You can’t stop eating salt, but you don’t need to stop it

Some parents may have heard a lot about salt being harmful to pets’ health, so they are extremely careful lest their pets eat salt. In fact, no matter whether your pet eats professional pet food or home-made pet food, you can't stop them from eating salt. Why do you say that? Because for cats and dogs, salt belongs to the mineral category among the six major nutrients and is essential. Therefore, major brands of professional pet food will add salt that meets the needs of pets. Moreover, even if you do not choose prepared food, but cook your own food for your pet, the raw materials will generally include meat, offal and the like. Even if you do not add any salt during the cooking process, the meat and offal themselves Even if it contains a certain amount of salt, pets will still eat it.

Of course, parents don’t have to worry about their pets eating salt. In fact, salt plays a very important role in maintaining normal physiological functions of mammals. If animals lack salt, it will lead to symptoms such as loss of appetite, diarrhea and vomiting. When cats and dogs hunt in nature, they supplement salt through food such as animal muscles and internal organs. When feeding professional pet food, an appropriate amount of salt will be added accordingly, so parents basically don’t need to worry about their pets’ salt deficiency.

Salt has nothing to do with how much food pets eat

There are several versions of the relationship between salt and pets. The general meaning is that eating too much salt is not good for pets, but it can increase Regarding palatability, pets love to eat salt. In order to make pets eat more, pet food manufacturers add more salt to pet food without conscience. This very imaginative legend probably blames the fact that "no one likes vegetables with less salt" on pets. So what are the facts?

Dogs cannot taste the taste of salt, nor can they feel it if the salt content is changed

Let’s talk about dogs first. As mentioned before, salt is very important to mammals, and humans and many animals The tongues of both species are highly sensitive to the taste of salt, which may help these animals consume enough salt. But for dogs, their ancestors mainly fed on meat, and meat contains more salt, so although dogs can taste salty taste, they neither need nor have evolved to be as salt-sensitive as humans. Taste. Indirect evidence is that although dogs have taste buds on their tongues that can sense salty taste, they are located very far back, the distribution area is small, and the number is not comparable to that of humans. So, manipulating the salt actually has a minimal effect on how much your dog eats.

Salt is not a natural enemy of the urinary system

Salt causes kidney failure or lower urinary tract diseases. One of the reasons why this type of statement is so popular is that it is in line with common sense, because for us humans Said that excessive salt intake is indeed closely related to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure can increase a person's risk of kidney disease. Indeed, some people have suggested that saltDiet may cause high blood pressure in cats, which can lead to chronic renal failure in cats, but experiments have shown that, at least in the short term, there is no significant change in blood pressure in cats fed foods with different salt contents1. In addition, Dr. Chandler of the University of Edinburgh also wrote that there is currently no reliable evidence that high blood pressure in cats and dogs is related to salt.

Salt is not a hair remover

Finally, there is another saying that eating too much salt will cause hair loss in pets. However, there are too many factors that can affect pet hair loss. With the change of seasons, pets may change their hair; as pets get older, their hair will become sparse; if they lack certain nutrients, their coat will also become messy and easy to get. hair loss, not to mention various skin diseases and trauma. Moreover, pets will lose a lot of hair every day when they are in good health. In this case, pet owners want to determine the cause of pet hair loss. What caused it is really difficult. To sum up, there is no direct evidence that eating salt will cause hair loss in pets.