The Dog Bowl Pet Supply and BARF Raw Food Blog

Cooking destroys vitamins. Heat destroys many vitamins. Particularly a number of the B vitamins and vitamin C. Many are lost with cooking water.

Cooking destroys enzymes. All living tissue contains enzymes in abundance. Enzymes are proteins which control the chemical reactions which in their totality, constitute the life of an animal. The enzymes in raw food are now recognised as important nutrients. As nutrients they have two basic functions: Firstly, they aid the digestion of the food they are found it, and secondly they help slow the ageing process. The destruction of enzymes in food forces the pancreas to work harder. It has to produce more digestive enzymes. The result is several diseases in dogs, including Pancreatitis, Pancreatic Insufficiency and sugar Diabetes. Closely linked with this problem is the poor availability of zinc in modern processed foods, particularly the dried dog foods. Enzymes in food are absorbed whole into the bloodstream. Once in the body, they help slow and even reverse the damaging effects of a process in the body called "cross-linking". Cross-linking is one of the most damaging of the ageing effects. It causes skin to become wrinkled and inelastic, arteries to become hard and brittle, and is one of the mechanisms by which the molecules found in genes become damaged, resulting in cancer and birth deformities. In other words, by cooking your dog's food, you are contributing in no small way to your dog's ageing processes and in the case of stud dogs and bitches, you are contributing to reproductive problems.