A human diet is made up of a variety of foods. We consume different ingredients during the day and week. Our pets should also. We feed dogs the same food everyday throughout their lives (Brown and Taylor, n.d.). Dr. Ackerman, a canine dermatologist, wrote that dogs given the same food repeatedly can develop allergies (as cited in Brown and Taylor, n.d.). A variety of food is an essential part of a raw food diet and will provide a wide range of nutrients (Olsen, 2010). A balanced diet need only to be achieved through a series of meals as their counterparts in the wild (Billinghurst, 1993). Even humans obtain a balanced diet over a period of time and not at one sitting. All animals store nutrients, such as fat and proteins, as well as, vitamins to be needed if there is a shortage (Kuehn, 2007). Proteins contain essential amino acids, fats contain essential fatty acids. Both are necessary in the diet to meet energy needs (Case et al., 2011).

Carbohydrates are different and don’t contain any essential ingredient. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Even though carbs contain glucose and dogs need glucose, it can be provided by amino acids through gluconeogenesis. Balance, in a diet, is a vague concept thought up by humans and pet food companies to encourage people to buy their food (Kuehn, 2007). A raw food diet consists of all the vitamins and minerals in their natural form, thousands of different enzymes, and a full range of antioxidants. Studies have shown that nutrients from whole fresh food protects against many illnesses while the same nutrients in pill form show no more effectiveness than the placebos. Enzymes regulate most biological processes that are chemical reactions in the body. They catalyze all cell metabolisms including digestion. The cooking of food forces the stomach, pancreas, and small intestine to produce these digestive enzymes that naturally come from raw food (Brown and Taylor, n.d.).