Gladden longevity — Episode #25

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gladden Longevity Podcast with Dr. Jeffrey Gladden, MD, FACC, Founder, and CEO of Gladden Longevity. On this show we want to answer three questions for you. How good can we be? How do we make 100 the new 30? And how do we live well beyond 120? We want to help you optimize your longevity, health and human performance with impactful and actionable information. Now here's today's episode of the Gladden Longevity Podcast.

The Gladden Longevity Podcast is provided for informational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. The use of any information and materials linked in this podcast is at the listener's own risk.

Jeffrey Gladden: Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Longevity Podcast. I'm here with a good friend of mine and a person that I have a great deal of esteem for, and really consider a colleague, Gary Richter. Gary is a doctor of veterinary medicine, which is certainly analogous to what we do. And a lot of clients have done a lot to take care of their own health, their own performance, optimization, their own longevity, and they're wondering about their pets. I mean, what can we do to improve the life of our pets?

Everybody, not everybody, but everybody that has a pet certainly becomes very emotionally involved. And it's always, I've had a couple of dogs that are, actually four now that were in my life that have passed away and it's always a very emotional sort of traumatic thing. And I think being able to optimize longevity for pets is just a really interesting topic. And Gary quite honestly right now is in the middle of writing a book about this. And we've had some conversations about that over time. So nonetheless, Gary, welcome to the podcast.

Gary Richter: Thank you so much. I've really been looking forward to this.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about pet longevity, and I know you're in the middle of your book right now, just about done potentially, what do you think are some of the biggest things that people can do that have an impact on the health of their pet and the longevity of their pet?

Gary Richter: Yeah, that's a great question and a really broad one, and I think before I answer it, it's worth saying that that looking at longevity for pets is, obviously it's an animal health and welfare issue, but the reality is, and you are surely aware of this is that statistically people who own pets live longer.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh yeah.

Gary Richter: So this is more than just an animal health thing. This is a human health thing because the longer that your pet is with you, the healthier you are likely to be. So it's really, it's sort it's a whole system that we're working within.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. I'll just interrupt for a second and say, it is really interesting because in the construct that we have with our mosaic of ages, we have this circle of life energy, and in there are things about relationship and love and feeling safe and all these things. And I think pets really scratch a lot of those itches.

Gary Richter: Oh yeah, they do.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. And for us, that circle is actually the circle that binds them all, right? So you can throw all the biochemistry in the world at somebody, but if they're depressed, anxious, don't feel loved, et cetera, they're sabotaging that. So having a pet, and here's another thing, if you don't have a pet and you're feeling some of those things, maybe people should consider getting a pet.

Gary Richter: Yeah. I mean, I agree. One of the things about the human animal bond is that in many ways, people have bonds with their animals that transcend bonds that they would have with people. There is something very pure and unconditional about the love that you have for an animal, whatever they do wrong, you will forgive them for it, whatever you do wrong, they will forgive you for it. Certainly the same cannot be said for our human relationships. People carry grudges for a lifetime over things that have happened.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: And I mean, I've heard you speak on this topic as it pertains to feeling safe and having purpose and having connection and you're right. I mean, a dog or a cat or whatever animal you may connect with, they cover a lot of that stuff in ways that, like I say, I mean, you can't always easily get from people.

Jeffrey Gladden: No. And I think that's right. And I think the unconditional element of it is really profound. I never felt unconditional love until my first child was born, and it's like, oh my gosh, I've never felt this. Right? And I think for a lot of people, they feel that similar sort of thing for an animal whether they have kids or not, they see that puppy, they scoop them up and it's an immediate bilateral, unconditional love. And when you think about the number of people in your life that have loved you unconditionally...

Gary Richter: It's a short list.

Jeffrey Gladden: It's a short list, right?

Gary Richter: Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden: It's a short list and your pets probably show up in that list. I mean, that's why, I remember losing my grandfather and I just wept, I mean, he was somebody that just loved me unconditionally and it's like, there's so few of those people in your life.

Gary Richter: It's true.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. So I think I'm just magnifying what you're saying that having a pet where you share this unconditional bond is really massive. It's not just an add-on, it actually is really kind of right at the center, right at the core, if you will.

Gary Richter: Yeah. I agree. And I obviously, I mean, I see that every day in my work environment. I see the kind of emotion that goes into people, caring for their pets and I mean, when people lose a pet, a lot of times it's as profound, if not more so than losing a family member. So, I mean all the more reason to do everything we can to keep them healthy and keep them going.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Uncle Bill, they’re not too concerned about, but their pet.

