, alanine. Alanine can be, can be used as a substrate for glucose, so they manage to maintain it without going down and going crazy. The other thing with a high-fat diet is it makes the dog reliant on fat as a primary source of energy. And by doing that, there's so obviously so much more energy per gram or whatever in fat compared to protein and carbs. So it's got loads of— even the lean dog's got thousands and thousands of calories stored. And obviously if it's consuming a high-fat diet, it's doing that as well. So it's basically you've pushed them away by feeding a diet of that composition to, one, rely on fat as a source of energy, and two, the glycogen doesn't go as low. Now there's an interesting study that a guy called Arlie Reynolds— this is the same for any dog, he did it with sled dogs, and I think it was 160 miles there was one group that was fed a high-carb diet. Glycogen was high. They went off and they dropped, and they were much slower than the other dogs who had a moderate amount of, of glucose. Um, but they just didn't go down. They just kept on chugging away. We did a— another example would be we did a study in, um, slightly different, but in New Zealand with working dogs. We fed them a high-fat protein, very low-carb diet versus a high-carb typical kibble diet with working dogs. And we put the Hydrix collar and measured activity. This was during the working season, the muster season in New Zealand. And we found the dogs that were like that, they had glucose levels that were lower but stayed lower than the high-carb kibble diet. They were much higher, but they weren't hypo. And when you looked at the activity level for the hydrics, they were significantly more active than the dogs that were fed a high-carb diet that had far more high levels of glucose. It went down. I actually think— to be honest, I actually think dogs inherently, what is perceived as being the norm for glucose is typically higher than what it probably would be by virtue of a high-fat protein-based diet.

So, Mark, what you're saying is that you can You can, yeah, and if you pre-habilitate the dog to fat, you induce those pathways so that they can break down alanine and gluconeogenesis and what have you. Yeah, so that when you get to the working season, the dog is already switched in, uh, switched into— exactly, Connor— switched into the fat burning, so it's not so reliant on glycogen, so it doesn't hit the wall.

Yep, yeah, yeah, I know. I can take— I'll take my dogs out. Even where I live now, there's people that will take the dogs out on the trails, uh, and it's typical with working dogs. I don't— I've never understood this one, uh, and I don't get involved in it because I don't want to sort of rock any boats with it. But there's a lot of people who feed a mixture of kibble and raw. Right now, don't get me wrong, I think, I think I'd rather do that than just feed kibble. But the problem, the fundamental problem, unfortunately, those folk make is that by feeding them, even if it's 20% kibble, is you're not allowing the dogs to fully switch over into that ketogenic state and use and really use those fats. You know, you kind of— what you're doing is you're kind of like messing about with a light switch, but you're not really fully going one way or the other. So good on you, but you've not fully gone the whole way. And I can tell you now, I can say now from my own research, it doesn't take much in terms of carbs in the dog's diet to take them out of that carb— sorry, that fat-reliant ketogenic state.

That was my question. Yeah. So if you give them a little bit of carbs, have you seen— can dogs hit a wall? Do dogs, when they're switching from, let's say, a carb-burning pathway to the fat-burning pathway, simply Can dogs hit a wall like marathon runners do? Does that happen, or can they switch just like that?

