Dog Nutrition is complete when fed a raw meat diet. See how the nutrition profiles compare

Meat is vital to your dog because it is a carnivore. Butwhat about cooked meat or dried dog treats? And why is most of the pet food manufacturing industry selling grains and vegetable matter to your dog?

This article reviews the specific nutrition of raw and cooked beef and chicken with the AAFCO guidelines. These American guidelines are taken as a world standard and are cleverly created to preclude raw diets and benefit dog food manufacturers. This is part one of the article and explores the nutrition requirement of dogs in regard to fats and proteins in their diet.

Other articles on this site have shown that ideally youshould be providing your dog with raw meat, even if you have frozen it first as a caution against ‘bad’ bacteria. While meat dog treats are always cooked first, and it slightly lessons their nutrition, it also ensures a stable shelf life. The good news is that for the main meats of beef and chicken, that amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) are mostly preserved through the cooking process. There is a small loss in some of the vitamins, however as dried meat dog treats are the best ‘snack’ that a dog can get, it is worth understanding how the drying process may affect its nutrient level (see the appendix for tables).

The best method of cooking to retain vitamins is roasting (or oven drying) and broiling (cooking in water). Less nutrients are preserved when cooking by braising and finally stewing dramatically reduces vitamin levels.  The following analysis is made with chuck steak (typically costing $6 per kilo at markets) and whole chicken meat. Values of the nutrients for both raw and roasted versions for beef and chicken are compared for fats, proteins, amino acids, vitamins and minerals. Further comparisons are made with sardines (healthy oily fish) and corn.