Ketones and Coffee Podcast with Lorenz
Ketones and Coffee Podcast with Lorenz
Episode 161: Daniel Schulof ON How A Keto Diet Can Improve Your Pet's Health
In this episode of the Ketones and Coffee Podcast, I interview Daniel Schulof, the CEO and founder of Keto Natural Pet Foods. Daniel, who is also the author of 'Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma', delves deep into the critical issues facing pet health including obesity, diabetes, and cancer.
Daniel asserts that dietary carbohydrate is the root cause of the pet obesity epidemic and discusses how commercial pet food companies have influenced the nutrition advice given by vets. He advises pet owners to focus on the macronutritional content of pet foods and not just the ingredients. The interview also explores the inception of Daniel's company, Keto Natural Pet Foods, which aims to provide low-carb solutions for pets.
00:00 Introduction to the Episode
00:53 Meet the Guest: Daniel Schulof
02:31 Daniel's Journey into Pet Nutrition
05:20 The Obesity Problem in Pets
09:59 The Misinformation in Pet Nutrition
11:08 The Birth of Keto Natural Pet Foods
02:23 The Importance of Pet Nutrition Awareness
19:17 The Deception in the Pet Food Industry
21:10 The Evolution of Dogs' Diet
23:24 The Impact of Carbohydrates on Pets' Health
29:13 The Misinformation and Blame Game in the Food Industry
30:01 The Importance of Reading Pet Food Labels
30:42 Hidden Ingredients and Misleading Labels in Pet Food
31:29 The Importance of Macronutrients Over Ingredients
32:50 The Deception of Pet Food Companies
35:52 The Consequences of Suboptimal Diets for Pets
36:28 The Link Between Diet and Chronic Diseases in Pets
39:12 The Misguided Advice from Veterinarians
45:01 The Role of Carbohydrates in Pet Obesity and Diabetes
48:15 The Challenges of Changing the Pet Food Industry
52:23 The Benefits of Keto Natural Pet Foods
Connect with Daniel Schulof
Website: https://ketonaturalpetfoods.com
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We have another interesting episode for you guys today and this is with the CEO and founder of Keto Natural Pet Foods. He's also the author of Dog's Dog Food and Dogma. This is a different interview for you guys today, because instead of we focusing on human health, this episode will be focusing on and discussing how we can help our furry friends. Yes, if you have a cat, if you have a dog, this is for you, right? This is the main focus of this episode. One of the topics that we talked about was how dietary carbohydrate is the root cause of the pet obesity epidemic. And we also discussed how commercial pet food companies have influenced the nutrition advice given by our veterinarians. Very exciting stuff, guys. If you are on a ketogenic diet and you want the best for your pet, the best nutrition for them, be sure to tune in to the end of the episode. But without further ado, here is my interview with Daniel Skolov.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:So exCited for this guy. Today we have a truly exceptional guest on the show. Daniel Skoulov is the CEO and founder of Keto Natural Pet Food. He's a visionary. with a mission to establish the world's most substantial, sincere, and forward thinking pet food company with a deep rooted commitment to companion animal nutrition. Daniel is an acclaimed expert who addresses critical issues for pet owners. His insights delve into the complexities of challenges such as obesity, diabetes, and cancer that affect our beloved pets. He is also the author of the groundbreaking book. It's called dogs, dog food, and dogma. And this book is a profound exploration of the dog obesity epidemic epidemic. I'm honored and excited. Daniel, welcome to the ketones and coffee podcast, man.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Thank you, Lawrence. It's very nice to be here. Thank you for the very generous and thorough introduction.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Awesome, man. I'm so excited for this episode. And if you're listening or watching to this, you should be too. I have come across, like we, we talked about before we went live many extraordinary individuals on the show, and it has been an honor to have them and talk to them about their particular expertise. And some of these topics I'm very familiar with, right? But this particular topic that we are going to discuss today is so important, I believe, and it deserves greater attention just because of the enormity of the impact this particular change can have, uh, on the lives of our pets, right? So I'm very excited and privileged to have you on. But before we dive into the details, Daniel, I'd love to. Give our audience a brief introduction to your journey, you wear multiple hats before, before, uh, I know before you become a CEO, you are, I believe, a lawyer, right? Tell us that story and what prompted that transition for you.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah. So, I'm, I would say full time doggy world person. Now, I have not been all of my life. I was, but the story starts like probably anyone who works in dogs professionally. The story starts when I got my own first dog, I was raised with dogs. My mother had always, we always had them in the household and I always consider myself a dog person. But I did not have a dog where I was the primary caregiver, where it was my pet until I was in like my mid twenties. And at that point I was a lawyer. I was working, uh, in the litigation department of this big international corporate style law firm. And I was for lack of a better term, a yuppie. I was like. I've overworked as young professionals often are. I was living in a city environment. I was single. And in that context, I got my first dog and he became very important to me. He was, he has since passed on, as you could probably tell if you're watching this, I'm no longer anywhere near my mid twenties. And so the, the dog that sparked my journey has since passed on. His name was Cody. Cody was a Rottweiler. I got him when he was a little puppy, eight weeks old. And he was very much the prototypical Rottweiler in that he was big. Athletic, very high energy, high drive, intense kind of dog with protective instincts that needed, that would, could be a liability if you were, if you didn't take it seriously, like he's not a dog, even though it was my first dog that I was in charge of wasn't what you'd think of as like a dog for beginners, Um, and so one of the things that anyone that's listening to this and has dogs already knows is that like. If you have a dog that has high, strong behavior and the behavior can be a problem and you're trying to manage it. One of the things you really need to lean into is exercise. Just like with people, daily exercise, is good for mental health in animals, I guess. But like, it manifests in behavior where you you don't have to like guess what's going on inside the dog. You can just Tell that the behavior of an exhausted dog is more manageable, less prone to neuroses, that kind of thing. And so exercising this dog every day became important to me in order to make sure that he was like a polite member of society. And I was a busy guy and exercising him in a way that was like efficient and cost effective and effective for him and his physical health became a subject that I was like, Started learning more about and trying to understand better so I could do it better and over the course of doing that I like kind of stumbled into familiarity with the problem of obesity in pets and in the Western world it is a Colossal public health problem that is hugely underappreciated I certainly didn't even think about it until I sort of stumbled into it But when I did, I learned things that blew me away. So there are two facts that anytime I'm being interviewed about this, I like to highlight for people about the extent of the obesity problem in pets. Number one, obesity is so common in pets in the Western world, dogs and cats, that it's the norm. So more than half of the dogs and cats in the country today. So hundreds of millions of animals are either overweight or clinically