FOOD AND SPECIAL DIETS

Food Allergies-Alfred Plechner, DVM

Bad breath, without dental disease, may mean you are looking at a problem of food that doesn’t agree with an animal. The immune cells in the mouth are overreacting to foodstuffs and you get a kind of “dermatitis of the mouth” and a bad smell. A red flare, or line, above the teeth, or even an entire oral cavity that appears inflamed, is a major sign that the problem is being caused by imbalances in the endocrine and immune system that often lead to food allergies and other disorders (see section on food allergies; also see chapter 16 on what to do when nothing seems to work).

{citation: part 2, p.105}

The Food Allergy Connection

-Alfred Plechner, DVM

This problem often has to do with food allergies and abnormal activity of antibodies in the mucous membrane of the intestinal tract, a result of imbalances in the endocrine-immune systems. (For more details on this widespread imbalance, see Plechner’s discussion in the food allergy section and in chapter 16.)

{citation: part 2, p. 140}

Food Allergies

See also Digestive Disorders

A healthy animal may not have trouble eating most foods. However, if you feed the same food daily for years, there is potential for intolerance to develop-particularly if you are feeding a cheap, poor-quality commercial pet food. Any individual animal can become allergic to any food-a protein source, a fruit, a vegetable. Just a small amount of an offending food could be enough to trigger reactions in some animals. In others, reactions occur from constant feeding of the same food.

Food allergies may manifest as intestinal upset, poor absorption of nutrients, or a variety of other problems. Remember that each animal is individual. Two hypersensitive dogs will probably react differently to the same food depending on their individual weaknesses and strengths.

“The HIT List” of Troublesome Foods-Alfred Plechner, DVM

(Note: Food allergy expert Alfred Plechner, DVM, was a co-creator of the first lamb and rice diet, marketed by Nature’s Recipe, and also helped design the company’s line of special diets for food-sensitive animals.)

Based on years of treating animals for food allergy-related disorders. I created an allergic “HIT list” of major food offenders. These are the foods that set off the alarm most frequently that is, that cause the most trouble in sensitive animals. You may have a dog who is sensitive to any one or several of them. in past years animals may have been able to tolerate these foods, but because of hormonal-immune system imbalances caused by improper breeding practices, increasing numbers of animals are intolerant and can develop both acute and chronic conditions as a result.

THE HIT LIST

1. Beef and beef by-products.

2. Milk. In my experience, perhaps as many as 80 percent of animals, no matter what age, cannot tolerate cow’s milk. After drinking it, they usually have gassy stomachs, vomiting, loose stool, or diarrhea. Raw, low-fat, or nonfat-it doesn’t matter. There is a much greater tolerance to cottage cheese, other cheeses, and yogurt.

3. Yeast, yeast-containing foods, brewer’s yeast (as given to animals for supposed flea protection). Unfortunately, quite a few animals are sensitive to yeast,

4. Corn and corn oil.

5. Pork.

6. Turkey.

7. Eggs. They can be allergenic, particularly the whites. If you want to test your animal, cook the eggs. Don’t give them raw. Years ago eggs were used in preparing distemper vaccines for dogs, but they were dropped from the formulations when it was found that they caused allergic reactions in many animals.

8. Fish and fish oils. If you want to provide omega-3 fatty acids to your anima, use plant oils instead, such as flaxseed oil.

9. Soybeans. This used to be a fine source of protein, but now many animals can’t handle it. Tofu, the fermented soybean product, is less allergenic, but nevertheless some animals are sensitive to it.

10. Chicken.

11. Lamb and rice!!! Surprise. See following text.

The HIT list may shock you. You may be thinking. There is nothing left to feed my animal. Lamb and rice, too. Isn’t that supposed to be hypoallergenic combination- that is, food that is safe for sensitive animals? Please read on. There is hope: there are solutions for highly sensitive animals.

When I first participated with Nature’s Recipe to develop a commercial lamb and rice diet, the intention was to produce a cleaner food that would be palatable and tolerated by the many animals sensitive to the adulterated beef by-products widely used in the pet food industry. The thinking was that if you fed a food-such as lamb and rice-that animals weren’t used to eating, you could avoid or minimize food allergies. That was in the mid-1980’s-and the idea worked.

Today, however, there are something like sixty versions of lamb and rice on the market. Diets are inundated with lamb and rice, and increasingly animals are developing an intolerance to lamb and rice recipes. The sensitivity can possibly be explained in part as a result of the constant exposure to lamb and rice, or it could be due to some individually offensive ingredient used in a particular formulation. I have found that often an animal can tolerate one brand of lamb and rice but not another, so you have to wonder what else is in the other brand. Pet foods are highly processed with many chemicals and multiple ingredients, often of questionable purity, and any one of them could be the triggering agent.

Interestingly, I have found recently that some animals who now appear to be sensitive to lamb and rice can handle beef-based diets better, at least for a while. This may possibly be because they haven’t been exposed much to beef. If you decide to try your animal on beef, it should be a healthy form, not adulterated and shot up with hormones.

