How whole prey helps with digestive issues

Walk down the aisle of your local store and you’ll see shelves stacked high with dog kibble of all types. Chicken, salmon, beef, venison, and more can all seem like great choices! However, in many cases, pets often battle with an upset stomach that doesn’t respond well to kibble, and it’s often because commercial dog food contains much more than just the processed animal you’re promised.

Even if your dog seems fine on kibble but has some shaky digestion for another reason, like a chronic illness, it can be hard to get things under control. Have you considered how a whole prey diet could make a difference?

The Connection Between Digestive Health and Food Contents

Your pet’s digestion is a much more complex process than you might imagine. Most people think of digestion as placing food in stomach acid, which either dissolves it or doesn’t. If it doesn’t—maybe because the food is too hard or the dog didn’t chew enough—the dog throws it back up or defecates it out undigested. Maybe the dog feels nauseated because it’s got food that’s hard to break down in its stomach or the stomach acid isn’t doing its job right.

While all these could be examples of why your dog is having digestive issues, the reality is likely much more nuanced than just whether a food is “too hard to digest” or your pet has a “weak tummy.” A big part of your dog’s digestion comes from their gut microbiome, which is fueled by the things they eat (just like in humans).

What’s a Microbiome?

A microbiome is the entire collection of microorganisms that live inside your dog’s digestive tract. Not just their stomach—their large and small intestines, colon, and more. These little living things perform a lot of tasks, from breaking down compounds to attacking and eating other microbes.

A microbiome is meant to be diverse, filled with bacteria and microbes of all shapes and sizes, each with its own task. This means that all across your dog’s digestive system is a blanket of little helpers living on the walls of the intestines. However, not every inhabitant is automatically a helper. If organisms with unwanted functions can outcompete the “good” bacteria for space inside your dog’s belly, they can start to cause problems. Your dog might start to get an upset stomach from the excess gas the intruders produce. They might not be good at breaking down the things your dog likes to eat, leading to constipation or diarrhea.

The good news is that the reverse is also true; when supported properly, the good, helpful microorganisms can outcompete the bad ones. This creates an entire community of microbes that help your dog digest their food at the appropriate rate and draw the maximum nutrients from their meals.

How? Like any other living thing, microbes need to eat. What you feed them determines whether they have what they need to reproduce and thrive. For many dogs, a kibble diet starves their good digestive bacteria and hands a buffet to the problematic microbes on a silver platter.

How to Fuel a Microbiome the Right Way

Beneficial microbes in the gut help to process food so your pet can get the most out of what they eat. Some of the best ingredients in your dog’s diet to support their microbiome can be easily found in whole prey items.

Animal-based fibers

Fiber is essential for good digestion. Without it, pets can become constipated, and they may feel unwell or bloated as food moves too slowly through the intestines and colon. While fiber can come from plant material (and sometimes does in the wild for canines), trying to fulfill your pet’s fiber needs solely through plant-based ingredients is a recipe for failure. This is why kibble rarely addresses digestive issues; it uses plant materials like rice for fiber.

Animal-based fibers have a lot to offer that plant-based ones don’t. For instance, plant fibers can make your pet gassy, as the byproducts of moving the vegetation through the digestive tract create gases. Animal fibers like fur and feathers, on the other hand, remain mostly inert and can pass through more smoothly.

The microbiome needs fiber because this material feeds the microbes without being consumed. The purpose of fiber is that it does not fully break down, allowing the bacteria specialized to feed on it to access it throughout the digestive process. When fiber meets the other contents of the digestive system, such as water, it bulks up, creating fecal matter that is the ideal size and texture to pass effortlessly through the intestines. This helps your dog stay regular, prevents the need for straining, alleviates constipation, and reduces inflammation in the intestines that can lead to issues like diabetes!

Low sugar

The bacteria and microbes in your pet’s intestines prefer nutritious foods—which, for a dog, are rarely high in sugar. Dogs don’t eat sweet things very often, so a high-sugar diet doesn’t match up with what their healthy gut microbiome needs. Instead, unwanted microbes that might be more adapted to eating sugar can eat their fill, proliferating and crowding out the good helpers that should be present.

In studies, these “bad” bacteria exploded in population quickly—sometimes within a few weeks. They immediately began to alter the tested animals’ metabolism, leading to an increased risk of obesity and even diabetes. The new, sugar-craving bacteria that take the place of the old ones outcompete immune cells called Th17 cells. Without them, your dog’s intestines aren’t getting the signal to “calm down” after a meal passes through, leading to inflammation that can cause digestive upset, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation.

While dry dog food (kibble) is the type of standardized pet food with the highest sugar content, whole prey is naturally low in sugar, which keeps the bacteria in the intestines properly balanced. It feeds the right microbes without supporting others that would outcompete those that belong. As an added benefit, the low sugar content of whole prey items helps to keep your pet’s blood sugar stable, which is healthier!

Diversity

Like any living things, the microbes in the gut need a balanced diet in order to thrive. By feeding your pet whole prey, you are providing nutrient diversity that is hard to match from commercial diets. The kibble that contains elk, venison, beef, or salmon does have some of those ingredients—but usually not the whole animal. That means your dog is missing out on essential vitamins and minerals like zinc and the B complex series, which are primarily found in the parts that kibble companies don’t use.

Whole prey retains these parts, such as fur, livers, kidneys, and bones. By feeding your dog’s microbiome with this nutritionally rich smorgasbord of options, your pet is going to feel the effects, too!