obese. So it's not even like we're dealing with a, a fraction of the, of the total pet population. That's unhealthy. You're talking about this as the norm is you're more likely if you pick the next dog or cat you see, it's more likely that it's going to have this disease than not. So it's insanely common, but it's also insanely bad for them. It, we take for granted. Uh, because it's hammered into us through not just doctors and public health authorities, but through like popular culture, that being fat is bad for people. Like we know no, there aren't too many people out there who subscribe to the belief that being obese is good for your longterm health and chronic disease risk. And so I think everyone that embarks on a pet ownership journey kind of understands that at baseline, but the extent of to which it is bad for them kind of is mind blowing. So being like moderately overweight, which is to say not like The kind, like the kind of fat that you wouldn't, a lot of people wouldn't recognize the dog is like technically fat, like it would be pretty normal looking not clinically obese, not 30, 40 percent body fat is worse for that animal than a lifetime of smoking is for a person studies performed where researchers follow dogs from the time they're born until the time they die. And one of the clearest trends that emerges from those studies is that fatter dogs die young. And the extent to which they die young is worse than the extent to which smokers die young in people. If your dog is moderately overweight, it is a smoker. And more than half the dogs in the country are like that. I just like was like, Blown away by that. I had just gotten this dog and he was very important to me. I loved him. It felt like fam familial, love and the idea that other people would love their pets the same kind of way. And yet these two facts could possibly coexist. Just seemed like, how could that be? didn't make sense to me. And that kind of kickstarted my journey. That's, that's what got me into it. It was just like, I needed to understand how that could be a thing. It didn't add up.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Mm hmm. And then, when did you transition that career into, uh, creating your own business now? You are the CEO of a company. That, uh, produces pet food for animals, which are, keto, keto, keto lifestyle for animals. When did that happen?
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:So I, I, like it started as a personal, like I said, it was like just me trying to understand what the science said in order to help my own dog and like, just be useful for me. And I sort of started like keeping notes on that. And, stuff that I could refer to. And then as I like started becoming interested in obesity more and more, what you'll hear when you look, when you find something, uh, on the internet, or if you talk to your veterinarian about the problem of obesity in pets, you will see it like commonly. Acknowledged as a horrible problem. Vets recognize that and the public, to the extent you go looking, you'll see that generally everyone understands that this is a big deal. But, the explanations that are being given for why it's happening, why so many pets are obese despite the clear links to health don't make sense. They didn't make sense to me. The explanations you'll hear are like, things like they're very pet owner focused. It's like Either you're too lazy to give your dog exercise. And so they're all becoming fat or you're too weak willed. And so every time your dog begs, you're giving it treats. So you're overfeeding it or, uh, you're too stupid. You don't understand that this is a real problem. It's not just cute. Everybody thinks their dog
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:It's never them. it's never, they never admit to what they do. It's always like,
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Oh, yeah, exactly. So that's what
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:on you. They put their responsibility on you.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:that's right. And to me, that again, didn't make sense. And so like, I started trying to find out the extent to which those answers lined up with the scientific record for myself. But as I looked into it, it became clear to me that it doesn't. That like, when you look at the science, that is not what the science says. The science says very different things are causing the obesity problem we see in pets. And that started to get me thinking that there's more to this. That this is a story. This is a problem that has national significance that other people care about. And so what began as like a little personal project started growing in scope for me. And it eventually Over, it kind of like would get regenerated. It would be like, I would just be keeping notes and I'd be like, I could put together some, this, this would be something other people would want to read. Why don't I try to package this in a way that other people, and I'd work on it with that ambition in mind for a while. And then I'm like, I'd get deeper into it. I learned some other like crazy thing. And I'd be like, this is a full on. Book that somebody would, this is a useful book that someone would read. And then it was like, I should strive for the best book that's ever been written about this. And so I constantly like the ambition would grow. And so eventually I left my job as a lawyer so I could work on finishing this, what would become my book full time. And yeah, I wrote it over the period of 2011 through about 2016. This is big, thick 400 page book full of. All this science. And when I published it, it was unquestionably the most serious book about this problem. There are other, it's not like the human nutrition keto world where there are dozens or hundreds of pop science books about why carbs are bad for your health. It is not like that in the dog world. There's like before my book, there was like one other book on the problem of obesity and pets. And it's just not serious. It was written by a vet. I give the guy credit for like being interested in the problem and trying to do his part But it's not a serious book is the bottom line. It's short It's very superficial and doesn't do a serious job of investigating The basis for all the scientific stuff that's discussed in it and it's like I wanted to do a better job So I put that out in 2016 and essentially The two main theses that I advance in the book are number one, from a scientific, from like a nutritional perspective, the problem of obesity and among dogs and cats is not really anything pet owners are doing, except for the fact that we are feeding them too much dietary carbohydrate. That dietary carbohydrate is the root cause of the pet obesity epidemic, not any kind of Uh, personality trait that all pet owners just happen to have. The second main thesis of the book is that the only reason that we don't all recognize that already, that people, whether they're lay people or veterinarians don't agree with that, the first thesis is because they have been deliberately misinformed by the kinds of companies that make a lot of money off promoting the idea that carbohydrate is good for dogs and cats. And that is the, the biggest pet food companies in the country. Like it is the foundation of the modern pet food ecosystem is dietary carbohydrate. And so they are hugely invested in promoting the idea that carbs are healthy. And so they've engaged in this big process of misleading. And so those are the two like main ideas that I put forward in the book. And if you're somebody that read the book and was like, This guy's onto something. I, I agree with this. Or if you're just like, like you, I, you have private read my book, but you probably endorse that thinking implicitly. I probably don't need to explain to you why all those, those two theses are things. If you were one of those kinds of people that was like, yeah, carbs are bad for dogs. And as of 2016, you like, didn't have good options there. It's so pervasive. Like the, the extent to which carbohydrate is used in the pet food industry. I agree. Is so much that like, there's not good products for people that want to feed their dogs that way. And so that was kind of the last piece of the journey is that a company in 2018 that was, uh, that is designed for people who buy that, who are like, yes, carbs are the devil. What can I help me with low carb products? And so that's what keto natural pet foods is.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Now you're definitely on to something big here. Uh, I'm, I'm a pet owner myself. I'm not, we have a cat. Yeah, it's a Siamese cat. but my wife loves that little thing. I do too, but, uh, we, we also live a keto lifestyle, so I am primarily carnivore. So I'm already looking at food labels, right? Especially the ingredients. And I'm obsessed with, what I feed my family. And, with our cat, there's so much confusion, right? What should I feed him? Because I know carbs. I know there's additives on food, I also grew up with, three cats around the house and they're not with us anymore. One had diabetes. One had kidney
