"You are what you eat..."

Nutrition is the foundation of health and wellness. You cannot ask a carpenter to make a chair without her supplies, her tools; the same is true for our bodies. Without proper nutrition, the body lacks its supplies to build and repair itself. This is why nutrition is our top priority at Garden City Pet!

Introduction to Pet Food:

Thanks to the internet, modern research comes with a surplus of information (and misinformation) to sift through, especially within health science disciplines. To make things simpler, we have consolidated some of most important aspects about what makes our favorite pet food healthier than others.

In a Nutshell:

Our favorite brands of pet food contain no corn, wheat or soy; they are recall-free, high-protein foods cooked at lower temperatures (if at all) to preserve nutrition as nature intended. While initial cost is usually higher than grocery-store brands, less food is required per meal, since the food is much more nutritionally dense.

              On average, a grocery store brand will recommend 3 cups of food to offer the same nutrition that is found in just 1 cup of our favorite brands.

Ingredients:

In general, a “healthy” product’s ingredients list will be shorter rather than longer, and contain more words you can recognize than ones you cannot.

Frankly, with so many products on the market, it’s always a gamble to trust what a company is saying about their own product. When it comes to pet food, the real information is found on the back, under the “Ingredients” section.

You may know that ingredients listed first are found in the largest quantities (by weight, before cooking). Therefore, in pet food, the 1^st ingredient (& ideally the 2^nd and 3^rd) ingredients should always be animal protein. Chicken, Beef, Fish, Lamb etc... followed by vegetables and fruits.

Especially in dry food, after the major ingredients comes a long list of chemicals; vitamin packets are used to “balance” pet food, since nutrients are inevitably lost during any cooking process. These supplements (while not harmful) are not very “bioavailable” meaning they do not absorb easily into the body. In other words, you are paying for nutrition your pet is not always getting.

Vitamin packets are not generally found in raw food, since raw food undergoes little to no processing, all the nutrients are there, exactly as they should be!

Bioavailability of nutrients is exactly why we always recommend a raw diet first!

 

Raw Food Forever!

Since raw pet food is not cooked, no nutrition is lost to heat or chemical processing, so with raw food you get premium nutrition, exactly as nature intended!

“But is it safe? My vet said…”

Yes! Raw pet food is completely safe! So long as your pet likes it and does well on it! All raw pet food is legally required to be tested for pathogens before shipping, so everything that comes to our store is guaranteed to be pathogen-free!

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More information coming soon!