7. "Natural" foods are more nutritious than processed foods.
 
FALSE.  If a processed food has all the necessary nutrients needed by
a ferret, it is just as nutritious as ANY natural food, period.  The
problem is defining "all the necessary nutrients," but that is a
different question altogether.  The body ignores issues of politics,
palatability, or esthetics; the cells in a ferret cannot make a
distinction between a glucose molecule cleaved from a chunk of mouse fat,
cut from a carbohydrate chain in corn starch, synthesized from rabbit
muscle protein, or manufactured by a mad scientist in the presence of
thousands of noxious chemicals.  Why?  Because glucose is glucose is
glucose is glucose.
 
As far as nutrition goes, it doesn't matter a single iota HOW the
molecule was made, as long as it is made to specifications.  Glucose is
defined by very specific molecular formula=97NOT by method or place of
origin.  All nutrients follow the same basic rules; the body does not
care if an amino acid originated in a soybean or in the muscle of a
domesticated cow.  The body doesn't care if its calcium requirements are
met by eating crushed oyster shell, drinking milk, or chewing the end off
a chicken bone.  It doesn't care because all it can see is the molecule
or element, and THAT is the bottom line.  Water is H2O, NOT HO, H2O2, or
H3O, or anything else.  Water is defined as H2O, not because it
originated in a passing comet, was recycled from urine, or scooped from a
mountain stream.  That is just how the universe works.
 
The important question regarding processed versus natural foods is
NOT the origin or degree of processing of nutrients, but DEFINING proper
nutrients.  At this point in time, the nutrient requirements for ferrets
are only understood in a basic sense.  We know they need a high protein,
high fat diet.  We know ferrets have no nutritional requirement for
carbohydrate.  We have a basic understanding of what diets cause harm,
but we have no real understanding of how to construct an optimal diet for
ferrets.  Don't misunderstand; what we do know is a pretty good framework
of nutritional needs, but as the saying goes, we need some meat on dem
bones.
 
The question of "natural v. processed" is NOT a question of natural
foods being better or worse, but rather, it is a question of nutritional
completeness.  Ferrets are domesticated polecats, and polecats are STRICT
primary, obligate carnivores that evolved eating a diet almost entirely
composed of animal flesh.  Currently, we do not have a complete
understanding of what that means in terms of ferret nutrition.  Feeding
a natural diet not only insures ferrets would be eating a nutritionally
complete food, but it would guard against overfeeding any one nutrient
(like carbohydrates).  BUT, the truth is, if a processed diet contained
the same nutrients in the same proportions as a natural diet, it would be
just as good for the ferret.
 
Bob C
[Posted in FML issue 3941]