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Oh, Yeah.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Um, one had, you know, uh, a grave accident. One had one jump off the 10 story building, but we won't talk about that. But what we owe, what we. Always do with our pets, we just always brush it off too, right? They, them getting old, them getting sick is part of it, right? Because they're getting old, which is what we've always told people. And what we've always normalized is in our society, but now chronic illnesses. It isn't because of aging, rather it is very much tied to what we eat, to the food we eat. Right. So I think, you know, the bigger challenge here is that I think we face is just awareness about this topic. I don't think people are that aware about pet nutrition and how important that is for pets longevity. I think the question that we should ask is what, just what led you to, uh, What, what's going on with, uh, society today. I mean, with. With people not really reading labels, right? With people not aware with, uh, what they're feeding their pets. They're not, sometimes they're not aware that here's why I think, this will transition well is because when you talk to. And we talked about this before we went live that when you talk to people who knows keto, who knows how to eat keto, knows why carbohydrates and additives is bad for your dietary choice, they already understand. They just don't know where to go. Right.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah. Yeah. In the world. It's like, it's, it's interesting because you like it. So I'm drinking my Coke zero here. And of course it has on the back of it, the FDA is nutrition facts panel, which includes mandatory nutritional information, right? That all packaged food products have to contain. And like you said, people who listen to podcasts like yours, read labels on pet food or on their, on their food products, right? They understand. Yeah. Uh, what's information is on there. They have a sense of the significance of various pieces of information and they know what they're looking for. That type of behavior exists in the pet food world. People look at labels, but it's not at all tied to macronutrient content. And one of the key reasons for what they're looking, when people read labels, they're looking at stuff that is like, is tangential to macronutrition, stuff that has to do with protein. But like, isn't protein directly because the equivalent to the FDA's nutrition facts panel that you find on all human use packaged food products is really misleading and not at all helpful in the doggy and kitty world that what's the quantitative nutritional information that goes on dog and cat food is called the guaranteed analysis panel. And it's quite different. From what the FDA's nutrition facts panel looks like, and one of the ways in which it is most notably different is you do not have to tell the consumer how much carbohydrate is in there. So unlike in human domains, where somebody listens to your show and is like, keto diet, that's for me, I'm going to go out and make sure I eat a keto diet. One of the things you're going to do is you're going to look for a lot of zeros or small numbers on the carbohydrate line. You can't do that. In the doggie and kitty world, you can pick up a bag of food that has a wolf on it, that has a steak on it, that says no corn, no wheat, no grain, that has meat as the first ingredient, and it's 50 percent carbohydrate. And you have no idea. And so the extent to which people are like roughly sent, keyed into the idea that carbs aren't ideal for dogs. My dog is like a wolf and wolves obviously don't eat carbs. And so probably shouldn't feed my dog very much of that seems reasonable. Everybody like, tons of people are on the level with that. Like that's like, but they don't under what's the real problem is. That they're being misled about what the content of the product they're actually feeding is. And so there's a big change coming. It's like in essentially the rules have now been passed, but it's not going to be a few years until you see it on every label, but much. Better nutrition labeling is coming. And I'll bet you dollars to donuts that, uh, it's going to open people's eyes big time when that happens. Cause these products, there's not a person I talked to in a sophisticated setting who doesn't say to me, I feed the good stuff. I'm one of the people that cares, there are all these people out there that just don't even care about their dog. That's not me. I care. I feed the good stuff. And then I go through this awkward process of explaining to them, well, what brand do you feed? Let me walk you through how you figure out what the nutritional content of this product is. And they have the aha moment where they're like, Oh my God, this is not good for my dog. I had no idea. And that's like the baseline. That is like the most common posture that pet owners have these days.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:The more confused you are, the better for the industry. That's why I always say for the food industry. I didn't know it was the same for the pet food industry. I, I love, I love the quote that I saw on your website. It says, Keto. Is a dog's natural diet. I love it. You know, there's a million like dog videos on TikTok about their dog eating steak and they're perfectly healthy dogs. Right. But, um, I want to
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah. The most go ahead. Go ahead.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Uh, go ahead. What were you going to say Since
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:first bit of my book, the first main chapter is, it has to do with my experience in Yellowstone national park. I went to live for a short period of time with the biologists. called the Yellowstone Wolf Project and the Yellowstone Wolf Project is the preeminent place for the study of gray wolves in the United States. The most legit biologists in the country work there and they know everything there is to know about wolves. And that's important to helping you understand your dog's health because dogs and wolves are very, very similar species. In fact, they're so similar. That they can breed successfully with one another and do commonly. There are hundreds of thousands of dog, wolf hybrids us right now, which means that in kind of technical terms, they're like not even really too distinct species. Like if you ask a lot of biologists, how do you define the line between one species and another, what they'll say is they can't interbreed like a human and a orangutan or a gorilla or something like that won't make children if you breed together. Dogs and wolves, they do. They're so similar that they do. And they, if you ask like, folks who know a lot about genetics, they will tell you, because the studies have been done, that dogs and wolves occupy the exact same genetic lineage for 99. 