Jess, I have just picked up your posting about what's natural/unnatural.

Yes, homo sapiens was a hunter gatherer, and I believe we should still follow that self same diet. Man has been a farmer for a very very very short time, in evolutionary terms. I truly believe that we should eat a little raw meat, raw organs, raw nuts, seeds, raw eggs, ripe and over-ripe fruit (that is where man first learned the joys of alcohol and I'm all for that !!). This is not to say that I practice this diet, but I do believe that if I did and had done so thus far, I would be lean, mean and very fit, instead of a fat and unfit old woman !

The modern western diet is too heavily laden with refined - or even unrefined - carbohydrate. Like our dogs, we are designed to eat a LITTLE carbohydrate. We are encouraged to eat our muesli for breakfast, this is great in comparison to Sugar Puffs, or some other sugar (refined carbohydrate) laden cereal, but it is still far too much carb. We were designed to eat a LITTLE of this, a LITTLE of that -maybe we would kill a wild boar, or a colobus monkey or whatever, once every month, but the bulk of the time we would have lived on raw eggs (occasional), a handful of seeds, nuts, roots, fruits, whatever we could scavenge. Before we discovered fire, we had to live hand to mouth, we have the teeth still to prove that we were raw flesh eaters, but in the main we were herbivores, the bulk of our teeth are grinding teeth. But we have those few cutting teeth at the front that prove we should eat meat - raw meat.

I believe in looking at the tools of a species to ascertain what its diet should be, and you and I agree on what our dogs' diets should be I think.

Evie: aha we are agreeing here !! I SO agree about mares milk. 20 years ago when I had my daughter, 21 years in March (oh bless, where did those years go !!) I tried to get hold of mares milk ... we lived up on the Wirral then, and I have to say, my request was met with ... well, shall we say, a stony silence ... ! I failed, not to put into too fine a nutshell, I could not get hold of mares milk for love or money. When I suggested it to my midwife, she went absolutely beserk saying why on earth should I want to give the milk from an alien species to my baby.

What on earth she thought a cow was, I dread to think !

While we agree on most things, I think that taking it back to the roots of wolves or homo erectus is going a little far...

''instead of a fat and unfit old woman'' I believe this has happened only within the last 30 years with the advent of fast food and as you say the craving for carbs. Less time but more money?

You talk about us being a smidge on the evolutionary scale, that may be so, but again, mutations happen with a generation. I feel just because we have been around a mere 200,000 years doesn't mean we should look back so far to eat like that. We are where we are, I for one am not going to live in the past.

Veering of topic (again) I am interested in research that supports certain breeds doing better on certain foods. For example northern breeds raised on raw meats, and collies and JR's being fed more carbs and less meat. It seems to make sense, and certainly my JR is calmer on less meat and higher % carbs. This won't fit into the 'wolf' theory in the slightest, however it does once again bring up the fact of mutations occuring within a generation, and how many generations have there been since 18,000 (domestication of the dog).

Great post, and good point to be made there. I used to ve a veggie and when I first started eating meat again it made me quite sick (probably because my body had not been used to it for a long time) so I can see what you are saying there.

My dogs also drink milk with no adverse effects and really enjoy it. I feel in a way that we are wrong to say it is not natural because wolves are wild and to tham just like eating meat drinking milk is one of their natural behaviours (as per my explanation why in my last post).

You are so right about fast food, but you can't ignore teeth. The teeth of any species dictates what that species should be eating, and we should be eating an omniverous diet ... a little raw muscle meat and organ meat, but mainly vegetarian. I know for a fact that I would prefer to eat my eat my meat just very lightly cooked ... I like my steak blue, but definitely singed for a couple of minutes on each side. Cooking does not destroy the goodness that we get from eating meat ... the iron, the protein especially ... and the discovery of fire meant that man could cook a kill and keep it for a day or 2 longer than before, plus it was easier to eat and probably digest. But that does not go to say that we shouldn't eat at least more raw, natural, food than we do. I am again racking my brain, but I thought man had only discovered fire a few thousand years ago, that is just a mere smidge of a fraction of a whatever in terms of evolution.

I personally think the reason that northern breeds and other more natural breeds such as JRT's (they havent been messed about with too much) do better on BARF and in general have more problems with eating processed dog food, is because they are closer to the natural state, the wild wolf. That is obvious with northern breeds of course, and GSD's, you only have to look at them to see that they are closer to nature than, say, a labrador. However, the Jack Russell is a new breed, a dog that has not been inbred to achieve a short tail, a long tail, a wavey tail, or whatever tail some idiot dictated was "the" thing. In other words, it is close to the nature, even though obviously it is quite a small chappie. This is why they do better on a more natural diet, because they are nearer to what nature originally intended.

I am going to put my foot in it again, I can feel it, but just to get it off my chest, 'evolution' is not the only theory going. There are alot of holes in the evolution theory (dear old Darwin) but lots of subscribers who don't know it yet. One of those things I fear, that we get told about and just believe 'that's it'.
I personally feel that you are using 'smidge of a fraction in terms of evolutionary scale' to justify why things should be as they were at the dawn of the species.

Can I take the example of the horse.
Wild horses v. domesticated horses are closer than dogs/wolves in their dna difference, yet domesticated horses are bigger, live lonbger lives, and depend on humans for their survival. Should we feed domesticated horses thorns as wild horses eat?
I am not understanding the logic that makes us look back in time for a diet that suits ancestors. What if the real ancestor to the dog didn't exist nowadays, that might be the case?

''and we should be eating an omniverous diet ... a little raw muscle meat and organ meat, but mainly vegetarian. ''

My point lies in here.... you are talking about what nature intended. What if nature intended, what exists now.
My parents didn't eat raw meat, neither do I, but I am doing ok, you could go as far as saying I am 'healthy'. Should revert back to eating raw meat because it might be better for me, or is what we have now grown to eat the best thing?
It's an open question, I am not sure if either of us or right or wrong on the subject.

Jess.. which 'holes' in evolutionary theory do you mean... you're not going intelligent design on us all are you?! i agree, that i would not want to revert back to eating raw meat- paracite paranoia!

eh? There are loads of missing links, that Darwin expected to be found by now, but which haven't so we are still assuming. Also they are still printing and teaching things like the 'millar' (miller) not sure, experiment which 'proved' about how RNA first came about, which has since been shown to be false, however they are still preaching it (I had to study for it for an exam - how annoying, learning something we know to be proven wrong) I feel the world is more than a little screwed up sometimes.

Hay I am not condoning nor disputing intelligent design, only that I have read some interesting things. Luckily I don't have to deal with these questions daily.
I do Reiki though, which throws open alot of crazy things. It is very hard to be raised scientifically, find fault with science, read up on religions and then feel 'Reiki' running through your hands.
They outta lock me up, truly.

yep.. but that experiment proved to be a platform for many others, don't know why it's being taught as gospel though! Darwin didn't get everything right, but that's not a reason, in my opinion, to discount evolutionary theory. But hey... thats another thread on another forum!