Q: My vet said your gravy is ok but told me to take out the honey and
   nutri-cal because she said sugar is bad for the ferret .is that ok?
   The bone scares me do I really need to leave it in?
 
Q: Isn t your gravy about the same as feeding chicken baby food?
 
Q: I ve been reading the FML for years and I ve noticed you rarely
   comment on t he FML about your gravy.  I would think you would be the
   expert since you made it and I was told you even have a trademark on
   it.  Do you even make it?
 
A: Oh, I make it all the time and if I'm lucky I'll have someone with me
when I do.  I m talking about blending, of course what did you think?
 
Yes, I invented Bob s Chicken Gravy, and yes, years ago I copyrighted the
terms Bob's Chicken Gravy, BCG, and Bob's Gravy only to prevent them from
entering the public domain and being used by the unscrupulous.  However,
that doesn't mean other people can't contribute valuable insights into
the manufacturing of the food.  In fact, I LOVE it when other people
speak up and tell how and why they make it like they do.  I know I learn
stuff when I read the comments and as long as a remark doesn t suggest a
change that makes a profound difference, or suggest an ingredient
amendment, I generally refrain from response.  Besides, there are a lot
of people that own burned-out blenders because of me, so I try not to
antagonize them. ;-)
 
The recipe may look simple but there was a lot of effort that went into
the creation of Bob's Chicken Gravy.
 
My goal was twofold:
1) to make a food that was compositionally as close to a prey animal as
possible, 2) using items ANY ferret owner would have at hand that most
ferrets would actually eat.
 
I admit the food could be a bit better if not constrained by the second
goal, but you try building a rodent out of a chicken with what you can
find in the kitchen.  Bob's Chicken Gravy has been reviewed by at least a
dozen nutritionists that *I* know about, including the two that reviewed
it at my request.  It is a good food, but ONLY if it is made with all the
listed ingredients, which is why I come down so hard on any suggestion of
ingredient change.  Cooking changes can degrade some of the protein and
vitamins, but it is minor enough for me to disregard, especially if the
Nutri-Cal is added after the cooking.  However, removing or adding stuff
to the recipe can cause profound, even dangerous changes that I cannot
and will not ignore.
 
Please, don't remove the honey or the Nutri-Cal; there are good reasons
they were added.  Yes, your vet might be a twit and suggest the sugars
are bad for your ferret, but they are wrong and should review their
nutritional biochemistry.  Sugar fed in amounts consistent with a
ferret's evolutionary history is not bad.  For ferrets, this would be a
small amount of carbohydrates fed infrequently, with most of those being
simple sugars such as fructose and glucose.  What is bad for ferrets is
a long-term diet high in sugars, such as a nutritional regime based on
kibble containing high percentages of carbohydrates.  Different sugars
and starches metabolize at different rates of time depending on metabolic
complexity and location of metabolism; some diffuse into the circulation
quite slowly, and some hit the bloodstream very rapidly.  For example, if
a ferret ate pure glucose, they would have a rapid, sudden spike of blood
sugar, followed by a sudden increase in insulin and then a rapid return
to normal; a high peak, short base type of spike.  If the ferret ate
honey, the spike would have a wider base because the fructose in the
honey would take longer to be converted to glucose, but overall the blood
sugar spike would be of fairly rapid onset until it hit a peak, then a
rapid decline.  Starches behave differently because they are cut into
complex sugars before they are converted into simple sugars, so it takes
more time to make glucose.  Depending on the specific starch and how long
it takes to be metabolized into glucose, the spike is usually shorter and
the base is much wider.  So, at one end of the scale, glucose causes a
needle-like spike, while complex carbohydrates cause a spike that looks
more like a wide, round-topped mountain.
 
It is the wide, round topped mountain-like blood sugar peaks that are the
problem for ferrets, because they have a pancreas that evolved eating a
diet of high proteins, moderate fats, and low carbohydrates.  It does ok
with sudden blood sugar spikes having short time intervals; what it is
NOT designed to do is pump out a lot of insulin for a long period of
time.  This taxes the beta cells in the pancreas--the ones that make
insulin--so they try to adapt to the constant exposure to kibble-based
carbohydrates by becoming overactive (hypertrophied).  If the situation
continues, the beta cells may burn out (a human physiological response),
or start growing into a tumor (a ferret physiological response).  When
the beta cells burn out, they stop producing insulin and the victim
becomes a diabetic (chronic high blood sugar).  When the beta cells
become neoplasic (become tumors), they produce too much insulin and
the victim develops insulinoma (chronic low blood sugar).  The exact
mechanisms for human and ferret responses to long-term exposure to high
carbohydrate levels is poorly understood, and in some cases the specific
links are yet to be proved.  However, there is little doubt the response
to a high carbohydrate load in both humans and ferrets results in
pancreatic disease.  Now, you can be some sort of crack-pot Chicken
Little screaming The hypotheses are falling each time someone refutes
American dietary regimes, or you can simply graph the feeding of diets
having a high carbohydrate load by country and compare that to the
reported incidences of insulinoma by country.  The graphs are nearly
identical, a correlation that cannot be ignored or denied.
 
The most obvious reason Nutri-Cal is added is because it replaces
degraded vitamins and adds other trace nutrients, but that reason is not
the only one.  The amount of carbohydrate in BCG honey, Nutri-Cal, and
added kibble--is roughly between 10 and 5%, depending on the size of the
chicken and the amount of fat (always try to use the largest chicken you
can find).  That is far less than what is found in most kibble.  I'll be
honest; it always amazes me to hear a vet suggest a couple of tablespoons
of honey in more than a gallon of food is somehow worse than a ferret
eating a food that is composed of between 20-40% of the stuff.  There
are some people that suggest many of the carbohydrates just pass through
the ferret, but that would be generally incorrect for most kibbles.  The
carbohydrates in kibble are finely ground and heated during extrusion;
they are, in fact, very digestible and that is the intention because they
are designed to supply the energy needs, as well as some of the protein
requirements, of the ferret.  When a carbohydrate is digested it is
ultimately converted to glucose, which is the aforementioned dreaded
sugar.  So the next time your vet, or anyone for that matter, suggests
the sugars in the honey or Nutri-Cal are somehow worse than the sugars
from 30% carbohydrate kibble, gently and lovingly remind them that 40%,
30%, and even 20% carbohydrate kibbles have a significantly larger amount
of sugar than Bob's Chicken Gravy, even with the honey.
 
Although all ferrets can eat the food, people tend to use it to feed weak
or sick ferrets.  The main reason for the honey (and Nutri-Cal) is to
give the ferret free energy (and non-degraded vitamins) so they don't use
precious body reserves to kick-start the making of glucose from protein.
Both protein and carbohydrates contain about the same amount of calories,
but almost a third of the calories harvested from protein when making
glucose are used up during the metabolic process, so the ferret get less
net energy from the same volume of food.  The sugars in the honey and
Nutri-Cal help make up the difference.  I know you think you are
protecting your ferret when you remove the honey and Nutri-Cal, but
unless your ferret has diabetes, you are not helping much, if at all.
[Posted in FML issue 4600]