How to check the nutrition profile of your dog's menu
In the series of "Raw feeding 911 Part I" through "Raw feeding Part IX", I wrote a lot about raw diet for dogs from what you feed,how much to feed, what you can do when your dogs turned nose up or vomited etc etc..
In the previous entry titled "Raw feeding 911 Part II", I wrote that with my way of feeding;1.5 day worth poultry,1.5 day worth fish,4 day worth red meat, it tends to have close omega 3 number enough to make Omega 3 being higher than Omega 6 if I give Palette fish body oil daily.
Therefore, I do not try to be exact on ratio number for omega 3 vs Omega 6 but,I make sure I get higher omega 6,and lower omega 3 by putting weekly menu into nutrition profile website.
Then,I decide how much of fish body oil capsules I would need to give Palette each week.
Depending on the menu detail, I give none,sometimes I give daily,sometimes just 2-3 days per week.It depends.
You would also notice that when I make an entry about Palette's treat diary series, I always leave the link to the nutrition profile website for you to look at more detail yourself for the nutrition information, and also tell you how much kcal in the treat.
In the previous entry titled "What brand/type of dog food are best for your dogs?", I wrote a little bit about homemade diet, and also wrote that with homemade diet, they will look the kcal rather than how much weight of food you would feed, and supplement your dogs with deficient nutrient,and try to achieve the balanced meal recipe by recipe.
For me, good diet is base of our health whether humans or furriends, and I strongly believe that best source of such various array of vitamins,minerals, and all other essential nutrients we need are best provided in the form of "fresh" REAL food, not via synthetic vitamin pills.
Synthetic vitamins/minerals could deliver deficient nutrient for the specific menu, but I feel that natural fresh food form will be more easily absorbed,plus fresh food can deliver more than 1 specific nutrient.
If you were to switch your dog's diet to fresh food diet from processed dog food that often times comes with statement "Complete and balanced", you may wonder how you can see what kinds of nutrient profile the menu you have created can provide to your dogs.
So I thought, in this entry, I would show you how you can use the nutrient profile website to have rough ideas about how many kcal your dogs are getting with the meals and what nutrients your fresh food menu can provide your dogs.
There are two websites you can look up the nutrient for food you feed to your dogs.
Websites you can look nutrient profile up
One is nutririondata.self.com , and the other is usda website nal.usda.gov
With USDA website, all you need to do is to put the food name in the empty box,select the appropriate food group and click on "submit" button. Then,select the appropriate form of foods; type of meat,cooked or raw etc.
After that, select the weight of the products (28 grams is equal to 1 oz wt), and click "submit" button and you will have the nutrition breakdown like this.
With USDA website, you cannot look combined nutrient profile (nutrient profile for all the menu you feed).
That is when nutritiondata website comes handy. You can look one thing up, you can look up overall nutrient profile by using the recipe function. Also if you did not find the item at the site, you can input the data from nutrition label on back of the products or maybe data from USDA website by using custom entry function. So, this website is very useful when you like to look things up.
How to find the nutrient profile for overall menu
Here is how nutritiondata website work.
1. Go to nutritiondata.self.com and create your account
2. Look for items you feed,and click on the item
** You will then see the nutrition detail for the product
3. If the item was common items you feed, click on "Add to my foods" and it will make it easy for you to search next time
** All of your common menu item added to "my foods" will be listed under "My Foods" page and you can hoover your cursor on "My ND" and you can see "My Foods" right under "My ND" box
4. After adding all the common food you feed to "My Foods" page, now you can create the recipe.
5. Hoover cursor over "My ND" and click on "My recipe" and that is the page where all your recipes will be stored
6. If you were to make new recipes, click on "create recipe"
7. On the bottom, you will find the search box and you will type in the food name and click "search" and you will see the list of items
8. Click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate food items to add to your recipe
9. Keep searching,adding items to your recipe
10. When all the menu is in the recipe, adjust the amount and quantity of each food
11. When everything is set, click on "Save & Analyze" button and you will see the overall nutrition profile on the page.
There, you can see roughly how much of omega 3,Omega 6, Vitamin A etc.. your dog is getting through the menu you feed them.
This is how I am getting the rough ideas as to how much of what nutrient I am feeding to Palette through form of food, and decide the number of fish body oil capsules I give to her.
