How Much Fat Should Be In Raw Diets?

This video will show you how to balance the protein and fat in your dog's raw diet. This is part of the Raw Dog Food Unlocked course.

RESOURCES & LINKS:
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Find the fat in your meats at USDA FoodData Central: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/index.html
The Ultimate Guide to Balancing Fats: https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com...
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To build a raw diet, you have to understand what macronutrients are. A macronutrient is any substance that gives your dog energy - and as long as your dog doesn't drink alcohol, there are only three sources of energy: protein, fat and carbohydrate. Your dog's diet also includes micronutrients, which are the vitamins and minerals, and phytonutrients which are tiny compounds like quercetin and curcumin - but only protein, fat and carbohydrate - the macronutrients will supply your dog with energy or calories. So macronutrients are obviously the most critical part of your dog's diet - with the exception of carbohydrate. The funny thing about carbohydrate is, dogs have no known need for them. They can live perfectly fine without them. In fact, that's the main benefit of the raw diet … your dog isn't getting a lot of his nutrition from carbohydrate.

So if there's very little carbohydrate in the diet, that leaves just two macronutrients to fuel your dog: protein and fat. Now this sounds pretty simple to figure out, but when it comes to how much fat and protein should be in the raw diet, many raw feeders get this wrong. Now fat is super important not just for fuel - it builds and support all of your dog's cell membranes, fat soluble vitamins, hormones and can even decrease - or increase - inflammation in the body. Without enough fat, your dog's health would suffer severely. But there's three things you need to know about fat:

First, fat contains few vitamins and minerals - it's nutrient poor. Second, large amounts of fat cause unwanted changes in the gut flora and trigger inflammation. And third, pound for pound, fat contains TWICE as many calories as protein. So you want a healthy amount of fat in the diet … but not too much!

So how do we figure out the right amount? Well, let's see what Mother Nature has to say about it. And to do this, we need to look at wild prey animals. I have data from whole prey animals from zoos - they need this information so they can make balanced diets for their own carnivores. We have analyses from deer, rabbits, quail, ducks and other animals … and they all have roughly the same ratio of protein to fat: 2:1. Across the board, healthy prey animals all have this one thing in common: they contain twice as much protein as fat. So that's what you need to feed your dog. Mother Nature rarely gets it wrong.

OK, so how do you know if your dog is getting too much fat? Well, if you're feeding a commercial raw diet, it's easy - just look on the label. Now, a lot of raw diets contain the same amount of fat as protein - and that means a really high calorie diet that's not what nature wants your dog to eat. The result is a shift in your dog's gut flora and a decrease in the healthy vitamins and short chain fatty acids they produce. In short, high fat diets are inflammatory. They cause a low grade systemic inflammation that stresses your dog's organs, so you don't want the fat to be too high. Look for a diet that contains roughly half the amount of fat as protein.

Now if you're making your own raw food, then you just need to know the fat content of the meats you feed. Regular ground beef is 30% fat and 14% protein. That's TWICE as much fat as protein, FOUR TIMES as many calories from fat as from protein and a REALLY inflammatory diet. 20% lean ground beef is 20% fat and 13% protein - remember the rest is water weight, while 10% lean ground beef is, you guessed it, 10% fat but 20% protein. And 10% fat gives you the perfect ratio of protein to fat. So if you feed your own dog food, you need to know how much fat is in the food - and the amount of fat needs to be around 10%. If you're not sure, you can always google the meat and you should get the amount of fat. You'll usually see the amount of fat per 100g of food, and that will tell you the overall percentage of fat.

If you have a question or you need any help with your dog's diet, just leave a comment below and I'm happy to help you out. If you liked this video, like it, share it, tell people about it. Thanks for watching!

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