Gary Richter: Right. That's true. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden: They're very concerned about, yeah.

Gary Richter: Uncle Bill always makes a scene at Thanksgiving.

Jeffrey Gladden: Tell me about it. So anyway. So, all right. So walk us into that. So we've kind of set the stage for not only how important this is for the pet, but how important it is for the owner. And then given that construct what are the things that, maybe we start with this, maybe it's what are the things that people are doing wrong? What are people doing wrong that's actually sabotaging the health of their pet? Well intended, but kind of going against the grain.

Gary Richter: Yeah. Sadly, there's a fair bit of that stuff going on, and we'll get into this, but on a certain level, my own profession is responsible for some of that. But without a doubt, the absolute, single biggest thing that you can do to help your pet live a longer and healthier life is exactly the same thing as we would do for ourselves, and what that is optimize their nutrition.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: Get them eating better. And so here's the problem is that the vast majority of people that have say dogs and cats are feeding them either dry food or canned food or some combination of the two. And-

Jeffrey Gladden: [inaudible 00:07:22]. That's a massive industry, right? Canned and dried, I mean, you see massive bags of it.

Gary Richter: Billions of dollars. The pet food industry is a huge industry with enormous political clout, and the reality is that there's no way to get around the fact that dry food and canned food is highly processed food and it comes with all of the baggage that highly processed food does for people. So there's loss of nutrients. There are creation of compounds like advanced glycation end products and [inaudible 00:07:56] product reactants that promote inflammation and even potentially cause cancer. And the really crazy thing is when you look at the levels of these compounds in say, dry food, the levels that these animals are eating on a daily basis can be over a hundred times greater than what the average person is eating.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, wow.

Gary Richter: On a daily basis. And they're eating this stuff every single day.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Yeah. And people feed tend to feed the animals the same thing all the time, right? It's kind of like they write down the bag and they get the same thing.

Gary Richter: And you know what the truth is, when I was in school, what we were told was put the dog on a dry dog food that they do well on, and if they're doing well, keep them on it for the rest of their life.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: That's what they told us.

Jeffrey Gladden: That's like nutrition in medical school. Right.

Gary Richter: Or the lack thereof. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden: Well that's what I'm saying.

Gary Richter: I mean, you just don't get much. Yeah. You just don't get much. So the solution to all of this is very clearly the same solution that it is for us in the sense that pets should be eating a biologically appropriate, fresh whole food diet. And when I say biologically appropriate, I mean, dogs evolved eating a certain spectrum of nutrients. That spectrum is a little bit different than cats. It's a little bit different than people. So what's ideal for me is not going to be exactly the same as what's ideal for my dog, but at the end of the day, fresh whole foods are really the key because they have the whole food nutrients, they have the enzymes, they have the vitamins that would get degraded in that processing. And they have minimal amounts of those problematic byproducts that get created in that whole process. And the good news is that these-

Jeffrey Gladden: Let me just interrupt you for a second. Because when I think about whole foods and a whole food diet, I don't see dogs eating apples and eating kale and eating broccoli, right? So I guess I'm struggling a little bit. When I think about dogs and cats, I think of them as being predominantly carnivores and maybe that's not exactly right. So when you're talking about a whole food diet for, let's be a little more specific for a dog or a cat, I mean, what are we actually including here? Is it root vegetables or what are we really talking about?

Gary Richter: No, it's a great question. And to your point, so I mean, cats very much are evolutionary, obligate carnivores. As a colleague of mine once said, you will never see a lion drag home and ear of corn. It's not a thing that they do. Now they might get small amounts of plant material, just nibbling around, or maybe within the contents of the thing that they're eating, the prey that they're eating. But generally speaking, cats are very, very highly animal protein centric creatures. Dogs are a little bit different. Obviously dogs have evolved from wolves, but dogs and wolves are certainly not the same genetically and nutritionally speaking. Over 20 or 30 thousands of years of dogs evolving, or should I say co-evolving with people, what has happened is dogs have been sort of unintentionally selected to actually do better on a diet that has a higher plant content, a higher carbohydrate content than do wolves. And the reason for this is because 10,000 years ago, dogs were eating whatever the humans threw to them.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: Clearly what we're eating is not all meat. So they sort of evolved to do that. But nonetheless-

Jeffrey Gladden: I can understand that, but what are we talking about just to put it in perspective? So if a Wolf is a hundred percent a carnivore and I get the lion, or a tiger, and a cheetah are all carnivores, but for a wolf, they're a hundred percent carnivores as I understand it. And then for a dog, are we saying they're 80% carnivores or 90% or 60% or 30%, or what are you thinking there?