9 percent of their history as a canine species, as two distinct canine species or whatever. Just in the past 10, 000 years, which is of course a lot of time for you and I, but in the Time scale of evolution is a very small fraction of time. Have they diverged at all? And that divergence really concerns just kind of two main groups of genetic differences. The first has to do with the brain. And that's like the one that probably everybody understands already. It's like wolves behaviorally, psychologically are different than dogs. Like we have trained, we have bred, excuse me, docility. into dogs over generations. We're to make them into companions. Like you can't just raise a wolf in your home and expect it to behave like a friendly golden retriever. It doesn't work that way. Brain is different. But the second one has to do with carbohydrate digestion. It's like dogs have evolved in just the past 10, 000 years, the ability to digest starch effectively. And what that means is that wolves, we know Until just 10, 000 years ago for 99. 9 percent of the time they've been on this planet, both dogs and wolves consume zero carbohydrates. So it's like people have different people mean different things when they say carnivore and even obligate carnivore versus facultative carnivore. But like. In wolves, it's so, the carnivory is so pronounced that it's like, it is, they literally can't eat anything else. The reason they eat is because they can't effectively digest carbohydrate based food products. So for 99. 9 percent of the dog's genetic history, it was in that exact same environment. And so this idea that like, All of a sudden, we've introduced tons of carbohydrate into the diet and they're doing incredibly well is clearly like, how can you think that we know better than mother nature in that way? Yeah, it seems to me that there
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:the topic of, you mentioned some of these companies, agendas, right. We talked about. The food industry and, changing your lifestyle is still such an issue with a lot of people, right? The food industry are lining their pockets, lining the pockets of politicians that they make sure that the policy is staying in their favor, right? And we know this and how the food industry is an industry of, agendas, right? Deceptions and misinformation, right? We talked about. The more confused you are, right, the better for them, right? But they, you know, you talked about how your veterinarian puts the responsibility on you. Because at the end of the day, that's what the food industry wants to do, right? Is to put the responsibility on you because they don't want to admit to anything, right? And that's what the food industry is banking on, right? So that. You are addicted enough to the foods that you will find it, you will find it hard to change your lifestyle, right? So, not sure about the pet food industry. I assume that it's also still about making money at the day for them. I know, I don't know, I don't know who runs it, right? But, and, and what agendas there are.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:are subtle differences, but at the end of the day, these are companies that have been around. They have very similar business models, same profit incentive, yeah. And have kind of same histories really where in essence, what happened is it goes like this is like, like I said, a second ago, dogs can digest carbohydrate. They can pull nutrition out of carbohydrates. Why obesity is such a problem because they pull it out really well. anD so somewhere in the late 19th century, early 20th century, this guy figured out That you could feed dogs. What amounts to like, there's stuff called hard tack that like sailors used to take with them on like transatlantic voyages. That was like very, very uh, like crunchy bread, like just essentially like biscuits and it like is so crunchy. Cause they were like, wouldn't spoil as much a very little water in it. So it doesn't spoil. So you could bring it on these long voyages and the legend has it. That this guy, this entrepreneur one day was on the dock on a dock, saw some, a pack of dogs squabbling over like a loaf of this hard tax stuff. And was like, aha, this stuff is really cheap and effective at giving nutrition to sailors on voyages. What if we can make the same kind of thing with dogs? And that's what they did. And they started baking in essence, these little nuggets of meat infused Bread. That's what like kibble style dog food. That's still the most popular kind of dog food in the country is it's like you make it just like you're making think of like meaty bread. Like if you're baking, uh, biscuits or doughnuts or whatever. And you're making a batter with starch ingredients. The only difference is that in pet food, you add meat to it as well. And then you heat it up. And what happens is the starch gelatinizes and it holds it all together. It's like one of the reasons why, you know, like as a keto focused person, it's hard to bake keto bread, like to make bread. Without carbohydrate is difficult. It doesn't want to hold together and that's because it doesn't have the starch. The starch is what holds it together. And so like once upon a time, somebody was like, Oh my God, this, I can make a great product like this. It's going to hold together. It's going to be shelf stable. There's dogs are going to want to eat it. They're going to be able to pull nutrition from it. It's going to be crazy and expensive to make. And it's very convenient for pet owners. It's like scoop and serve the same amount every day. Super inexpensive. Great. And it was a great product for them and it became the backbone of the industry. And so by the like 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, it's the industry. There is no like fractionalizing of like there are frozen raw diets and freeze dried raw diets like there are today. It's kind of the whole industry. And it wasn't until after that point that people really started doing the science that was like, wait a second, there are really bad things that happen to your dog's body when you feed it this much carbohydrate. And it's not unlike a tobacco company, like you, they didn't start cigarette companies because they were like, these are going to kill tons of people. Ha ha ha. We're evil. It's not that kind of evil. The evil is they start these companies. They get huge. Everybody's rich. Then they figure out, Oh my God, it's killing people. And the evil comes in when they refuse to change because they're already so big that you can't reshape the whole thing. It's like that in pet food, where it's like these, the companies that dominate the industry were so big by the time the human side of the nutritional community started doing things like, Oh my God, carbs make you fat. Carbs are the root cause of diabetes, blah, blah, blah. That they were just like, well, we can't admit that we'll blow up our whole business. And so they exerted in this whole long term process, like try to like cover up misinformed, blah, blah, blah.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:So then they focus on advising people to eat less and exercise more, which is false, which falls under the owner. Or if you're talking about, uh, people. Then falls on you. If you're fat, it's your fault, right? Because you can't eat less. You can't exercise. You're, uh, you're lazy. You don't get up. You don't, you don't exercise, right? So they're banking on that idea because, hey, it's not our responsibility. You can choose not to eat it, right? You can choose, right? So, uh, at the end of the day, it is what it is. I mean, that's why you gotta take control of your own health. But for, for our pets, we really are not aware since, since you talked about, there will be no labels on pet foods. I've
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:no, there will be better labels. Better. It's going the other, it's going in a good way. It's just really bad right
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Mm hmm. And you said you wouldn't know how much carbohydrates would be in
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:most people don't,
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:right?