Now, when you happened to have no nutrient profile found on the website, you can still create the profile on your own by using the custom entry function.
How to make nutrient profile using the custom entry
1. Hoover cursor over "Tool" and click on "custom entry tool"
2. Enter nutrient profile numbers using food labels on products and click on "Add to My food"
Also, there is another thing you can do at this website. You can compare recipe by recipe or food by food using "comparison" function.
How to compare food..
1. Hoover cursor over "Tool" and click on "Compare foods"
2. Search food items, click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate food items to add to your comparison page
** If you were to compare recipe by recipe, you can search the recipe by selecting "recipe" on search box and click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate recipe to add to your comparison page
3. Click "compare" button and you can see basic nutrient profile side by side
I do use the nutritiondata website to get rough ideas as to how much of what nutrient I am feeding to Palette through form of food, and decide the number of fish body oil capsules I give to her.
However, I do not try to go "complete and balanced" every single meal.
I believe variety,and balance over time whether it is for us human or for dogs.
Even if you feed kibble,each brand of kibble has different combination of nutrient (formula) and different ingredients.
If you feed same brand of kibble day in day out, dogs are getting the same combination of nutrient (formula) with same ingredients over and over again.
Therefore, I recommend to have a couple of brands to rotate so dogs can exposed to variety of ingredients, and variety of combination of nutrient.
When Palette was on kibble, she used to have 3 brands to rotate.
It goes same with those who feed raw diet.
Different food offer unique combination of nutrient. If you feed the same protein source over and over again, combination of nutrient and level of each nutrient will stay the same.
Therefore, by feeding variety of protein source, you can provide your dogs wide variety of nutrient and its level, and there would not have excess nutrient over the other nutrient in the long run.
Whether human or for dogs, any diet should not have one particular thing to dominate the overall diet menu.
When deficient nutrient is present, it is easy to reach to the vitamin pills but,when you think about it, there is no way to know that the pill you gave to your dogs was absorbed nicely enough to give them the stated amount of nutrient on the vitamin label.
Try provide nutrient with the form of "REAL" food, not processed food and give variety of food for balance over time.
Now you have a tool to see nutrient profile and get the rough ideas as to how much of what you are giving to your dogs.
Feed the best diet possible for your dogs to live healthy and longer..
In the previous entry titled "Raw feeding 911 Part II", I wrote that with my way of feeding;1.5 day worth poultry,1.5 day worth fish,4 day worth red meat, it tends to have close omega 3 number enough to make Omega 3 being higher than Omega 6 if I give Palette fish body oil daily.
Therefore, I do not try to be exact on ratio number for omega 3 vs Omega 6 but,I make sure I get higher omega 6,and lower omega 3 by putting weekly menu into nutrition profile website.
Then,I decide how much of fish body oil capsules I would need to give Palette each week.
Depending on the menu detail, I give none,sometimes I give daily,sometimes just 2-3 days per week.It depends.
You would also notice that when I make an entry about Palette's treat diary series, I always leave the link to the nutrition profile website for you to look at more detail yourself for the nutrition information, and also tell you how much kcal in the treat.
In the previous entry titled "What brand/type of dog food are best for your dogs?", I wrote a little bit about homemade diet, and also wrote that with homemade diet, they will look the kcal rather than how much weight of food you would feed, and supplement your dogs with deficient nutrient,and try to achieve the balanced meal recipe by recipe.
For me, good diet is base of our health whether humans or furriends, and I strongly believe that best source of such various array of vitamins,minerals, and all other essential nutrients we need are best provided in the form of "fresh" REAL food, not via synthetic vitamin pills.
Synthetic vitamins/minerals could deliver deficient nutrient for the specific menu, but I feel that natural fresh food form will be more easily absorbed,plus fresh food can deliver more than 1 specific nutrient.
If you were to switch your dog's diet to fresh food diet from processed dog food that often times comes with statement "Complete and balanced", you may wonder how you can see what kinds of nutrient profile the menu you have created can provide to your dogs.
So I thought, in this entry, I would show you how you can use the nutrient profile website to have rough ideas about how many kcal your dogs are getting with the meals and what nutrients your fresh food menu can provide your dogs.
There are two websites you can look up the nutrient for food you feed to your dogs.
