Al Jazeera is reporting that, although dog food manufacturers and suppliers claim they have made changes to their supply chain to get rid of excess magnesium, the lack of the nutrient has remained a major problem for dog owners.
“Magnesium is essential for normal brain function,” said Sarah Taylor, from the UK-based Pet Nutrition Association, in a video released on Thursday.
“But if you eat a lot of dog food and supplement, it’s not as beneficial.”
Magnesium has been found in food, as well as animal protein, in the form of bran and seeds, and in the animal feed itself, which contains magnesium-rich minerals such as magnesium sulfate.
“There’s no doubt that magnesium is a very important mineral,” said Dr Taylor.
“If you are eating a lot more dog food, you need to be taking more of it, because there’s just not enough.”
Dog food that is made by US company Pinnacle, which manufactures its own brand of dog foods, is a common source of magnesium.
But the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not classify dog food products as “Magnesium-rich” food.
It only considers products containing more than 0.8mg of magnesium per 100g of food.
Dr Taylor said it was difficult to determine exactly what percentage of dog owners are eating too much magnesium.
“It’s a lot easier to measure it than to look at it,” she said.
“The only way to do that is to look in the dog food.
If you look at the ingredient lists, you can see that it’s more or less the same thing.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over the last five years, the number of deaths in the US attributed to magnesium deficiency increased by 4.5% annually, from 12,000 in 2010 to 21,000 last year.
“We don’t really know what the cause is,” Dr Taylor said.
“The most likely reason is that people are getting too much of it.
The most common causes of magnesium deficiency are overfeeding, stress and lack of exercise.”
If you’re over-consuming, then you’re going to get magnesium deficiency.
“Dr Taylor also said it wasn’t clear why dog owners were getting so much magnesium in the first place.”
When you over-feed, the body is less able to get the nutrients it needs.””
Over-feeding has been shown to lead to magnesium toxicity in some animals.”
When you over-feed, the body is less able to get the nutrients it needs.
“Dr Harris also suggested that, if there was a problem with dog food quality, people might not know what they were eating.”
One thing that we’re seeing in dogs is that they’re more sensitive to calcium than other dogs, and they may not know that their dog’s diet is actually more calcium deficient than it should be.”””
You may be feeding your dog something that’s not necessarily a good source of nutrients, like calcium.”
One thing that we’re seeing in dogs is that they’re more sensitive to calcium than other dogs, and they may not know that their dog’s diet is actually more calcium deficient than it should be.””
If a dog is fed a lot, it may be a problem because it can get calcium deficiency.
And that’s why there are more calcium deficiency cases in dogs, because they’re not getting the calcium they need from their diet.
“Dr Sarah Taylor is one of several experts working to reduce dog food consumption, with the aim of reducing the amount of magnesium that is in dog foods.
She said it might be possible to remove the excess magnesium from dog food if the manufacturers and their suppliers were more honest with their customers.”
In the past, manufacturers have been saying, ‘Look, we’re going away from calcium, we’ll be back to magnesium,’ but the manufacturers are just not doing that,” she told Al Jazeera.”
And we’re not seeing that happening.
So, we need to do a lot better in this area.
“Al Jazeera’s Katie Smith reported from Los Angeles, California.