Gary Richter: Wolves are mostly carnivorous. I mean, you will see wolves in the wild nibbling on berries and leaves and whatnot.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: But nonetheless, rather like where I would classify, unequivocally classify cats as obligate carnivores, I think when you're looking at a dog, I think what you're really looking at is a significantly carnivorous leaning omnivore.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. Is that 60%, 70%? I mean, can you give a [inaudible 00:12:33]?

Gary Richter: Yeah. I mean, 60 or 70% is kind of a reasonable neighborhood to be in.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: And there's no shortage of options out there from the standpoint of either pre-made fresh foods that you can buy for dogs and cats, and those can be like frozen cooked diets, frozen raw diets, they can be freeze dried raw diets, and you can also make food for dogs and cats.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay. So is it healthy to go to the butcher shop and get scraps for your dog? Do they need that kind of fat? Is it healthy to just give them hamburger or do they need filet mignon? Do they need bison?

Gary Richter: So it's not that they need a specific cut of meat and certainly I would not generally recommend if they were actually going to make food at home to go out and buy like the filet mignon. It's just not necessary.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: But at the same time, it is very important that what they're eating is properly balanced. So it's not just a function of saying I'm going to go out and buy a bunch of ground beef and maybe throw some vegetables in the bowl and call it good. As you mentioned before, about the processed food, the thing about dogs and cats is they tend to eat the same thing day after day.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: So the catch with that is if there's a nutritional imbalance, if there's something missing in that diet, that is going to amplify over time. Whereas every meal I eat may not be nutritionally balanced, but the hope is that in the aggregate I'm getting everything I need, but you just don't have that kind of a variety.

Jeffrey Gladden: So it raises the question, should people be thinking about their pets differently, even for a cat that's, let's call it a pure carnivore, should they be rotating the kind of meat that they're exposed to and in a dog's world, should there be, instead of three things that they're eating, should there be 10 different things or 13 or 20 different things that they're eating and they rotate, they get the opportunity to rotate through that. Is that kind of what you're advocating or what, what are we talking about?

Gary Richter: I am very much a big advocate for variety in the diet.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: I mean, there's all kinds of science that shows the benefits of that ranging anywhere from changes in nutrition to the development of food sensitivities in animals that have been eating the same protein for years.

Jeffrey Gladden: Just like humans.

Gary Richter: Yeah, exactly. So rotating through is a great idea. The balance that you have to play, I guess, is two things. Number one, whatever you're feeding them, it does need to be appropriately balanced. And if somebody's making food at home, that basically means you have to work off of a recipe because there's really just no way that any normal human could look at a pile of food and go, yeah, that's balanced.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: You need a computer to figure that out.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Especially for a dog. I mean, we kind of have a sense of what's balanced for us. We kind of either feel our way into that or read our way into it or whatever, but to know what that would be for a dog or even a cat would be difficult.

Gary Richter: Yeah. It's not an intuitive thing that anybody could figure out.

Jeffrey Gladden: So how does somebody figure that out? Is that something you've created where people can go to a reference or how, how do they know how to do it?

Gary Richter: There's a number of ways that you can do it. As I said before, you can just go out and buy premade, prebalanced, fresh foods, and that's one way to go. If you want to make food at home, like I say, you work off of a recipe. So for example, in my book that I came out with a couple years ago, The Ultimate Pet Health Guide, there's 25 recipes in there for dogs and 25 recipes for cats. All whole food recipes that pretty much, if you can follow a recipe, you can make these foods. It's not hard to do, it's just a list of food ingredients and then you do have to add certain amounts of vitamin and mineral supplements to kind of balance it all out. I mean, you could make a fully balanced diet for a dog or a cat with just whole foods and no supplements, but what you'd wind up with is a recipe that had 20 or more ingredients in it and just as a practical matter, it's not something that people are going to do.

Jeffrey Gladden: Got it. Yeah. Just, right, basically to cover the bases on all the different nutrients that are required.

Gary Richter: Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden: So I get that. Okay. So it sounds to me like a fair amount of work though, to make these diets. And then do you have any confidence if you go out and you buy something that's freeze dried or frozen or put together, I mean, where do you even go to get that stuff? And how do you even know that it's complete in and of what it's supposed to be?