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:you have to do, you can calculate an approximation. If you know how to do the math from what information is on there, but it's not straightforward and most people don't know how to do it.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:yeah. And they don't even do it for themselves, right? Let alone do it for their
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:right?
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:So I want to talk about. The hidden ingredients, because I think this is really important. The fillers in pet food, sometimes, the evidence is right in our faces. And we, you, you said you can calculate, approx in proximity and approximation of what contents are, but you know, but but if you don't know how to do that, you're not going to do it, we just had to read through them and. We're still not doing it. I'm hoping that we, with this knowledge, we are learning today gives our listeners some incentive to check the label, right. And read the ingredients because, this may cause down the line longevity, right. For, for your pets. So, some pet foods, contain hidden ingredients, right. Or fillers. What are some of the red flags that pet owners should be aware of when evaluating their pet food?
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:I would actually tell you, here's how I'd, I'd frame the problem. I would encourage people that are interested by this stuff and want to make evidence based healthful decisions for their pets. To actually to read the label, of course, but to read it with a focus on macro nutrients as opposed to ingredients. And the reason for that is because there's such a lack of macro nutrient focus and such an ingredient focus in consumer behavior right now on the pet food side, that all these loopholes have now sprung up that make it really hard for you to understand, like we look at ingredients. Primarily because we're interested in understanding the macronutritional content, like we don't care what ingredients are in there unless it's significant to macronutrition. Right. So like we look, we're looking at ingredients. I'm speaking very generally now, but you might like look at a bag of pet food and go, I'm gonna look for a lot of meat stuff and not a lot of carbohydrate manufactured ultra process type stuff. And we want that because we know that science says certain things about the typical macronutritional content of those things where we know meat. It's just protein and fat and zero carbohydrates. So that's probably good. And we know that, high fructose corn syrup is this highly concentrated, simple carbohydrate molecule. It does all kinds of bad things, nutritional as well. People look for the ingredients, but the problem is that pet. Food companies know that, and so the way that everything is laid out now allows them to continue to hide the ball really effectively. And so what you can do to get around all that trickery is focus directly on macronutritional content. Just go, what matters to me is I want a high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate product. That's what I'm going to find and look for it directly. And so like the nutritional labeling doesn't do you any favors in that regard, but you can, if that's what you're interested in, instead of looking at ingredients, if you're looking for high protein, you'll find it, you can find numbers, compare numbers, that kind of thing. So yeah, that, that would be my main, like suggestion with regard to ingredients is like, don't assume that because there's meat at the top of the ingredient list, that you're good. It's like, in reality. I mean, I'll just give you an example of one of the most common tricks. Okay, so pet food products commonly have, uh, dozens of ingredients. Okay. And one of the reasons for that is that in order to sell them in the United States, they have to have certain micro nutritional contents. Like scientists have over a long period of time come to understand that dogs need a certain amount of certain micronutrients every. Periodic basis day, week, whatever, in order to avoid diseases of deficiency. So like don't get enough calcium. You're going to have certain kinds of developmental problems. Don't get enough vitamin D you're going to have. And so in order to sell your pet food in the United States, it has to have a pretty, uh, it's the, the micronutritional content has to fall in a pretty narrow range. Okay, kind of hard to put that together without a lot of different ingredients, you know what I mean? And sell different protein base a salmon and a chicken and etc without a lot of ingredients These products have lots of ingredients and so what you'll hear People that are well intentioned but not particularly well informed often say is like well We want to look for the ingredients at the top of the list because they're listed by descending order of weight so like the most weighty Product in our ingredient in the recipe is at the top. And so if you look and the first few are salmon, uh, fillets, shrimp, and other seafood products, you might very reasonably say to yourself, this feels like a good choice for me. But companies have spent, decades trying to hide the ball. And so what they'll do instead is just increase the number. Of non protein product, uh, ingredients further down the list. So it might feel good when the first three ingredients are all meat, but when halfway down the list, there are two dozen different types of derivatives of corn.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:yep,
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:That's where, that's how they sneak it all in basically. And so it's too easy to get misled. I'd encourage folks to focus directly on the macronutritional content.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:yeah, and we very much encourage it, but for some people, hey, why would I do all of that, uh, work? Well, the cons, there's a, there are consequences, right? We've known that suboptimal diets. create a whole bunch of problems for us, right? And it affects our whole physiology, our brain, especially, our energy when, when it's done for a long period of time, people develop chronic diseases. And it's the same for your pets, right? That's, that's why you have to read these labels, if you don't, right? Causes obesity, diabetes, in some cases, right? Failures, right? Enlargement of the heart, all of which are caused by a suboptimal diet. And by the way you're talking, it's the same for pets, right?