I've found with my own dogs and other dogs that— because I've actually got just over there— that when I measure ketones or blood glucose, they switch over real quick. Like, you can fast them for 24 hours and they'll be into it. I think the longer you do it, the more kind of adapted they become to it, you know. So there are— I think there is a, there is a belief out there, and again, I don't necessarily agree with this, that feed them more meat in the working season and then just put them on a cheap, a cheap kibble. I don't believe that because I think all you're doing is you really want to let— you really want to get— let those pathways fully get going, you know. You don't want to sort of take them in and out of it. Just let them get in there and let everything get firing away, you know. Now, um, the other one— I keep you all day with this— the other one I'm going to briefly touch upon is, is, and I mentioned it quickly, but I think it's a really important point, is hydration. Okay, so, and I'm sure, I don't know, I'm sure you guys have probably spoken about this in the past in terms of raw food and hydration and how dogs drink less. I'm sure you've spoken about it. So, um, In terms of working dogs, and this is where the whole working dog thing is kind of— people might say, what relevance does it have for the average dog? Well, the fact is it does, because, um, we're kind of— by working the dog, it's almost like a stress test. We're enabling ourselves to see things a lot more clearer by putting dogs under some level of physical exertion. Um, so what you find is when you put a dog onto a high So if you look at something called the respiratory exchange ratio, so if you look at it, look at when it's 1, that essentially means it's looking at the production of carbon dioxide versus O2 oxygen uptake. So if it's 1, there's an equal balance between carbon dioxide production and oxygen uptake. Once you go above 1, then what that means is the dog is relying more on carbs. So as soon as you add more carbs in the diet, then basically the dog's producing more CO2 and intake is less O2. So as we all know with dogs, that means they're going to start because they want to, they want to, they want to get it back down there, right? Now if you look at a high-fat diet, then that respiratory exchange ratio goes the opposite way. So you end up with less CO2 production and more O2 uptake, and that means less So just by combination of just good old-fashioned blowing off more CO2, the dog is going to be in a more dehydrated state than the dog that's fed a high kibble diet. And this is just— this has been— this is— there was a good— I never— I can't take the credit for this. There was a lady who did a PhD at Massey before me, and she looked at this with dogs, and they used the Douglas bags and all this kind of stuff, and they had them on the treadmills, and she measured all this. So That's again, that's just the fact, you know. I mean, what's the implications?

What are the implications for you on a track before the dogs?

Well, I'll tell you a funny story. I'll tell you, it's actually a frustrating story, is that when I lived in New Zealand, there was a, um, I was working for a particular company and, um, I— there was a bid for, for, um, uh, all the New Zealand service dogs, you know, like the drug dogs, the police dogs, all that kind of stuff. And I put a bid in on behalf of this company, and my angle was, yes, it's more expensive, but, you know, all the other— along with all the other benefits of feeding a dog a diet of this composition, one of them that's relevant for you guys is that if a dog's blowing off more— and this hasn't been proven, but I suspect there's a pretty strong likelihood— if it's blowing off more CO2, is that going to affect suffocation? Are they going to be able to smell something as well? And there's a lot of CO2 that's being produced, you know. I think, first of all, I think that should be a great study and someone can take that up, or if someone wants to fund me for it, give me a shout, I'll do it. But anyway, they never accepted it, and that wasn't even going into the sort of the exercise benefits I mentioned before of a high fat. But yeah, ultimately they never went with it. They went for a kibble instead.

What's the hydration bit though, Mark? Like, in terms of like, I'm assuming you've put these dogs on the track and tried them out a little bit. You're not the raw— oh, sorry, I've cut you off there, but I can't hear you, Mark. Sorry. Um, yeah, I can, I can hear you now. Sorry, Mark, I didn't— we missed it. Yeah, I can hear you now. You in time? Yeah. Um, I was just going to say, have you, have you worked these dogs, Mark, against other teams? Uh, have they— like, how many years has this team been— how long are you building this raw-fed team?