Gary Richter: Great question. So the decision of like, I'm going to make it at home versus I'm going to buy it very, very commonly comes down to sort of a calculus that we all do over and over and over again in our life, which is, which is worth more right now to me, my time or my money.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right.

Gary Richter: Because I mean, as you can imagine, just like if I go online and I kind of sign up with one of those meal services that are going to bring ready made, fresh food meals to my door, those meals are going to be more expensive on a per meal basis than if I made it myself.

Jeffrey Gladden: Sure.

Gary Richter: So it's the same equation. So yes, going out and buying those foods will cost you more than if you did it yourself. It just depends on how much time and interest you have. But to your other question, as far as like where to get it, a lot of really good pet stores these days will have fresh foods. They are becoming more and more popular and like everything else in life, there is a certain amount of kind of buyer beware, due diligence involved on the consumers part. And certainly if you're in a good pet store and you know the people there, you can talk to them, because they'll be somewhat educated, but you can also do some online research.

Jeffrey Gladden: Let me ask you this, is this, if you're going to a pet store, are there like national brands now that are bringing forward these nutrient, I'll call them nutrient complete or nutrient dense diets for pets where you can say, well, it's made by so and so, so we know that checks the box, or is this really just local kind of like farm to market kind of concept or what's happening with this?

Gary Richter: Yeah. I mean the farm to market thing is definitely out there, but yeah, I mean, there are, there are nationally available brands now. So for example, kind of on the raw foods or freeze dried food side of things, there's companies like Primal, there's another one called Stella and Chewies, which are nationally available, both frozen or freeze dried. I myself have developed a freeze dried fresh food called Nutra Complete, which you can purchase online at ultimatepetnutrition.com.

There's also cooked options, Just Food for dogs, Evermore, The Farmer's Dog. Once you start paying attention, you're going to see these things pop up everywhere and like advertisements. It is becoming sort of a ground swell of interest in this, especially for people who are very concerned about their pets and one other thing to bring up and you full well know this is, are you going to spend more on food if you do it this way? Yes. Are you probably going to save in the long run on healthcare costs? So if you look at it from the big picture sense, I mean, I'd rather spend money on food than on medicine, if I can.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're back to the same equation that food is medicine for people and food is medicine for pets as well, right? It's either medicine or poison depending on how you basically dice it up. So, yeah. It's interesting. So just to give people an idea, I don't have any pets currently, so I don't know what it cost to feed an animal a day. Let's say you have an average size dog, 30 pound dog, and you're just buying the traditional can stuff, bag stuff. I don't know what it would even cost to feed that animal a day. Was it a dollar, $2, something like that? I don't know.

Gary Richter: So let's see if you had a 30 pound dog and you were buying like standard processed food and mind you, there's a very wide range of processed food. So you could probably be spending anywhere from $30 or $40 a month up to a couple of hundred dollars a month, depending on how premium you wanted to buy that canned food and dry food.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: If you were going to feed that same dog a store bought, fresh food diet then probably-

Jeffrey Gladden: When you say store bought, I go buy the food and make the food, is that what you mean by store bought?

Gary Richter: No, I'm sorry. I mean something that's pre-made you just buy it and feed it.

Jeffrey Gladden: Pre made, okay. Got it.

Gary Richter: Probably you're spending a couple hundred bucks a month to do that.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: If you're going to make it yourself, like if you're going to go to the store and source ingredients and make it yourself, you can definitely cut those costs significantly.

Jeffrey Gladden: Got it.

Gary Richter: And really, the key with making food at home once you've got the recipe you're going to use is what you want to do is make as much food at once as you have the ability to store in the freezer.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Gary Richter: So if you can make two weeks, three weeks worth of food all at once, portion it out and freeze it. That's perfect.

Jeffrey Gladden: Got it. Got it.

Gary Richter: You don't have to cook every day.

Jeffrey Gladden: That makes a lot of sense. So are we getting to a point where the feeling is that dogs should never really eat these dried foods and canned foods at all kind of thing? Is that kind of, I mean, for optimal health, is that really what we're intuitively saying here?

Gary Richter: You know what, I mean it's not something that you'll hear from too many people in the veterinary profession, but yes.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: I mean, as a physician, can you think of a reason why you would tell one of your patients to go out and eat processed food?

Jeffrey Gladden: Just so they know how bad it makes them feel.

Gary Richter: Touche. Okay. Fair enough. But yeah. Yeah. So yeah, they should be eating fresh food from day one.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right. No, that's a good point. Well, all right. Well, I mean, that's a pretty massive statement. So for everybody listening that has a pet, if you've got a bag of food someplace or some cans someplace, think twice about it, I suppose, is really what we're saying.