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:So there's like the evidentiary basis on essentially all of the chronic diseases that are common at a population level among pets in the Western world, obesity, diabetes, cancer, osteoarthritis, there is one degree or another. A some degree of evidentiary basis that the root problem here is carbohydrate. In some cases, the evidentiary basis is unassailably strong. There is just no way to like there's, you can't with a straight face, make the case that, oh no, uh, Diabetes is best treated by feeding lots of carbohydrate, even though as insane as it sounds, it is the standard of care that like most commonly prescribed diet for a dog with diabetes is 40 percent digestible carbohydrate right now. It's absolutely insane, but you can't with a straight face. Try to defend it. Some other places with cancer, for instance, not unlike the human world, there is evidence and it's promising and it's building that like Tumors like glucose, lower glucose, lower tumor growth, that type of thinking, but it's not yet like you'd be irresponsible to say like Carbs cause cancer in dogs. The science proves it rah rah rah It's not that yet, but it is a very plausible theory and it's kind of being tested out But yeah, there's just not one kind of chronic disease that's common that doesn't essentially go back to environment and nutrition
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying it's the same for humans, right? But we've known that, uh, cancer cells feed on glucose, right? And that's what
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah, exactly
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:what grows tumors, uh, tumors, right? So, know, at the end of the day, we, it's all about helping our pet owners make an informed decision here. Right. And I hope that this is incentive enough for you guys to do your own research, read the label, read what's, read the book, uh, dog food. What was that? Dogs, dog food and dogma. That book, uh, is available on Amazon if this will help your, the longevity of your pet and so that they don't contract diabetes, obesity. Right. And this is, I, I mean, all pet owners would love their pets to be healthy, right? I think this is all about just awareness and what you're feeding and what to feed them, right? And what's an optimal diet for our pets, right? So I, I hope that the consequences, the prognosis of, feeding and a suboptimal. Diet for your pet, you know, is incentive enough for you guys to may take action. Um, hopefully, hopefully this podcast does it for you. Are there any resources or guidelines you recommend for pet owners so that they can stay informed in all of this?
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah. So our website is notable for like, kind of, I think that most notable for one of the cool things that we do there, which is we provide a library of evidence that you can, that's entirely free, that you can access through our website, KetoNaturalPetFoods. com, that includes KetoNaturalPetFoods. com. All manner of information about any topic that you might be interested in. And I'm talking about full length studies, evidence, reviews, summaries, other like types of video resources, all that kind of stuff. And whether it's diabetes, protein intake, wolves, obesity, whatever your thing is, you can find a ton of it there. Unfortunately, and it's, it really is unfortunate. I usually, it's like, I don't recommend. I hate saying this, but it's like, I don't really think, I don't trust the advice, like a pet owner should go talk to their veterinarian and take their veterinarian's nutritional advice and follow that. I don't believe that. And it brings me no joy to say that. But the reality, as I've documented in my book and countless other places, is that the information environment that veterinarians are exposed to is more likely to lead to bad outcomes than good ones. It's just that simple that like, you know, several chapters in my book, I encourage folks to take a look and judge for yourself. But from where I sit, the extent to which big pet food companies with a very deep conflict of interest have influenced what veterinarians think. At a population level. Okay. Like what they're taught at school, what textbooks are used, all that kind of stuff is so closely tied to industry that you just don't, can't get reliably sound answers talking to your vet about too many topics. There are some things that don't touch industry interests where the thinking is really clear and the evidence basis is really strong. And you can rely on your vet when it comes to like. Surgical interventions, things like that. But like in the nutrition world, it is, there are forces stronger than the combined power of the 32 veterinary schools in the country that have shaped the curricula and yeah, I don't, uh, sadly, but I don't recommend that. I think you can do like one of the ways in which pet food, uh, excuse me, uh, pet, like science, veterinary nutrition science and human nutrition science are different is that the volume. Of research conducted in the human domain every year, absolutely dwarfs the veterinary side. Like there's just a tiny, tiny number of people doing veterinary nutrition research every year compared to the human side. And so the amount that can be learned and can be promoted through authors, journalists, scientists, public health bodies is just tiny. In the veterinary world. And so I, like, I think you have a lot more, if you're listening to the show, you will gain a lot more reading deeply about human nutritional science topics, and then trying to extrapolate where appropriate that stuff to the, your relationship with your dog or your cat. Cause like, I, uh, we're recording in early January right now. I of course bought Gary Tobbs's latest book about called rethinking diabetes that is this massive five, 600 page. Home with like resources that just, go back into the early part of the 20th century. And it's, incredible. There's nothing close to that in the veterinary world arguing for one side or the other. And so you can make up a lot more ground learning the human nutrition side and then trying to extrapolate,
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Oh, that's a, that's a really great point. I mean, for the veterinarians, People got to understand everybody's well meaning, right? Doctors well meaning, veterinarians well meaning, but it wasn't up to them, right? It's, uh, it's the system that they, it's their training, right? And who has the deeper pockets at the end of the day? Who, who pays, who, who's, who's coming up with all this policy, right? That, uh, paid for all the training for those veterinarians, right? So you got to understand everybody's well meaning, but at the end of the day, you really got to take control of what you think is best for your pets. Because like we said, if we wait for the government to change the policies. Make it better. We're going to wait a long time so you can take control now and, uh, there's a lot of information out there on how to, an example, you talked about your dog when you brought him to the veterinarian, you said, uh, they feed them like 40, a diabetic dog gets fed 40 percent carbohydrates, right? Which doesn't make sense because the point of having diabetes, right? When you have diabetes. And what raises insulin, what raises your blood sugar is carbohydrates, right? So, it really doesn't make sense and, for, for, humans, it's the same. Uh, I, I've had like, um, what, what are they called, uh, dieticians on my show, uh, who work for, uh, acute care, uh, diabetic acute care center. What do they feed those diabetic patients, right? They feed them, uh, oatmeal, grains, uh, sugar, right? And you gotta you gotta think about it. It's bigger than them. It's bigger than the vets. It's bigger than the system. It's, it's the whole system that needs to change, right? So,