And so, so that's a good question, mate. So, um, so when I came to the US I was kind of like, do I want to go for one more, you know, run of, of building a kennel? Because when I moved over here, I had an aging team. I was like, do I want to build another set of dogs and do this again? And then the answer I came to was yes. Why? Because I like working dogs, uh, and two, I wanted to really dig deeper into this stuff and see that, see the end, you know, the results of that. Um, I mean, these— the thing with the dogs I've got is Well, it's not the dogs, it's the environment. So for half the year, I can't give the dogs water because the water's just frozen. So they don't— there's no water for them to drink. So when I feed these dogs, they get fed once a day, uh, and they get a meat-based diet, and I just make into a massive stew, and that's the only time they drink. So they only drink once a day, you know. You just can't— even if you take them out working and you pour water in a bowl in front of them they don't want it. Like, when it's— it comfortably gets down to— so I can't say come, it's not comfortably, but it'll get down to negative 30, negative 30, 35, you know, degrees. As soon as you pull the water, it's frozen, you know, and they don't want it either way. So you've got to rely on them getting all that fluid in one meal. And even when they're out— I mean, I take dogs out, I'll do 50 miles with them, 60 miles stop. And, you know, even if I make them some something to drink, they might only have a couple hundred mils. They don't drink much fluid. Um, so it's, um, it's, it's again, that's an extreme example, but it shows you that when you see this, when I see my own eyes, even though I understand that, you know what, they get— they are— I'm giving them plenty of fluid, they're consuming it because it's in a diet, you know, a high-fat protein that they want to eat. But also I understand in my head that, you know, those pathways are going in such a way, and that CO2 production and O2 uptake is actually helping keeping them hydrated. When you see it, even when I see it, I think to myself, Christ, that's kind of mental. Like, you see a lot of dogs can be out for hours and you see them hardly drinking anything. You just think, that is really quite impressive, you know. You can't help but be impressed by it, you know.

It's an amazing adaption to a frozen waste though, isn't it? It's, it's a desert. It's a water desert. Yeah, it is, because there's no available water.

But then, but then when you think about it again, um, and that's the thing with what we all do, is we all get sort of, um, we're all into the science and all the rest of it, but then when you take a step back and think, well, you know, the wolves, uh, that's another thing I should talk about, the wolves up in Alaska when I went studying them. But, but, but with wolves, that they'll cover 50, 60 miles a day Now, if you're up in Denali, your food's only going to come from, from the kill, you know. That's the only— it's not really much different, the same concept. Um, but, um, yeah, I find it really— in terms of how other people— I don't know how other people— I, I just know most, um, unfortunately feed a combination because— and it's a bit like the pancreatitis discussion is that someone's told them to do it, someone else tells them to do it, they do it, they do it, they do it, and it becomes the exception. So I want to see how my guys are going to do on this diet, you know. I mean, I want to— you know, they did fantastic last year, um, we're going to hopefully do a 250-mile race this year, and I'm going to keep going and going, and, and we'll see where it stops. It's likely to be the one who falls apart before they do. But I'll go as far as I can.

Yeah, there's a lot of people on here, Mark.

There's a—

canny cross is very big in Ireland, so that's, I think it's one, maybe two dogs, you know, wheels and being pulled along a little chariot. And so there's people here that do that. And is there any difference between feeding— what do you know about the difference between three different types of working dogs? So let's say canny cross style, sled dogging, which is much longer distance, and then compare it to a 400-meter dash from a lurcher?

It's a good question. I think if you're going out and you're working for, you know, a Canicross, again, I actually do a bit of that in New Zealand. It all depends how far you're going, you know. If it's just— I still think even if you're just doing a few kilometers, a few miles, you're still clearly going to be into those that whole beta oxidation, you're still using fats as a source of energy. So I would, I would still say that even for if you're out for a handful of minutes, that the diet of that is still the right way to go. And I still think you're not going to deplete that glycogen to the point where it's going to affect the dog. Actually, as I mentioned before, the fact that you want a diet that's not going to deplete it anyway, even though it might start off less. And I go back to the New Zealand working dogs. The glucose may be lower, it doesn't actually seem to reduce the level of performance. Now the real interesting one here, the real interesting one here is what about, say, a greyhound that's flying on the track? Okay, that's a real interesting one. Now I'm on the fence on this because I went to a conference over in Long Beach in California a couple of years ago, and there was a guy who was giving some really good work about sprinters and powerlifters and bodybuilders, how even on a high-fat diet they still had this explosive strength. So is that the same? Logic would say, well, it must be the same for dogs. Do dogs somehow manage to catch up and convert those proteins into glucose? Is there some way in which we do it? Is the creatine within meat, which is typically high, is that somehow working to replenish this and allow them to perform that? Listen, the jury's out as far as I'm concerned on this one. Let's get 10 super quick greyhounds, feed them on both diets and see how they get on and measure things.

