According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word ‘functional’ means: practical and useful, having a special purpose, working, and able to work. These excellent characteristics are appreciated and generally understood when applied to our cars and our appliances, but not often thought about in conjunction with our diets or our pets’ diets. Foods for ourselves are often chosen because they look tempting (an ice cream cone), smell delicious (a fresh cinnamon roll), or appeal to our taste buds (salty French fries). Foods for our dogs and cats are also often chosen for superficial reasons, such as they resemble human foods we like ourselves (shredded beef or chicken stew), or the packaging features attractive, whole food photos. Likewise, pet treats are often chosen for their appealing shapes and cute names. But are foods based on these superficial choices delivering functional foods, foods that work for you or your pet by nourishing vital organ systems or are those foods actually harming them?

Lately, I have seen many pet foods advertising a single ingredient on their packaging and boasting that this newly incorporated ingredient is a functional food. They additionally state that by adding this one new ingredient to the food that food can now prevent or ease certain health conditions.  For example, one dog food company recently added salmon oil for a “shiny, healthy coat.”  Another company is now featuring pumpkin for “digestive health.”  Yet another brand claims it adds blueberries for “antioxidants, to encourage longer life.”

Guess what?  All of those claims are true about that one single ingredient, but many duplicitous pet food companies are only trying to distract you from the fact that the rest of their ingredients are basically non-functional foods, or in other words, junk food. Most kibble and canned pet foods contain ingredients that put stress on a pet’s body rather than nourish and support it. Ingredients such as synthetic vitamins and minerals, denatured proteins, questionable fillers, high-carbohydrate grains, and starch-heavy vegetables all diminish our pet’s body’s ability to function properly because they are non-functioning ingredients for a carnivore’s digestive system. But the pet food manufacturer hopes to fool you into believing that by including one functional ingredient into a bad diet, you are choosing a healthy diet for your pets. They couldn’t be more wrong, and unfortunately, your pet will suffer the consequences.

A pet food that contains only functional foods indicates all foods are working not only individually but also synergistically to support all bodily systems. They do not need to claim one diet is for “digestion,” and another is for “sensitive skin” because all the foods in the diet support all the pet’s bodily needs. Most of the raw food diets that I have investigated work on that principle, although some are complete and balanced, while others are purposefully limited and need some added supplementation.

At this point, you may be asking what specific foods are considered functional foods for dogs and cats. To answer that question, we need to look into the ancestral diets of these two species. Please note that for both species, all ancestral diets for cats and dogs are consumed raw…never cooked!

Feline ancestral diets are fairly easy to decipher. Cats are true carnivores and excellent hunters. They can obtain all their nutritional requirements from prey animals. Whole prey contains high protein, adequate fat, and near-zero carbohydrates. Therefore, a functional diet for cats can be achieved through eating the muscles, organs, and appropriate raw bones of wild and domesticated animals.  However, since most pet cats are not outside hunting every day, it is imperative for cat parents to find a commercially available diet that closely mimics this ancestral diet. First, it should be raw. Second, it should consist of at least 95%+ of muscle meat, organs, and bones. In the wild, cats may consume the stomach contents of their prey as well as the glands, eyes, brains, etc. These substances would amount to around 3% of a wild cat’s diet and will not be found in commercial cat food, which brings us to the third component of a functional cat diet: supplements. Added supplements should be whole-food sourced, focused on trace minerals, and the complete complement of vitamins, and manufactured under the highest industry standards. It will not be a perfect replication of the ancestral diet, but at this point in time it is as nutritionally accurate as is possible.

Canines are also carnivores, and it is speculated that they tolerate a slightly higher percentage of carbohydrates in their diets because of their long association with humans and our starchy foods, scraps of which were often included in the dog’s diet. Dogs do tolerate some starches better than cats, and a few can be beneficial. With that in mind, the major ingredients of a functional diet for canines would still be muscle meat, organs, and bone, with the inclusion of fruits and vegetables selected for their high nutritional value in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fatty acids, etc.

In conclusion, a practical, useful, i.e., functional diet for our pets should look like this:

Felines:

95%+ raw, muscle meat, organs, bone

Up to 5% whole-foods sourced supplements

Canines:

70%+ raw, muscle meat, organs, bone

Up to 25% raw, low-carb fruits and vegetables

Up to 5% whole-foods sourced supplements

Of course, every dog and cat is an individual, and you may find that your pet does better with slightly higher or lower levels of those proportions suggested above, but average, healthy pets will thrive within the limits indicated. Just remember that a truly functional diet, where each ingredient is useful to the body, is one where all ingredients work individually and together to promote the total health of your treasured pet.