Healthy vs Natural

Thee is a growing trend in the US to look for what we call 'natural', we attempt to mimic what we were meant to eat in nature how we were supposed to move in nature, etc.. and then we extrapolate that to our pets.  We ask ourselves, what does natural dog care look like? What does natural veterinary care look like?

I absolutely understand this. I write this sitting outside in nature listening to my chickens who will hopefully begin delivering me absolutely natural eggs. Many of the advances that we have made towards feeding the many have caused an unnatural balance to evolve in our diets, and have affected the quality of the food we eat. I am all for natural.

The question that we must of course balance is, what is natural vs what is healthy. My chickens are eating free range foods that are healthy and natural, and should create healthy eggs for me to eat. Leaving them outside with the coyotes to eat is also natural, but it benefits neither them nor me, so at night, they are unnaturally locked up. Domesticating them in the first place is distinctly unnatural, however, foraging for puny little quail eggs will not keep me fed. I must balance the natural with the unnatural to keep me and my animals safe and healthy.

We all want what is healthiest for ourselves and for our pets. However, even knowing what is 'natural' is fraught with debate. Are grains natural for dogs? They've been eating our scraps for tens of thousands of years, how long does it take before what we have chosen to feed them becomes "natural"?  Are grains natural for humans even, we've only been cultivating grain for about 10,000 years.

Before we humans began to cultivate grain we were hunter gatherers, we lived 'naturally' off the land, and had enough to just get by, we were smaller, suffered from malnutrition, and lost babies by the score to disease and malnutrition. in bad years we died naturally of starvation and parasite infestation. With the advent of grain we starved less often, but began to live 'unnaturally'. With the advent of grain we were able to begin cultivating livestock, including my chickens, which in turn fed us, providing superior unnatural nutrition and protein.

Feeding our dogs and cats bagged food is inherently unnatural. Feeding our dogs and cats our overly fat, corn fed, antibiotic riddled livestock can hardly be deemed more natural. My dogs eat horse manure and grasshoppers, they eat grass and if I let them, my chickens, that is natural, but will grasshoppers and manure be enough? What is a dog's optimal nutrition? 

What to know about 'natural' is that it is neither a panacea nor a curse. It is something that like everything else in our lives must be weighed carefully. Should we as a rule pursue eating natural foods? By all means, should those natural foods include raw meats and unpasteurized dairy? Not if health is our goal. If pursuing 'natural' for the sake of health is the goal, then choosing unpasteurized milk and eating raw meat will lead to a whole slew of natural diseases and possibly a very natural premature death,

With our pets we must balance these same issues. Is whole raw meat natural for an animal that has been fed left overs and scraps for 30,000 years? Who knows? Will feeding in this manner convey better health? Possibly, there is no way of really knowing. We obsess over natural food when the things that truly affect our health and the health have very little to do with the essential fatty acids in the eggs I eat.

People in third world countries, and their pets and livestock, live naturally. They drink water from rivers, and eat what comes to hand. They have no worries about chemicals in their environment, nor whether or not their beef was grass fed. They are living naturally, and dying young and often of diseases long since gone here. They may have the benefit of a natural diet, but they are dying because they lack our very unnatural Western Medicine. The much maligned curse of people who worship natural above all things is the one glaring difference between dying in infancy and living long enough to worry about pasture raised eggs.

Western Medicine is not natural. Western Medicine has eschewed herbal remedies and witch doctors for chemicals and drugs. It ignores stories and leans heavily on facts. Western Medicine doesn't care at all about natural.

We must remember that naturally wolves live to be about 7 and we live to be about 35-40. Dying young and dying often are natural. Western medicine has decided that in the face of death and disease natural has no place.

It is trendy in certain circles to point to our modern unnatural world and say, "Look at all the cancer, the dementia, the autoimmune diseases! Western Medicine is unnatural and causes these things." To that I must admit that I absolutely agree!

Western Medicine does cause cancer. It causes cancer for the same reason it also causes dementia, Alzheimer's, and other illnesses that come with age. Vaccines and modern medicine have allowed us and our pets to live long enough to encounter diseases that affect the old. Cancer being the number one cause of death in pets is just as unnatural as many of our pets seeing their teen years. It is unnatural that modern medicine has conquered so many of the diseases that used to make old age a rarified thing.

I'll take unnatural in that case. Natural has its place, but when it is pursued blindly in the face of logic it becomes ludicrous. I will try to buy grass fed beef, and I will allow my dogs to supplement their diet with whatever vile thing they can dig up, but once a year we will all trek to our various doctors and veterinarians, and we will pursue a long and unnatural old age.