Is nobody doing that? Is nobody doing that?

Oh mate, I mean, that's— I know, I know, that's why it's Yeah, I don't know why, because I think there's some really cool PhDs out there, masters and all the rest of it. But, um, I guess the problem is you've got to convince universities to actually get involved, and also you've got to get funding from, from companies that want to do that. But I'll tell you what, if I, if I was a working dog company, I'd be looking down that avenue for sure. I mean, look at greyhounds. Look at greyhounds. I mean, they make good money. Well, not the greyhounds, the owners make money. Some companies should be looking at that.

Yeah.

Yeah, too many of them are ending up feeding things like bread and stuff like that because they're under that illusion that they need to carb-load their dogs before the sprint, and it's still that illusion that's perpetuated rather than necessarily the science that's been proving it.

Yeah, but the greyhound, even if it's on a high-fat raw diet, which it should be, I would wager they're still going to have a glycogen store, and if they're only doing 400 meters, they're not going to get through their glycogen. So they can get the best of both worlds, surely?

Yeah, that's kind of how I see it. That's kind of how I see it, Nick, is it's not gonna— it's too short to be sort of, you know, something that's going to run deficient, you know. And if you've got that and you've got the protein, you've got the fat, you are— you're right, you're looking at— you're kind of embracing all those systems and just relying on one.

Can greyhounds, if they're in the trap and they're getting excited and animated, can they be conditioned to carb-load themselves and go into ketogenesis and turbocharge themselves so they have enough glycogen to get around the 400 meters? Does that happen? Does anybody measure it before and after the starting gun?

I'm not aware of it. I'm not aware of any research. I'm not aware of anything involving that. There might well be, but I certainly haven't seen anything involving that.

Um, but that they would have it on board though. That's what I'm saying. They would have glycogen on board because you, you always store a bit of glycogen if you have to go and chase a deer or, you know, yeah, even, yeah, even, yeah, that's right.

Well, I mean, a good way to look upon it, if you want a classic example, and in a way this kind of answers the question, is look at a, look at a cheetah. So a cheetah is going to go after that gazelle and it's going to be motoring up to 70 miles an hour that, that tea is not consuming carbs. Yeah, you know.

Yeah, nice, nice.

So that's the way I look at it.

Yeah, so sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, go on. So when you're looking through all of this research, and it's great that you're out there doing some of this, you know, so many people are interested in what you're doing, um, are you finding that, you know, all of these papers which are written about the human stuff, and we're seeing lots of development of ideas around why humans aren't necessarily as carb greedy as they should, as they have been painted out to be. Are you finding that there is a lot of correlation between a lot of those human study stuff that's out there and what you're finding with dogs, or do you find that there is a disparate sort of group?

Well, you guys know me, and I'm kind of, I've always, I'm always someone who kind of likes to self-experiment. As much as anything else. So I do a lot of, um, when the dogs are obviously busy from, from September all the way through to beginning of April, then they're done. I then do a lot of running. So what I, I switched over and I went on a ketogenic diet for years and years, and I did several ultra marathons with probably no more than about 30 grams of carbs I was consuming a day. I never had any effects at all.

That's crazy.

Amazing. Brilliant.

So, so I don't, I don't think humans, I don't think humans have any need for carbs. I think there's certainly, you know, having a few fruits and vegetables, you know, I don't have a problem with that. But I certainly think the, the abundance that we have, that we consume, is, is way too much. And part of my hope is that, and I think we are seeing it, we are seeing people kind of thinking about it more and then kind of applying it into the dogs and the cats more, you know, and hopefully that will gather more speed. But yeah, I mean, I've measured my glucose a lot and I've never had— it's always sat pretty the whole time. I've never gone hypo or anything. So it's not just dogs, it's humans as well.

