Pet Corner: Spicing up Your Pet's Diet

Add Spice to Your Pet’s Life

May/June 2004
By Randy Kidd, D.V.M. 
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When I think of spices, I recall the wonderful tastes and aromas they add to my daily meals. However, compared to my dog’s nose, mine is a mere vestige. We humans have about 5 to 10 million scent-detecting olfactory cells lying atop our nasal cavity; a dachshund has about 125 million olfactory cells; and a sheepdog has nearly twice that number. The sheepdog has a sense of smell 1 million times more acute than a human’s; the bloodhound, perhaps the king of the smellers, has a sense of smell 3 million times more acute than ours.

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One can only imagine the pleasures our pets glean from the scents and tastes that come from their food dish. But adding spices to your pet’s diet provides much more than simple enhancement to flavor and fragrance. Sprinkle a little bit of spice atop your pet’s food often—even daily—and mix in some healing and prevention with the great flavors.

Diversity Matters

Many holistic veterinarians believe food diversity is an important component of long-term health for our pets. The vets typically recommend changing food sources several times per year, and they cite several reasons:

a) Your pet may not fall into the norm of the rest of the world’s pets, meaning she may require more or fewer nutrients than are available in any one commercial food.

b) By shifting food sources occasionally, we lessen the chances of producing intolerances or allergies to any one food.

c) Addiction to any particular food flavor should be avoided. Some animals, if they are fed only one food source and flavor, eventually will refuse to even try another food.

Nosh on Nutrients

You’ll find dozens of nutrient-rich substances neatly packaged in the leaves, flowers and roots of every plant. Plants, including herbs used as spices, are excellent sources of vitamins, minerals, fiber and carbohydrates. Most plants typically are high in vitamin A, calcium and potassium; some plants are a good source of minerals, such as iron, zinc and magnesium; and others provide small amounts of necessary elements, such as selenium and vitamin C.

The small amount of spice you’ll add to your pet’s diet probably won’t be a huge-volume source for any of these nutrients, but some of them are needed in only minute amounts. And, there’s often more to the nutrients than appears on a dietary chart. For example, vitamins A and C, zinc and selenium are known to have excellent antioxidant activity.

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