Sometimes I think I just need to turn my brain off. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s possible.
I got to thinking about one of the posts that mentioned cats aren’t allergic to, say, chicken, but what the chicken was fed. Which got me to wondering, what would they normally eat? Long before factory farming, hundreds of years ago, what did they naturally eat, and are they now being fed too many things like corn and other grains? So I checked Wikipedia:
Chickens are omnivores.[11] In the wild, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects and even larger animals such as lizards or young mice.[12]So this tells me that unless the chicken is free-range, it’s probably not getting the insects, etc. that it normally would. Which makes me wonder what the impact of the chicken’s diet is on it’s health, which then impacts the health of those who eat it. I’m not even talking about steroids/horomones/antibiotics, just the impact of the diet itself. Then there’s another question: how much of the corn, grain, etc. that they’re being fed is GMO or has been sprayed with pesticides/herbicides? And how does that impact the chicken and those who eat it?
Some other diets of what we may be feeding (I’m also keeping in mind Dr. Pierson’s statement of “think fur and feathers, not hooves and horns”):
Wild turkeys are omnivorous, foraging on the ground or climbing shrubs and small trees to feed. They prefer eating hard mast such as acorns, nuts, and various trees, including hazel, chestnut, hickory, and pinyon pine as well as various seeds, berries such as juniper and bearberry, roots and insects. Turkeys also occasionally consume amphibians and small reptiles such as lizards and snakes. Poults have been observed eating insects, berries, and seeds. Wild turkeys often feed in cow pastures, sometimes visit back yard bird feeders, and favor croplands after harvest to scavenge seed on the ground. Turkeys are also known to eat a wide variety of grasses.
Ducks exploit a variety of food sources such as grasses, aquatic plants, fish, insects, small amphibians,[3] worms, and small molluscs.
Rabbits are herbivores that feed by grazing on grass, forbs, and leafy weeds. In consequence, their diet contains large amounts of cellulose, which is hard to digest. Rabbits solve this problem by passing two distinct types of feces: hard droppings and soft black viscous pellets, the latter of which are immediately eaten. Rabbits reingest their own droppings (rather than chewing the cud as do cows and many other herbivores) to digest their food further and extract sufficient nutrients.[16]
Cattle are ruminants, meaning that they have a digestive system that allows use of otherwise indigestible foods by regurgitating and rechewing them as "cud". The cud is then reswallowed and further digested by specialised microorganisms in the rumen. These microbes are primarily responsible for decomposing cellulose and other carbohydrates into volatile fatty acids that cattle use as their primary metabolic fuel. The microbes inside the rumen are also able to synthesize amino acids from non-protein nitrogenous sources, such as urea and ammonia. As these microbes reproduce in the rumen, older generations die and their carcasses continue on through the digestive tract. These carcasses are then partially digested by the cattle, allowing them to gain a high quality protein source. These features allow cattle to thrive on grasses and other vegetation.
Sheep are exclusively herbivorous mammals. Most breeds prefer to graze on grass and other short roughage, avoiding the taller woody parts of plants that goats readily consume.[31] Both sheep and goats use their lips and tongues to select parts of the plant that are easier to digest or higher in nutrition.[31] Sheep, however, graze well in monoculture pastures where most goats fare poorly.[31] Like all ruminants, sheep have a complex digestive system composed of four chambers, allowing them to break down cellulose from stems, leaves, and seed hulls into simpler carbohydrates. When sheep graze, vegetation is chewed into a mass called a bolus, which is then passed into the rumen, via the reticulum. The rumen is a 19 to 38-liter (5 to 10 gal) organ in which feed is fermented.[32] The fermenting organisms include bacteria, fungi, and protozoa.[33] (Other important rumen organisms include some archaea, which produce methane from carbon dioxide.[34]) The bolus is periodically regurgitated back to the mouth as cud for additional chewing and salivation.[32] Cud chewing is an adaptation allowing ruminants to graze more quickly in the morning, and then fully chew and digest feed later in the day.[35] This is safer than grazing, which requires lowering the head thus leaving the animal vulnerable to predators, while cud chewing does not.[12]Note that several of them, esp. the birds, are omnivores and will also eat meat (insects, lizards, fish, etc.). I don’t know if cattle are fed corn, but I suspect they do get some and that it’s not really a normal part of their diet.
I know the Native Americans used corn a lot in their diet, but then I realized, it wasn’t sprayed with anything and wasn’t GMO. So how safe is the corn being fed to animals raised for food (in factory farming)?
These are just random thoughts and speculations. But it makes me think that we as a species should look more closely at the natural diet of the things we eat in order to protect the food supply, our health, and the health of our pets and other life on this planet. Because from what I can tell, it seems like we’re slowly poisoning ourselves and everything else.
Ok, I need to really shut my mind off because I’m depressing myself . . . Sorry if I’ve depressed you, too.