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Tall order. Tall order. Hard to do. And it's like, but you're right to say that like, uh, diabetes is such a unique case. It's like you can, here's my estimation and this is, you can read this, the long version of this in my book, but like you can't make a dog fat without carbohydrate unless it has some other underlying endocrine criminological disease. You can't make it fat without carbohydrate, but you can make, you can get it to not be fat. In other ways, if you can still not be, you can eat carbohydrate and not have a fat dog, if you exercise an absolute ton and you're really mindful about portion control and you're perfect about everything else, carbohydrate is a necessary ingredient to make an obese dog. It's not a necessary ingredient in making your dog lean, helping your dog lose weight. And so you can have honest. Well informed professional level debates about whether the real problem of obesity in pets should be on Carbohydrate or should be on something like you you can just about squint and get there I think most of it is done in bad faith, but you can just sort of squint and get there Diabetes if you're a veterinarian or a human doctor, like you said recommending that an animal that cannot process dietary carbohydrate Ought to eat 40 percent of its diet in dietary carbohydrate that it rises to a different that that to me is that's professional negligence. That's like if you are a low, low, if you are a freshman in college who has gone through human physiology in any kind of way, you, that is a well done for you. And so if your medical provider is like, yes, I really think that God that is harder for me to defend as. Acceptable. You know what I mean? Like you want to give people the benefit of every doubt, but that's just like saying like, Oh, you're, you're allergic to peanuts. We think you ought to eat a lot of peanuts in your diet. Like, it's just so problematic that you, you, it's not bad faith. It's professional negligence. So I have real, I have trouble giving an offering for anybody that's, that says that it's so, so bad.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Yeah. And I don't know how they. You can't put two and two together, right? Especially with diabetes and how, carbohydrates turns to glucose in the body. And it's certainly like when, when you ask, cause now, nowadays for, for us humans, in our society, young kids are now being. Uh, diagnosed with pre diabetes
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:younger and younger because, they eat a high sugar breakfast to start today, right? So why can't we just put two and two together that that is a problem? We talked about how do you fatten a person with grains? How do you fatten a cow, right? With grains, right? How do you fatten the cow? That's why they feed them grains, so you fatten the cow, right? And why can't we put it together, uh, for humans, right? Why do you say fat makes you fat? Well, like when, how we fatten the cow with grains, you know what I mean? Like, I I'm so, I'm so like confused on how, the industry, the whole society in general can't put these two together.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Yeah. I mean, like It's a deeper topic than we would have a chance to discuss today. It's time to discuss today, but at a very high level, what goes on in the veterinary nutrition community is. The folks who are making products that are stuffed with carbohydrate and know it's really bad and know they need to convince veterinarians to keep recommending it anyway, the general strategy that they use is they try to identify other health problems associated with competing products. And then essentially say to vets, you have to instruct your people to avoid all those all together because of your concern. What should be your real concern? And the prototypical example in the veterinary world, the one that is longest history is raw diets. You go talk to your veteran, your cat's veterinarian tomorrow, you don't think about feeding them a raw diet, what they'll tell you. I guarantee you, I know what they will say. They will say, you shouldn't do that. You definitely don't recommend that because there's too much risk of contamination. And you say, what do you mean? You go, well, raw means uncooked meat and uncooked meat in potential food for pathogens, and if they've really done their reading, then they'll know that like even the pathogens don't make the animals sick. Like that's not a thing. Like your dog, if your dog has salmonella bacteria, it doesn't like become symptomatic, but you might get sick and your dog is going to lick you and your dog's feces is going to be in the yard. And so because of the concern that you could wind up with salmonella, we don't recommend any raw diets. So you should just feed this big 40 percent carbohydrate kibble. And like that general strategy where it's like, flag some valid, but really inconsequential issue. Try to draw every veterinarian's attention to that so that they ignore the much bigger elephant in the room is generally the strategy that's used. And it's just been replicated a bunch of times with different health problems. And that's how it's going right now. And raising awareness about that is sort of the name of the game.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Yeah. You literally have the same problem you had in the matrix that you got to. Wake people up with this information, give them awareness. I bet. Yeah.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:It's like these guys have, uh, maybe this is a place to bring it to the, I've mentioned Gary Taubes before Gary Taubes played a meaningful role in helping me with my book. He was interviewed a bunch of times and he's very helpful. And one thing that he says is. It's like a poker game and the every, but because they have a 50, 60, 70 year headstart and tons of more money than you do, all the other folks you're playing against are collaborating against you and your poker game. Because over time, corporations have. Form the kind of financial relationships they need to with individual veterinary schools, the people who make the textbooks, the organizations that promote guidelines, et cetera, et cetera. So they're collaborating. You have to fight against everybody over there. And like I said, you're at a disadvantage beyond that because they have all the resources that you don't have. But, and this is Gary's analogy, not mine, what you have is a winning hand. You have the evidence, like to the extent that the science is actually performed, you're on the right side of the issue. And so there is a way to win the kind of game we're talking about here. Despite those challenges that we have the winning hand, but we still have a very difficult game to try to win against a bunch of folks who are collaborating against us. But if you remember, you have the winning, winning hand on your side. It's helpful. It's helpful for me.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Yeah. We, we, you can't forget why we're doing this in the first place. Right. And, uh, it's, it's fulfilling one, every one that we becomes aware of this information is a win, right? So at the end of the day, for me, I do this so that one can be helped, right? I don't think about a thousand. I think about that one person that might listen, right? So, and by you coming on the show today, we're we're going to accomplish that one person today. That might be
