Food Poisoning
Why dogs don't duffer to the same extent as humans
People who do not support feeding a dog their natural diet including kibble manufacturers, will often use the case of food poisoning to sway pet parents away from feeding species-appropriate diets to dogs, so how true is it?
I sit here with food poisoning from dodgy take out on Friday night with my guts churning, threatening to explode with as little notice as a 2 million-year-old dormant volcano and I figure there’s an opportunity for education in every experience, right?
👉 The dog's digestive tract is shorter than a human's, which means that food passes through much faster, therefore if a dog eats something with a high burden of toxins created by bacteria, it passes through the body quickly not giving it a chance to linger and make the dog sick.
🤮 When food passes through humans, it does so more slowly, increasing the risk of making them sick - that salad bar or yummy prawn plate is a high risk for the human's delicate digestive system!
🥩Dogs also have different types of gut bacteria[3] which supports their ability to break down their natural (meat) diet.
🦠 Dogs living on a whole foods diet for some time have a greater level of diversity of bacteria[1] in their gut vs kibble-fed dogs which keeps their digestive system happier and also helps them cope with constantly changing foods that typically occurs when a dog is fed a whole foods diet.
🔋Dogs fed a natural also have a slightly different pH level to humans[2] helping them break down bones and gross things more effectively. It is said that kibble-fed dogs have higher pHs and therefore not as capable of breaking down natural diets, but we don't have any studies that I am aware of comparing fresh food-fed dogs and kibble-fed dogs. We only have one study but that was based on kibble or canned diets, which have higher carbohydrate contents.
🌟 So, in short - Mother Nature made the dog able to consume their natural diet, therefore, the digestive tract was made to cope with their natural diet, and that’s why they don’t get sick as easily as we do.
The complexities of how dogs do not get sick are not fully understood yet, for example, David Nichols DVM theorises: "Perhaps they [dogs] have a more active liver that breaks them [toxins created by bacteria] down in the first pass. Perhaps they do not have as many receptor sites for the toxins to latch on and cause their effects. Or maybe both. Or maybe they have more immune system phagocytes that destroy the toxin molecule. Dogs are known to be much more resistant to Clostridial spp intoxication than most other animals."[4]
⚠️ To be clear....Dogs can get sick but not like humans because Mother Nature made it so.
Most raw poultry contains Campylobacter. It also may contain Salmonella, Clostridium perfringens, and other bacteria. Raw meat may contain Salmonella, E. coli & Yersinia.....𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵𝘆 𝗱𝗼𝗴𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁.
Dogs under a year of age generally have immature digestive systems and are more prone to bacterial infections regardless of diet. I personally recommend young and elderly dogs (and dogs with sensitive digestive systems regardless of diet) are on a probiotic and digestive enzyme such as: https://mydoggieboosters.com/.../package-deal-gut-health
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[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9329806/
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3701609/....
[3] https://peerj.com/articles/3019/
[4] https://www.quora.com/Veterinarians-is-it-true-that-the...
[5] https://www.bigdogpetfoods.com/.../digestion-rates...