Rich in Content & Gently Prepared - The Naturavetal® Cooking Process

A minimum proportion of carbohydrates is necessary for the production of dry food, to ensure that the dry food can be compressed. It is therefore generally the case that a dry food has a higher proportion of carbohydrates than a wet food. 

Since the dog is still very close to the wolf and the main component of its diet should be meat, it is particularly important that the carbohydrates in the dry food are very valuable. They should therefore be highly digestible sources of energy that also contain many nutrients for the dog and its intestinal flora. 

In recent years, dog foods containing cereals have increasingly fallen into disrepute and often wrongly associated with carbohydrates. The prevailing opinion is that grain is a single, inferior ingredient. There are many dogs who cannot tolerate the gluten and other substances contained in grains and develop allergies, especially to wheat. What has also brought grain in dog food into disrepute is the excessively high proportion of inferior low-quality foods added to it.

The following point should be considered. If a feed contains potatoes instead of rice, it may be called "grain free" - but by no means "carbohydrate-free". The decisive factor should not be whether a plant botanically belongs to the cereal species, i.e. sweet grasses, or not. The decisive factor should be the quality and quantity - how high the quality of the carbohydrates it contains and in what quantity a manufacturer uses them. 

We use only healthy and ancient grains in our feed and prepare them carefully for digestion. Rice, oats, maize, millet and buckwheat are high-quality sources of energy for the dog and also contain valuable nutrients. Normally dogs cannot digest grains of any kind. Only by gently steam-cooking them and thus breaking them down can they be utilised by the dog as a valuable energy supplier and as a fibre-rich digestive aid.

Our range offers various options for feeding your dog. Our dry and wet food provide two alternatives, completely grain free or with a high-quality, gluten-free grain.

Brown Rice

The Naturavetal® rice used for the Canis Plus® complete food range is broken down in a gentle cooking process. But innovative processing alone does not make a healthy dog food. For the layman, it is often difficult to distinguish between the different types of rice.

• Paddy rice is harvested directly from the field - it still contains all the husks and is therefore approx. 8-9% crude fibre.
• If the first husk is removed, you get brown rice. This is also covered by a husk.
• If the last husk is polished off, white rice is obtained.
• Different varieties also have different names, such as long grain, etc.

The raw rice for Naturavetal® dog food is cleaned after harvesting.  It is then heated and blown up under air pressure (similar to popcorn). This separates the raw fibre structures from each other without destroying them. A unique pressure process stabilises the product without the addition of preservatives. This process ensures that the structure of the whole grain with their vitamins and minerals are intact, this is called whole grain rice. In the usual animal feed, the description "contains rice" often hides only fragments of the completely polished rice. This contains hardly any minerals or crude fibre. Our gently cooked whole rice, with the whole husk, contains valuable raw fibres and cellulose, which support intestinal peristalsis and absorb moisture from the intestines. This ensures firm, regular digestion and cleansing of the intestinal mucosa.

Oats

Here, too, we use raw oats. It is cleaned and peeled, as its outer shell would be too hard to be digested by the dog. After our gentle steam cooking, the oat grains look like oat flakes and are therefore very easy to digest.

Maize

Maize is gluten-free, contains many B vitamins and other minerals that are particularly important for the heart and nerves, and also provides easily usable energy. Our maize is broken down by air pressure, which preserves the nutrients it contains in the best possible way. We cannot confirm negative arguments against maize regarding behavioural changes with our feed. However, incorrect feeding can have an influence on your dog's behaviour. If you would like to learn more about this, please take a look at our guide on "The connection between nutrition and behaviour in dogs".

Millet

Brown millet is one of the oldest cultivated plants, it is also known as an ancient grain. It has a brown, hard husk and has been considered a wholesome, natural food  which is rich in micronutrients since time immemorial. During processing, only the outermost husk is removed because it is indigestible for the animal. This preserves the fibre-rich raw fibre for healthy intestinal activity, but also provides valuable nutrients such as minerals, vitamins, trace elements and, above all, valuable silicon.

Buckwheat

Buckwheat is not a grain, but a knotweed plant and therefore also gluten-free. It contains all the amino acids essential for dogs and is rich in nutrients overall. It can help maintain liver function and is involved in the regulation of cholesterol and blood sugar levels.

Origin and quality of our ingredients

Cereals and grain alternatives that we use in our range come from the EU and are grown according to the EU legal standards.

We only use grains and grain alternatives that are not genetically modified. However, 100% GMO-free cannot be guaranteed, as environmental factors and transport routes can cause tiny impurities that unfortunately no one can avoid nowadays.

The grains and grain alternatives used in our Canis Plus® and Felins Plus® foods are tested according to the strictest quality criteria and broken down using a gentle steam cooking process. This means that they can be optimally utilised by the dog and cat and provide a wide range of nutrients as a supplement to meat, vegetables, fruit and herbs. During the strict quality controls, the raw material is cleaned several times so that only the valuable grain remains and is used for the production of our cold-pressed food. Inferior vegetable by-products such as stalks or leaves are already sorted out in the course of these quality controls. The level of microtoxins, including aflatoxins, is also strictly monitored.

Therefore, if the processed grains are of high quality and are in a reasonable proportion in the feed, then it is not necessary that you feed grain free. However, if your dog is allergic to grain, then you should feed grain free. You can find out how to do this in our Naturavetal® guide "My dog is an allergy sufferer - what now?".