Dogs have lived with us humans for more than 16,000 years. From medieval times up until the mid-1800s dogs were mainly fed a steady diet of table scraps. They ate things like cabbage, potatoes, and bread crusts – whatever their owners could spare.
It is said that the Mesopotamian diet for dogs was barley dipped in whey, hunks of bread, meat broth and table scraps. Sounds good. Rice was a staple ingredient for dogs in China.
But then the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century came along, and dogs became pets as well as work animals. The year of note is 1860 when James Spratt produced a wheat-based biscuit that also contained beef blood. British sporting dogs were the starting recipients of these new biscuits.
When canned food came along, it was horse meat - readily available and acceptable back then.
Kibble came after biscuits. It is a product of extrusion. That's a method of flash-cooking raw ingredients at extremely high temperatures in order to create a uniform, pellet-like product that resembles the kibble of today. Once sprayed with taste-enhancing chemicals and preservatives, the kibble was bagged into enormous quantities and sent to market.
Today there are mainstream movements in raw food and fresh food.
What are some surprising foods you should not feed a dog? - avocado
- onions and garlic
- grapes and raisins
- macadamia nuts
- persimmons, peaches and plums
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