If someone was to ask you, Mark, I know you're not going to give me a straight answer here because you're a Man City supporter, but also because you're competitive. So like I would say, if I was to ask you ask you, uh, what else can you give to sled dogs? To what are you— you're in canicross and you want your dogs to perform better. Can you give us a couple of notes on a few supplements that you like? What sort of things do you put in your dogs just for maintenance? You don't have to talk about the Turbo Boost stuff that you keep to yourself.

Honestly, I think one of the things I'd be looking at would be, um, uh, obviously that'll be the Dalek of Elon Musk.

You just need to— your sound's just gone slightly. Oh, here we go, we're back.

Yeah, yeah.

Sound, sound sounds terrible. You sound like a dog.

It'll be on your phone, it'll be fine.

It will be on the phone, yeah, it'll come out in the—

in the—

if you listen to this podcast later on, we'll get Mark to specially record that hamster into his phone.

Yeah, I think he's just putting on some— he's putting on —give away the secrets.

Yeah, guys, guys, we're at, we're at the hour. I would love to invite Mark back because I've only just started on the list of questions and he can talk to us about his— yeah, so, um, um, Mark, how can people find out about, uh, what you do? Have you got a Facebook page or anything like that? Or that maybe, Bren, can you Right, yeah, we can put a link on the link.

It's on, it's on the Facebook page already. There's a link direct through to Mark's. There's some great information on there. Um, he talks about, you know, his disdain for carbs a lot. I've seen quite a few videos and his, uh, and some things that are great around the fats, etc. Uh, I would just say please do visit his Facebook page. It would be great to support Mark. And Mark, is there any particular sort of organizations which are funding your research and stuff that we should know about, that we should be promoting people to join in with?

Uh, can you hear me now?

Oh no, I'll tell you what, type us an answer or record it on your phone.

Yeah, we'll put it up on Facebook as well, so don't worry, we'll We'll share those links for sure.

I think Elon Musk has purchased a cereal factory and has now decided to cut Mark off because he doesn't like what he's saying.

Yeah. So I'd just like to say that Mark is just another fabulous PhD. Isn't it great that we've got PhDs adding such wealth of knowledge to the conversation? I just think it's fantastic. It's just great to meet another PhD in the gang. Nick, you're shaking your head. But yeah, it is fantastic. I was listening to Marcus— Michael Saylor, his name is. He's this really famous economist, and apparently, because I just heard him recently on the podcast, everybody else— you know him, do you? Yeah, I don't. Bitcoin guy. But really interesting. And he's got this institution that he believes in free education for everyone, so he just gets all the MIT professors and gets them to give their lecture on physics, lecture on thermodynamics, lecture on whatever, and puts it up for free, and he's— they trained a million people, heading them towards degrees. He wants to produce the most amount of PhDs in the next 10 years because he reckons that he's just— he's dying to get a jet propulsion system that can go a lot quicker than, uh— so I just thought, what a cool idea. So this guy was just talking about, um, PhD people, because like, people like Mark do all this research, and like, we wouldn't have this sort of knowledge if it wasn't for people like Mark and the institutions that— and the people that funded that research. Research costs money, and that's the problem. If Mark had more money to do these things, we'd learn so much more. It seems like the wrong experiments are being done all the time, and Mark gets a couple of quid to do a PhD, and look, we're actually getting easily another few hours out of it. So it's a pity we don't have more of this information, you know.

I think it was more than a couple of quid anyway. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

But isn't it a shame that this is like how many few, how many few Mark Roberts we have, and how many thousands and thousands of scientists we have working in the dry food industry, and then, you know, we get one or two gems coming out. So It's so useful. You can see by the comments that it's just valuable information. So thanks a million, Mark, for coming on tonight. We'll share your links. And thanks to everyone for coming. Very much appreciate it. So yeah, I think that was a good show. So we'll get you back, Mark, for sure.

Please come back and see us, Mark. We've got so many more questions to ask you.