Allergy Free Dog Food

No one wants their dog to be miserable. But food allergies can leave previously happy, healthy dogs in a wretched state.

Symptoms include constant itching, scratching and biting, excessive hair loss, and red, bald patches of skin with crusty scabs. Left untreated, a serious canine food allergy can be a nightmare for your dog.

While there is no such thing as a completely allergy free dog food, changing your dog's diet is the best way to treat food allergies.

Allergy Free Dog Foods and Novel Protein Sources

The seven most common allergens in dog food are beef, dairy products, chicken, wheat, chicken eggs, corn and soy. Not surprisingly, these are also the most common ingredients in dog food.

Why is this fact not surprising?

Because food allergies tend to develop due to repeated exposure to a food over time, making consumption of the same food or ingredient year after year the primary cause of food allergies in dogs.

For this reason, when choosing novel protein sources for elimination diets, people usually look to less common foods. Duck, fish, venison, and wild boar are examples of foods that would be novel protein sources for many dogs.

Similarly, look for potatoes or peas to replace wheat or corn on the ingredients list.

A novel protein diet is not the same as an allergy free dog food, but it should function as one for your dog.

Can Additives in Dog Food Cause Allergies?

Many people want to know if the various additives found in the most popular commercial dog foods can cause food allergies. The very simple answer to this question is yes. Dogs not only develop allergies to synthetic food dyes and chemical preservatives, but these ingredients can play havoc with your dog's immune system.

Allergies are, in essence, an immune response gone wrong, where the body tries to fight off a harmless or even beneficial substance as if it were a dangerous intruder.

This is why it's important to check your food ingredient label. When dyes like Blue 2 and Yellow 6, or synthetic antioxidants such as ethoxyquin or BHT are present, they are under suspicion of greatly increase the chance of your dog's immune system going wrong, and the risk of developing a food allergy rises in turn.

Are Lamb and Rice Formulas Allergy Free Dog Foods?

Once upon a time, lamb and rice dog foods were the most commonly used elimination diet.

As a result, people began to believe that lamb and rice were true allergy free dog food ingredients.

Unfortunately, lamb and rice are no different from other foods in this regard. As recently as the 1980s, they were a good choice for novel protein diets. But this wasn't because they possessed special hypoallergenic properties.

Rather, it was solely due to the fact that lamb and rice were not commonly used dog food ingredients back then, so dogs had no chance to develop allergies to them. As lamb and rice foods have become more common, more and more dogs are becoming allergic to these ingredients.

On a per capita basis, they are no more allergy-free dog food ingredients than beef or chicken.

Is There an Allergy Free Dog Food?

There is no entirely allergy free dog food. However, there are ways to alter your dog's diet to minimize the risk of food allergy. Dogs are less likely to develop allergies to minimally processed, high quality dog foods that don't use waste products, synthetic coloring, or chemical preservatives.

In addition, foods cooked at lower temperatures are less likely to cause allergic reactions than those cooked during superheated processing. This is because the extremely hot temperatures commonly used in cooking the most popular commercial brands can cause chemical changes in the food, rendering the protein molecules more likely to trigger an allergic reaction in your dog.

Even at lower temperatures, cooked proteins can be altered to the point where they cause allergic reactions where raw proteins do not. If a dog has an allergy to chicken or beef, it may be only to cooked chicken or beef and not the raw form.

The Best Option if Your Dog Has a Food Allergy

While there is no everlasting one-size-fits-all remedy for food allergies, there are several options that can produce good results.

This includes hydrolyzed dog foods, home-cooked diets and homemade raw diets.

While some high quality commercial foods using novel protein sources might work for your dog, this is not nearly as reliable a method as home-cooked, raw or hydrolyzed dog food diets.

Keep in mind that dog foods contain multiple ingredients, and because the original food may have multiple allergens, it's very hard to be sure of eliminating all the offending substances this way.

Of the three most helpful courses of treatment, based on my own research and practical experience, I feel hydrolyzed dog food is the best option for the majority of cases.

Hydrolyzed Dog Foods

Hydrolyzed dog foods are the closest thing to an allergy free dog food science has yet developed. In hydrolyzed dog foods, the amino acid chain of the protein has been shortened to such a degree that it will not stimulate the immune system, while still leaving it long enough to be properly absorbed and, ideally, to still taste much the same. Shortening the strand too much can cause loss of taste and digestive problems; leaving it too long can trigger an immune response. At present, a formula that works for most dogs appears to have been found.

Though many more scientific studies have been done on hydrolyzed formulas for food-allergic human infants (where its use is extremely common) than on dogs, every canine-specific trial thus far has shown hydrolyzed foods to be beneficial. In each case, the majority of food-allergic dogs (in most studies, nearly all) showed no allergic symptoms after being placed on the hydrolyzed dog food diet.

There are three great benefits to hydrolyzed foods as compared to other allergy free dog foods.

The first is that because of the nature of the proteins, dogs who respond positively to this diet are extremely unlikely to develop a food allergy ever again. While the odds may also be in your dog's favor with the other options mentioned above, it is near certain that a dog who initially responds to hydrolyzed allergy free dog food will never develop an allergy to it.

Those dogs who don't do well on hydrolyzed foods do poorly from the beginning, probably due to slightly different digestive systems that would require a still shorter amino acid chain to avoid stimulating an immune response.

The second advantage of a hydrolyzed allergy free dog food is that there is no need to seek out novel proteins, which can be very expensive. Your dog can be allergic to both normal chicken protein and soy protein but eat a hydrolyzed chicken and soy based food nonetheless, because your dog's immune system won't recognize the shortened protein strands as chicken and soy.

And finally, hydrolyzed foods are much easier to prepare and feed than home-cooked or raw diets. It's the same reason you might choose a super premium kibble over a home-prepared diet. With a hydrolyzed allergy free dog food, there's no need spend time locating and preparing ingredients. And you don't have to worry about adding supplements and making sure you have all the necessary nutrients in the correct amounts.

Can Changing Dog Foods Help Atopy?

Atopic allergies, also known as inhalant allergies, produce many of the same symptoms that dogs experience from food allergies. While feeding the same quality of food with different ingredients is unlikely to help with atopic allergies, improving the quality of your dog's food just might.

As I have already alluded to, the combination of toxic ingredients and excessive processing in many popular dog foods can have a negative effect on your dog's immune system. Over the long term, your dog can become hypersensitive to innocuous stimuli such as ordinary household dust or grass pollen. Improving the diet and thereby the overall health of your dog can cause such allergies to diminish in severity or disappear entirely.