Many health-oriented pet owners like to feed rice to their animals, and particularly brown rice, which is more nutritious. Just be aware of the possibility that some animals may react to the rice whether it is white, brown, or basmati.

In order to help affected animals, who seemingly have fewer food options open to them, I worked with Nature’s Recipe eight years ago to develop “limited antigen diets.” The idea was to combine potatoes with duck, venison, and rabbit-foods that animals had little exposure to and that were thus less likely to cause problems. Testing validated the concept, leading to the production of a number of dry and canned foods for dogs and cats. Each item has just two ingredients so as to limit the potential for allergic reaction.

The recommendation is to use a particular food for four to six months and then switch to another. For example, you feed duck and potatoes for four months, then switch to rabbit and potatoes. These foods, sold under the label of Innovative Veterinary Diets, are widely available on a prescription basis from veterinarians for animal food disorders. For additional vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, I recommend adding to the base food fresh vegetables and fruits that your animal can tolerate, plus a good nutritional supplement. The supplement I recommend is Power for Life, made by Terra Oceana (805-563-2634). It contains a health-boosting range of vitamins, trace minerals, enzymes, and whole-food factors. Follow label instructions.

Outside of the food itself, there is another extremely important aspect to the issue of food allergies. Many of our companion animals suffer from a widely unrecognized endocrine- immune dysfunction, a genetic fallout from years of inbreeding and line breeding. Among other things, this can create an erratic metabolism, intolerance to many foods, and abnormal immune reactions.

When certain hormones go awry, they fail to properly regulate the immune system, to the digestive tract, uncontrolled immune cells challenge food components as foreign invaders, setting off a whole scenario of upset, intolerance, and malabsorption, resulting in animals not being able to extract adequate nutrition from the food.

As genetic defects become perpetuated in the genre pool of breeding stock, it appears that more and more animals are able to tolerate fewer and fewer foods. With severely affected animals, unless you correct their deep-seated hormone-antibody levels with replacement therapy, there is hardly anything left they can eat. This may sound overly dramatic, but the reality in my practice is that I see more pets in this sad shape now than before-and I have been studying this problem for many years. The situation has become worse, and many animals are dying early in life because of it. In my opinion we have entered into a genetic ice age! See chapter 16 for information about a blood test that can determine such genetic imbalances and what can be done to address them.

TIPS FOR FEEDING SAFER FOODS

If you have a food-intolerant animal, the following suggestions can help minimize problems:

* Always read the list of ingredients on the label. The shorter the list, the better. The longer the list, the higher the odds of encountering an ingredient the animal can’t tolerate.

* The first three ingredients on the label usually make up 90 percent of the contents.

* Try to avoid ingredients on the HIT list, foods that often cause reactions in susceptible animals.

* Look out for, and avoid, products with chemical additives. This means the artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial sweeteners, chemical preservatives, and stabilizers. All have the potential to intensify or wholly activate an allergic reaction.

* Fresh and wholesome foods are, of course, much better for your animals as they are for us. But they, too, have the potential to cause reactions because of hormonal-immune imbalances. This includes raw meat. The food may be great, but your animal just may not be able to tolerate it.

THE ADD-BACK PLAN

On your own you can try developing an individually safe diet for your pet. If you feel there is some problem with the food you are giving your animal, start feeding a simple diet of low-fat cottage cheese and potatoes. I have found that to be tolerable for most animals.

Do this for a week. Feed one part cottage cheese to four parts boiled white potatoes (don’t use red potatoes, as they have a tendency to create diarrhea). If the stools are good, and there are no signs of food intolerance such as scratching, stomach upset, or diarrhea, then do a slow add-back of foods, one at a time, and each for a week before you add another.

I suggest starting add-back with a homemade food first, perhaps some vegetables or even chicken. If there are no reactions, you might find a commercial chicken product for pets and test it the same way the following week. Make sure the contents include no common allergenic items. See if your animal does as well as on the homemade chicken.

You can continue to add back any food to the regular diet after it has passed the seven- day test. You can then rotate, mix, and ad-lib with the boundaries of tolerated food. In this way you can soon develop an individualized hypoallergenic menu for your animal.

Another option is that after a week of cottage cheese and potatoes, you can also introduce a commercial pet food in this case add-back manner. Be alert for reactions. Remember that commercial food has multiple ingredients that increase the potential for reactions.

* The key points of the add-back diet are these: Add back only one food per week.

* If your animal is on any program of medication, don’t stop the medication unless your veterinarian says it’s okay.

* Eliminate any chew sticks, vitamins, biscuits, or snacks when you are testing. Any one of these items can be the cause of allergic reactions. In this plan, all foods and even ingredients in nutritional supplements are guilty until proven innocent. Later, once you have a firm handle on a problem-free diet, you can slowly begin to reintroduce supplements again. But monitor them as you would the food.

* It’s okay to feed from the table if you eat healthy. Unseasoned pastas, vegetables, and salad can be mixed into a base diet. But if your animal starts to scratch, vomits, has diarrhea, or becomes lethargic, than the light bulb should go on. You may have fed something that your animal cannot tolerate. Use common sense!

{citation: part 2, pp. 164-169}