Should you never switch foods?

Should you never switch foods?

A lot of these myths are interrelated, and this one is particularly connected to the “complete and balanced” issue.  Again, consider human nutrition practices.  Some days we have a steak, others chicken, and maybe some pasta the next.  Did dogs and cats in the wild have the option to limit themselves to a single ingredient?  Would they attempt to eat the same thing every day?  Total cereal, a fantastic product, has everything you need to live on in one box; so you should be able to eat nothing but Total cereal and do just fine (sound familiar?) right?  Not exactly.

Eventually, after eating nothing but the same box of cereal, day after day, for a period of years, your body is going to react, or more accurately shut itself down to that food in one way or another.  This is why so many of the newest premium pet foods contain no corn, wheat, or soy; pets were grossly overexposed to these ingredients for decades.  Then there were all the premium foods with chicken or chicken by-products as a main ingredient, which lead to the myth that feeding Lamb & Rice is better--pets everywhere had eaten nothing but chicken for generations, and now needed a new protein source.

Now lamb-based foods are having the same issue, and thus we see venison, duck, and other exotic meats now being included in pet foods.  The introduction of these protein sources to the market has been a positive, however, as it now offers pet owners an incredibly easy way to rotate their pet’s food every three to six months--a much better plan for long-term health both for your own pet, as well as their bloodlines if they’re bred.  A number of companies, such as Nature’s Variety, and Canine Caviar, are actively promoting rotation and variety in the diets of our pets, to great benefit.

The idea of never switching food was mostly propagated by manufacturers to maintain customer loyalty; besides, if you should never switch foods, why do they tell you to switch between puppy, adult, and senior foods?  (More on this in the section on puppy foods.)

But won’t switching cause digestive upset?

Only if you’re switching between inferior products.  Today’s best pet foods--the types of food you find at Joey’s--do not cause digestive upset when used in proper rotation.  In fact, you do not even need to mix the old food with the new one; actually, with premium foods, not only do you not need to mix foods, but you shouldn’t.