What's Bioavailability? The Secret to Making Every Food a Superfood
Could your pup be eating the right ingredients, but not actually getting all of the nutrients his or her body needs? It's possible depending on the cooking method used to prepare his or her food.
Beyond what our pups eat, bioavailability matters greatly in ensuring our pups receive the nutrition they need to thrive. Put simply, bioavailabilty is the percentage of what our pups ingest that makes it into their bloodstream. If bioavailability is low in a food, your pup is simply eating empty calories and not getting the optimal nutrition to live their best lives.
How Cooking Methods Impact Nutrition
When selecting food, it’s not just about selecting one with high quality ingredients. The time and temperature of a cooking process heavily influences the bioavailability of food. Sadly, most traditional dog food - kibble and canned food - is heavily processed. This results in low bioavailability and nutrient absorption for your dog.
To put it into perspective, if you buy kibble made with grass fed beef, the high temperature and heavy processing used to cook the food strips it of any nutritional benefits that would normally be derived from that beef. At A Pup Above, we use a unique low-temperature cooking method called sous-vide. This cooking method retains up to 40% more nutrients than traditional cooking methods, makes the food easy to digest, and delivers a flavor boost to the food, making meal time a healthier and happier time for your pup 😊
How Heavy Processing Causes Inflammation and Skin & Coat Issues
When your pup eats heavily processed foods, the food is difficult for him or her to digest. This results in less nutrient absorption and inflammation in the gut. Aside from not delivering the optimal amount nutrients your pup, it also causes flatulence. If your pup frequently passes gas, it could be that his or her diet is too difficult to digest resulting in unpleasant gas.
Gut irritation and a lack of nutrient absorption caused by heavy processing can manifest in allergy-like symptoms, such as itchy, dry skin and a thinning and dulling of the coat. Ever seen a pup with patchy or greasy looking fur? Unless your pup suffers from a skin condition due something other than diet (some disorders, or health issues can have an impact), many skin and coat issues are the body’s way of raising a red flag about digestive irritations.
The reason skin and coat health are connected to food is that skin and hair production is managed by the absorption of essential amino acids, which are gained from protein. If protein is not bioavailable, then your pup is going to have a harder time absorbing those amino acids that are key to happy skin and a gloriously silky coat.
There are several ways in which we can heal and maintain the digestive tract. One major way to healing it is the consumption of gently-cooked foods like A Pup Above. A Pup Above’s unique sous-vide cooking method, provides multiple benefits. The long even cooking process retains significantly more nutrients than other cooking methods, makes food easier to digest, and creates a delicious natural meat gravy that's rich in collagen, amino acids and happy hydration for your dog child.
Furthermore, the addition of prebiotics and probiotics, into the diet can drastically enhance the care and keeping of the gastro-intestinal tract. This can be added into your pup’s diet with relative ease.