Websites you can look nutrient profile up
One is nutririondata.self.com , and the other is usda website nal.usda.gov
With USDA website, all you need to do is to put the food name in the empty box,select the appropriate food group and click on "submit" button. Then,select the appropriate form of foods; type of meat,cooked or raw etc.
After that, select the weight of the products (28 grams is equal to 1 oz wt), and click "submit" button and you will have the nutrition breakdown like this.
With USDA website, you cannot look combined nutrient profile (nutrient profile for all the menu you feed).
That is when nutritiondata website comes handy. You can look one thing up, you can look up overall nutrient profile by using the recipe function. Also if you did not find the item at the site, you can input the data from nutrition label on back of the products or maybe data from USDA website by using custom entry function. So, this website is very useful when you like to look things up.
How to find the nutrient profile for overall menu
Here is how nutritiondata website work.
1. Go to nutritiondata.self.com and create your account
2. Look for items you feed,and click on the item
** You will then see the nutrition detail for the product
3. If the item was common items you feed, click on "Add to my foods" and it will make it easy for you to search next time
** All of your common menu item added to "my foods" will be listed under "My Foods" page and you can hoover your cursor on "My ND" and you can see "My Foods" right under "My ND" box
4. After adding all the common food you feed to "My Foods" page, now you can create the recipe.
5. Hoover cursor over "My ND" and click on "My recipe" and that is the page where all your recipes will be stored
6. If you were to make new recipes, click on "create recipe"
7. On the bottom, you will find the search box and you will type in the food name and click "search" and you will see the list of items
8. Click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate food items to add to your recipe
9. Keep searching,adding items to your recipe
10. When all the menu is in the recipe, adjust the amount and quantity of each food
11. When everything is set, click on "Save & Analyze" button and you will see the overall nutrition profile on the page.
There, you can see roughly how much of omega 3,Omega 6, Vitamin A etc.. your dog is getting through the menu you feed them.
This is how I am getting the rough ideas as to how much of what nutrient I am feeding to Palette through form of food, and decide the number of fish body oil capsules I give to her.
Now, when you happened to have no nutrient profile found on the website, you can still create the profile on your own by using the custom entry function.
How to make nutrient profile using the custom entry
1. Hoover cursor over "Tool" and click on "custom entry tool"
2. Enter nutrient profile numbers using food labels on products and click on "Add to My food"
Also, there is another thing you can do at this website. You can compare recipe by recipe or food by food using "comparison" function.
How to compare food..
1. Hoover cursor over "Tool" and click on "Compare foods"
2. Search food items, click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate food items to add to your comparison page
** If you were to compare recipe by recipe, you can search the recipe by selecting "recipe" on search box and click the orange "+" mark right next to the appropriate recipe to add to your comparison page
3. Click "compare" button and you can see basic nutrient profile side by side
I do use the nutritiondata website to get rough ideas as to how much of what nutrient I am feeding to Palette through form of food, and decide the number of fish body oil capsules I give to her.
However, I do not try to go "complete and balanced" every single meal.
I believe variety,and balance over time whether it is for us human or for dogs.
Even if you feed kibble,each brand of kibble has different combination of nutrient (formula) and different ingredients.
If you feed same brand of kibble day in day out, dogs are getting the same combination of nutrient (formula) with same ingredients over and over again.
Therefore, I recommend to have a couple of brands to rotate so dogs can exposed to variety of ingredients, and variety of combination of nutrient.
When Palette was on kibble, she used to have 3 brands to rotate.
It goes same with those who feed raw diet.
Different food offer unique combination of nutrient. If you feed the same protein source over and over again, combination of nutrient and level of each nutrient will stay the same.
Therefore, by feeding variety of protein source, you can provide your dogs wide variety of nutrient and its level, and there would not have excess nutrient over the other nutrient in the long run.
Whether human or for dogs, any diet should not have one particular thing to dominate the overall diet menu.
When deficient nutrient is present, it is easy to reach to the vitamin pills but,when you think about it, there is no way to know that the pill you gave to your dogs was absorbed nicely enough to give them the stated amount of nutrient on the vitamin label.
Try provide nutrient with the form of "REAL" food, not processed food and give variety of food for balance over time.
Now you have a tool to see nutrient profile and get the rough ideas as to how much of what you are giving to your dogs.
Feed the best diet possible for your dogs to live healthy and longer..
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