Soy and Dog Food

Premium dog foods have been touting "Soy Free" for some time now. Why is this important you ask? Maybe you already know soy is bad for your dog (if you are our customer I'm sure you know this already), but maybe you don't know exactly why.

Here's some interesting facts:

Soy beans, along with beet pulp, have been introduced into commercial pet foods because they are a cheap source of protein. Neither of these ingredients are essential to a dog's health. In fact, there has been mounting evidence that soy beans and beet pulp can have adverse effects.

The first effect is allergic reactions. Soy is considered a high risk allergen for dogs and often they are or develop sensitivities to soy products.

Soy can create bloat, which in severe cases can be fatal. Soy is also a bowel irritant that causes diarrhea, and often is coupled with beet pulp which will naturally harden the stool.

From http://therobertabadydogfoodcoltd.com

The intestinal tract responds to irritants by trying to eliminate them through the process called diarrhea. Diarrhea is caused by the intestinal tract drawing in water, through osmosis, in an attempt to flush the irritants from the system as rapidly as possible. The greater the level of irritation and damage, the more water the intestine will draw in, giving the beet pulp that much more water to absorb. The greater the amount of water available for the beet pulp to absorb, the larger its mass will become, slowing its progress through the colon even further. As a result, the worse the irritation and damage to the intestinal tract, the harder the stools will become. In other words, beet pulp short circuits one of the body's most effective methods of self defense.

If you read any more of the article quoted above, you would have also found out that soy contains saponins:

Saponins are a class of glycosides characterized by their ability to act as emulsifying agents. Saponins, like soap, make bubbles when they are mixed with water and shaken, They create a dense foam with a very high surface tension (similar to shaving cream or the "head" on a beer). It takes as little as one part of saponin material to one hundred thousand parts of water to make the water froth. Unlike soap suds, however, saponin bubbles, because of their high surface tension, are very tough and difficult to rupture. No doubt the observation that dogs were more prone to developing bloat if they were allowed large amounts of water and exercise soon after eating is valid. Although this observation is correct, it should be qualified, since these dynamics seem to apply primarily to feeds that incorporate large amounts of saponin containing material. Mr. Abady explains part of the process of bloat formation as follows: water mixes with the saponins in the feed, the mixture is then agitated in the dog's stomach during exercise creating a sudsy foam. The foam envelops the feed, trapping the gasses that are normally produced by the fermentation of the ration and contained in tiny bubbles of liquid dispersed throughout the feed. Because these gasses are trapped by the foam, rather than being free to escape via the normal oral and rectal routes, the mass of ingested feed will continue to expand until it crushes and cuts off circulation to the major organs. The dog then collapses from the pain and buildup of toxic metabolites.

It doesn't stop there.

In the late 1980s, quite by accident, Mr. Abady found the answer to his questions. While examining the molecular structure of snake venom he detected a resemblance between it and another chemical structure that was familiar to him: saponin. The connection had been made! Saponins were not only foaming agents; they were toxins as well.

Here is a thesis written by Texas A&M's Robert Allen Kennis. What I find most interesting about this document is that he used soy to induce allergic reactions to see if they could be identified in urine. Allergy to soy is the third most common food allergy in dogs, so he thought he would have a more consistent reaction for testing.

While many low quality dog foods continue to inject soy products (and often beet pulp to minimize diarrhea), there are plenty of foods out there that do not contain any soy products. Here's what we carry. While this is not an extensive list, we have used all of these foods with our own dogs and they have reacted very well to them.

My last point here is to be careful with pet companies (I use that term loosely) that do not take time to research what they use as ingredients, as in "Almond Soy Snaps"