Gary Richter: Yeah. And the greatest thing about this is as people, it's such a challenge for us to eat right because we have all these temptations to eat all of the wrong things. You know what? The reality is that animal, first of all, animals really like fresh foods. They enjoy them.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: And the second thing is they're not in control of what's going in the bowl. You are.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Yeah.

Gary Richter: So like, you know what I mean, if I had somebody hand me every bite of food I ate during the day, I would probably be a lot more healthy.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. I just read a really interesting article about how Google basically structured their snack areas to be much more healthy. And it basically has to do with, and this is true for humans too, we're talking about animals, but you've raised this point. It's really about constructing the environment to reward the behaviors that you want to see. So they had a scenario where they had a cold drink and a hot drink station. And if the snack bar was six feet away from that, or if it was 14 feet away from it, the snacking went down by 50%. If people had to go the extra seven or eight feet, right?

Gary Richter: We're so lazy.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right. And then the M&Ms, instead of being bulk, where you fill up your four ounce little cup, they put them in these little packets where you get whatever it is, five or six, M&Ms in a packet and consumption of M&Ms went down by 50%. So we've preached this for years, quite honestly, that you really want to construct the environment to support the mission. Right? So if you don't want to be eating Doritos at night, don't have them in the house.

Gary Richter: Don't have them in the house. Exactly. Exactly. Because if it's in the house, I'm going to eat it. I know myself well enough. Right.

Jeffrey Gladden: If there's ice cream in the fridge or I'm, I'm going to eat it.

Gary Richter: Oh yeah, sure.

Jeffrey Gladden: So I just can't put it in there, but I think that's really important for humans. But I think here, it's almost the flip side. I think humans are somewhat more guilty about just feeding the animals trash and not really thinking about the good side. So what about table scraps here? What about feeding from the table? And what about obesity in animals? We see a lot of fat animals, right? So, but let's talk about table scraps first. Is that fresh food or is that not?

Gary Richter: We'll talk about table scraps, but table scraps are not, as a rule, not really sort of the obesity problem. But table scraps, in general table scraps are fine. There are a couple of caveats there. Number one, you don't want to give them anything that is really strongly seasoned because that can lead to upset tummies. So if you're eating something spicy, probably best to leave the dog out of it. But for example, if you're cooking something in the kitchen and let's say you're making something with chicken, you can maybe just make a little bit of the chicken minus the seasoning and set that aside for the dog. That's totally fine. There is a very short list of foods that dogs should not eat. That short list is grapes or anything that ever look like a grape, so like raisins. There is a very rare, but potentially very serious issue where sometimes grapes can cause acute kidney failure in dogs.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, interesting.

Gary Richter: It's very rare.

Jeffrey Gladden: Any variety of grapes?

Gary Richter: That's the problem is it's not dose dependent and nobody can really seem to predict, like what's going to do it, or when. So like I say, you almost never see it. I mean, I remember when I was a kid, I have an older sister, she used to feed her dog frozen grapes as a treat, but that was before we knew. So it's rare, but best avoided. Onions in any quantity. I mean like a small piece of onion's not going to do anything, but like if somebody had like a plate of, I don't know, sauteed onions or something, and the dog wound up eating it potentially that could be problematic. It would cause methemoglobinemia.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, okay.

Gary Richter: So basically it changes the way your red cells carry oxygen.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Gary Richter: So that's no fun. And, and I mean realistically speaking-

Jeffrey Gladden: What about chocolate? You always hear about chocolate.

Gary Richter: Chocolate can be problematic and strangely it's more problematic now than it, than it was a while ago because of the popularity of these really, really intense, strong chocolates now.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh, I see.

Gary Richter: It used to be a chocolate bar was a Hershey bar. There's not actually a whole lot of chocolate in a Hershey bar.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Like 20%.

Gary Richter: But when you're talking about these 98% cacao deals.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Gary Richter: That's a lot of chocolate, and the theobromines and the methylxanthines in the chocolate can cause tachycardia, tremors, potentially even seizures if they get enough of them. So, I mean, certainly if dogs get into any amount of chocolate, it's a good idea to call your veterinarian, but-

Jeffrey Gladden: That's in the caffeine space also, right?

Gary Richter: That's exactly right. Yeah.

Jeffrey Gladden: So are animals sensitive to caffeine also?

