Notes by Marion Postgate

 

This diet is balanced and complete, and can be fed in combination with a commercial food. It needs no supplements. It also can be readily modified into most special prescription diets and is of at least as good a quality as those available commercially or from veterinarians. As a rule, it is cheaper, too.

 

I like to prepare a triple quantity of the recipe, using a Dutch oven size pot, and freeze the cooked food in plastic bags, in amounts to be thawed daily.

 

Ingredient information:

 

As you become familiar with cooking this diet, you will find yourself able to vary the basic ingredients to some extent. Remember that you must always include what Kronfeld terms the “supplement”: the liver, bone meal or equivalent, and iodine in approximately the right amounts. The liver provides the majority of the vitamins, and the bone meal the minerals. Iodine is necessary, and is variable in amounts in most foods – hence the use of iodized salt. To omit any of these ingredients will create an unbalanced diet.

 

Any meat may be used, or fowl, or fish! The meat can be fed raw if you are sure it is very fresh and uncontaminated by bacteria. Regular hamburger is legally up to 30% fat, medium hamburger is usually 20%. Some butchers sell regular hamburger of about the correct fat content for this recipe, for which Kronfeld recommends 20-25% fat. For my own dogs, I prefer lean hamburger, around 15%. Be careful, increased protein must be accompanied by enough fat.

 

Although it is not in the original recipe, I sometimes add a raw egg­ to the liver, for ease of blending, and the extra nutrition. Also, Kronfeld states more meat can be used in proportion to the rice, as high as 5 or 6 to 1 for very demanding nutritional requirements (e.g. Iditarod race). (I personally prefer to use a larger proportion of meat than suggested in the recipe, 6 to 1 of meat to rice, instead of 2 to 1.) Kronfeld additionally suggests using cottage cheese to supplement commercial foods if you wish to increase protein content in a diet.

 

While corn oil from the supermarket is cheap and readily available, better sources for linoleic and alpha linolenic acid are available at health food stores. Sunflower oil and flax oil, in the proportion of 3 to 1, or hemp oil or "Udo's Oil" alone, are among the best sources of essential fatty acids missing in commercially refined oils. The health food oils are specially pressed at low temperatures, unexposed to light and air, to prevent damage to essential ingredients; they are sold in dark glass, dated containers to preserve quality. When you purchase them you must refrigerate them. They should be used promptly, within a month or two at most. (They can be stored frozen for much longer periods.)

 

The bone meal is animal food quality, not garden bone meal. For sources, try farm animal food dealers. A raw pet food dealer may carry frozen powdered bone meal of good quality. Pulverized egg shells or calcium tablets may be used as a substitute, but the bone meal is probably complete and balanced in mineral content.

 

Other grains can replace the rice. Consult Pitcairn or Vollhard (see bibliography ff.) for approximate equivalents, since quantities required can vary in calories provided, and results.

 

Addendum

 

In my city, I purchase lean hamburger from Costco, and frozen bone meal from "Simply Natural" in my neighbourhood in Vancouver. I also use some of their raw foods when I cannot cook. (In the Vancouver BC area, ground frozen steamed lamb bone meal from New Zealand is available through pet dealers selling 3P Natural products.)

 

In the US, powdered bone meal for pets is available for sale. It cannot be imported to Canada because of restrictions concerning "mad cow" disease transmission. While dogs do not require carbohydrates at all, some finely chopped/ground vegetables can be substituted for, or added to the rice in this diet. A nutritionist could devise a combination of common vegetables that add nicely to fulfilling a dog’s nutritional requirements. Vegetables must be cooked, or finely shredded for a dog to absorb. (Do not use onion or raisins.)

 

From the Wellpet site – If you are using finely ground eggshells for your calcium source, you need approximately 2/3 of a large egg shell per pound of boneless meat, or ½ tsp. I use more, the equivalent to the bonemeal required in the Kronfeld diet. I now also use powdered kelp as my source of iodine instead of salt - recent research suggests that supplementing salt in a dog's diet is not harmless.