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:I hope so.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Yeah. Yeah. Someone, someone's out there. Someone's listening. I hope so. Um, let's, let's talk about your company. Talk a little bit about it. Uh, if anyone's interested in getting some of the products where can they get those products? Ketona.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:uh, in, in this day and age, there are keto and low carbohydrate food products for human beings that For whatever you like. Keto bread exists. Keto ice cream exists. Sodas without sugar exist, et cetera. In the doggy and kitty world, it is far more rare. In fact, if you want to feed a kibble product, With that is to say the scoop and serve kind of product with a truly low carbohydrate content We are your only choice that like other than keto natural pet foods The best options you are going to find are about 30 percent Carbohydrate, okay. So and ours is less than 5 percent So it's 80 plus Less than there's a huge difference. We really I mean, it's like Our thing is not that like we have a product that is legitimately unique in the industry right now, and if people understand the relevant science, they're looking for products like ours. They just have to discover that we exist. If, however, you have enough money and Like kind of, uh, tolerance or like motivation to feed your dog, a raw all meat diet. That's an even better option. It just gets very pricey. There's some sanitation and safety and kind of cleanup and refrigerator type things, but generally speaking I encourage if you can afford that It's like five times as much as kibble, but you can then go for it. That's what you should be doing. But if you, if you are going to feed kibble, you're unquestionably the best nutritional profile. It's got roughly twice the amount of protein as most of the other. Better for your dog diets. You're going to find like 80 percent less carbohydrate. It's really different. It's called ketona. That's the name of the product line companies. Keto natural pet foods. We saw it through all the major online retail channels. Chewy. Amazon Petco, our own website, we have our own subscription program. So any one of those places you can find it. We, we do, we have like essentially the best guarantee in the business where like, if you try it with your dog and you don't work out for any reason whatsoever, your dog's blood sugar doesn't go down. Your dog doesn't lose the weight you want to see. You get all of them, including free shipping. And that is not something that other companies do. And the reason we do it is because it does work and we can offer that, uh, because it'll incentive, it takes some of the risk out of it for people that are skeptical, but yeah.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Awesome, awesome. We're going to link everything down in the description box below if you guys are interested in that. Hopefully you're interested. If you have a pet, uh, I'm thinking about, uh, do you have some for cats too? Right.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:uh, the nutshell version of the story with cats is that, so we don't sell any of our products for use with cats. And the reason for that is unfortunate, but, uh, just a true economic reality. That like when you're a startup, like we are, you have to get the dog people first. And that's because, so my dog, who I'm looking at right now as he is lying fast asleep on the couch is a St. Bernard, which is a giant breed of dog. He weighs about 170 pounds. Now your Siamese cat probably weighs, what, six pounds, 10 pounds at the most. So as a consumer, I am worth. 20 times as much as you to a pet food company. And so you can't, it's just an economic reality. We're like survive, we're a startup survival is not guaranteed yet. In order to get there, we have to start with dogs. That said, we have lots of people who feed our product to cats. So I'll note a couple of things about it. Number one. The kibbles are really small, so they're not supersized large kibble and which is done because it helps us use less carbohydrate. Basically, you need less binding carbohydrate when you have a smaller product. So the kibbles are small and the nutritional profile meets the regulatory required nutritional profile for cats as well. Essentially, what makes The doggy nutritional profile and the kitty nutritional profile different is cats have to have a specific amino acid, a meat based amino acid called taurine in the diet. Ours are very meat focused. We have more meat than any product in the market right now. And so they have a ton of taurine in them. And so your cat, uh, If you were to switch, it's off label, it's not, uh, approved by regulators for use with cats, but we have dozens, if not hundreds of people that are customers of ours that use it with their cats as well, something to consider, but because your cat is so like that is so small. You might be able to afford a full on raw product, in which case that's what I would recommend. Zero carbohydrate, all meat, commercially sold, complete and balanced raw diet would be for your cat.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:Awesome. Awesome. I'll consider that. I'll, I'll take a look at it to see what we can find. Yeah. Uh, thank you so much for coming on, uh, Daniel, for sharing your story here. We learned a valuable lesson here, uh, about our pets and how we can optimize the diet for our pets so that we can make sure that they're healthy, uh, and longevity too. Right. So amazing stuff. Uh, thank you so much for coming on. And sharing your story, Daniel. I love, uh, having that conversation with you and I think, You know, this has a, we can put greater attention about this, a lot of great information, helping our pet owners here, uh, make that informed decision. All right. Daniel, thank you so much.
enhanced_daniel-schulof_1_01-11-2024_120538_#1:Steph, my pleasure. Happy to be here.
enhanced_loenz-manaig_1_01-11-2024_140538_#1:All right.
Thank you for joining me for another episode of the ketones and coffee podcast with Daniel Skoulov in the importance of pet nutrition awareness and the role of carbohydrate in pet obesity and diabetes. I have provided the links to Daniel's work and his socials so please see the show captions below. If you are learning from or enjoying the episode, please subscribe to wherever you listen to your podcast, which is a great zero cost way to support the podcast. And you can also leave us up to five star reviews on both Spotify and Apple. If you have any questions, please reach out to me on Instagram on our website at ketocoachlaurence. com or at ketocoachlaurence on Instagram and Facebook. Thanks so much guys.