Gary Richter: Yes. Although perhaps with chocolate being the exception, there's usually not too many things that they would get into that would have significant amounts of caffeine. I mean, I don't know that I've ever heard somebody say my dog drank my cup of coffee.

Jeffrey Gladden: Right. Well, coffee ice cream was kind of what I was thinking about. Something like that.

Gary Richter: Fair enough. And since you bring it up, any significant amount of dairy is not really great for dogs.

Jeffrey Gladden: Oh.

Gary Richter: They do love it. And like if your dog really likes cheese and a little tiny piece of cheese, nothing terrible is going to happen. But the bottom line is, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but I think this is true for all animals is that there is no animal on the planet that has evolved to eat dairy after weaning.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. No, I mean-

Gary Richter: It’s just not a thing that we're biologically supposed to be doing.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. And it's a little bit like the whole wheat, gluten [inaudible 00:28:20], almost nobody gets along with gluten. Quite honestly, it's just a function of degrees and the similar sort of thing with dairy. There's so many people and you can tell me if this is true in the veterinary space as well, but there's so many people that kind of get cleaned up if we just pull back dairy and grains, quite honestly, it seems to really, and gluten, it seems to make a big difference in their allergies and their gut health, and even how they feel, their mental clarity, all those kinds of things improve. Is the same thing true for animals?

Gary Richter: Oh man, you get a dog or a cat off of kibble and onto a fresh food diet. And it's the most unbelievable, life changing thing. They're going to lose weight. Their gut health is going to be better. Frequently their allergy symptoms abate. They have more energy. They just feel good.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Gary Richter: And like I said, I mean, it's the easiest thing in the world to do.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Fascinating. No, that's really fascinating. And is there kind of a plateau for this? Like we talked a little bit in jest about filet mignon and things like that, but are there, and where I'm coming from is this, in the human world, we think that one of the real keys to nutrition is eating very nutrient dense foods. And if you're eating nutrient dense foods, what we find is that you actually feel full much sooner because your body's getting the nutrients it wants, right? So we're very over fed and undernourished in Western diet.

Gary Richter: Sure.

Jeffrey Gladden: And it sounds like maybe that's true for the animals as well. So if you are selecting foods that are more nutrient dense, like even organic foods, I'll bring that into the picture. If you're giving the dog more nutrient density, does it work the same way for them where they actually have to eat less and they feel better and they lose weight and all that sort of stuff?

Gary Richter: Yeah. That is absolutely true. Organic is great. I mean, I would rather see people feed fresh food that is conventionally grown than like kibble that says organic on it. But nonetheless, I mean, yeah. I mean, organic, fresh food is about as good as one can get. And I mean the other things from to your point about nutrient dense foods, I mean, when we think about like meat for dogs, we're not talking about just muscle meat. We're talking about bone, we're talking about organ meat, liver, kidneys, heart.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah.

Gary Richter: I mean, there's unbelievable nutrition there. I mean, if you look at a carnivore in the wild take, that same lion that's not eating corn. If you look at a lion take down an animal, what's the first thing they do? Is they get into that animal and eat their liver.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. They go straight to the belly and I guess they go to the liver.

Gary Richter: They go straight for the organs and it's the sort of the lesser animals in the hierarchy or the scavengers that wind up eating the muscle meat, because that's the least desirable thing from their perspective.

Jeffrey Gladden: I think about orcas and sharks, great whites they'll basically flip a great white and come in and just surgically remove the liver and leave the rest. Right?

Gary Richter: Yep.

Jeffrey Gladden: So it's like a vitamin pill. It's a vitamin pill.

Gary Richter: You know, evolutionarily speaking, they know what they need.

Jeffrey Gladden: Yeah. Fascinating. So that being said, should people be feeding more organ meats to their pets? Like when you're talking about this fresh, should they be getting kidneys and liver and maybe tripe and I don't know, what else is there stuff that you recommend?

Gary Richter: Yeah, they absolutely should. And a lot of the raw food or the freeze dried raw food diets that you buy, you'll find that they have those, those ingredients in them.

Jeffrey Gladden: Okay.

Gary Richter: They have heart, they have kidney. Tripe is actually something that's pretty popular in the pet market. A lot of people will feed it as like a topper to the food or as treats. Good god, it smells bad.

Jeffrey Gladden: Man, I've never been drawn to tripe. I have to tell you that.

Gary Richter: You really got to love the heck out of your dog to be buying green tripe and keeping it in your refrigerator. Because that stuff is nasty.