Dogs and peas - can dogs have peas in their dog food - hear from the nutritionist
At Healthy Active Pet we are passionate about dogs, dog food and dog nutrition and dog health.
Our dog food recipes - both the freeze dried dog food recipes and the raw feeding dog food recipes are all created by our pet nutritionists and are designed to be jammed full of nutrition to fuel your dogs health and longevity.
All our recipes are natural human grade ingredients that are non processed and then freeze dried.
You can also see all our freeze dried dog food here
And recently, we were asked if dogs can eat green peas and if dogs should eat green peas.
And this is because in our raw feeding dog food recipes and our freeze dried dog food you will see pea in the recipes.
So we thought we would cover here if pea for dogs is good and if dogs should and can eat green peas.
And the reason this is a question some dog owners ask is that a lot of commercial dog food has pea in the ingredient list and it is considered a filler.
Pet nutritionist answers question about if dogs can eat green peas
In typical processed dog food, absolutely peas are a filler that provide little nutritional value when compared to species appropriate ingredients.
But those peas are dried, heavily refined and serve as a binder and vegetarian protein source.
In Healthy Active Pet recipes peas are whole, fresh and freeze dried, so they serve a similar role in a canine diet as they would a human diet; they offer fibre, magnesium and antioxidants, among other nutritional benefits.
These are important because, while technically dogs have no carbohydrate minimum requirement, they do have a requirement for things like appropriate amounts of fibre, magnesium and the disease fighting qualities of antioxidants.
Fibre, for example, would be supplied in the wild by species appropriate foods like fur from prey.
Our Healthy Active Pet raw dog food recipes and freeze dried dog food is made from over 80% animal protein, but it doesn’t contain fur so we use peas instead because they are nutritious and affordable.
Peas make up a mere 2% of our recipe, unlike dry dog food where they can be as high as 30% or more.
The internationally recognised source for the nutritional value of fresh, whole green peas can be found here
You can also see all our freeze dried dog food here
