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My dogs love green beans. I love green beans. But this isn’t something I would have thought to add to my dogs’ diet until a veterinarian recommended it for Sydney to help her lose weight. Today, green beans are a regular part of my dogs’ raw food diet,, and I explain why in this blog post.
You are watching: 4 Easy Ways to Add Green Beans to Your Dog’s Raw Diet
Green beans are a great source of the following vitamins and minerals; however, before you use green beans to “balance” your homemade dog food, ask yourself how bio-available these nutrients are for our dogs.
So, are these nutrients bioavailable? Some say “no,” our dogs don’t have enough cellulase (the enzyme that helps release antioxidants) or amylase (the enzyme that breaks down carbs and starches) in their system. But this is what I learned:
I don’t feed green beans for the nutrients they bring to the diet.
I source my green beans from the grocery store (or Costco), buying frozen, organic green beans. I grow green beans in my garden and other vegetables during the summer. I puree and freeze vegetable blends at the end of the summer.
I add green beans and other vegetables to my dogs’ raw diet because they are a great source of fiber. Some believe the best source of fiber is animal fur, but I believe this to be a fallacy. Animal fur is a source of keratin fiber, but this isn’t dietary fiber. When looking for natural sources of fiber, I reach for green vegetables and organic pureed sweet potato and pumpkin.
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I’ve learned to prioritize supporting my dogs’ gut health because 80% of the immune system lives in the gut, a healthy gut can absorb more nutrients, and my dogs with a healthy gut have fewer health issues.
Antioxidants may help protect our dogs’ cells from free radicals, which our dogs are exposed to daily. While there isn’t a cure for many cancers, we can do our best to protect our dogs from cancer and other diseases by feeding them a fresh food diet, and, for some dogs, this includes vegetables.
I have two dogs that are overweight (but losing steadily), and green beans have helped their weight loss. I replace a portion of their meal (about 10% with green beans to help them feel full). When I realized I was overfeeding my dogs, I used green beans to decrease their meals.
Sometimes I added fresh green beans, but there were times that I used low-sodium canned green beans.
The easiest way to add green beans to your dogs’ diet is to puree them and add them to the bowl. I like adding green beans and other healthy vegetables like zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, collard greens, cabbage, and asparagus.
To do this regularly, it’s essential to have a perfect blender. The best one costs $400 at Costco; it blends vegetables into juice in seconds. But I don’t have a spare $400 lying around, so I bought the best blender I could afford. I might look for something better on Black Friday.
If you’re adding green beans solely for weight loss or as a treat, you can chop them up into small pieces and mix them into your dog’s dish. Some believe chopping vegetables breaks the cellular wall, making the nutrients bioavailable. Others believe this isn’t enough and the vegetables need to be pureed.
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I love adding fermented foods to my dogs’ diet. Not only does fermenting make the nutrients bioavailable. The process also allows us to add a natural source of probiotics to our dogs’ diet.
Fermenting vegetables is easy, but a time element prevents you from immediately adding vegetables to the food. In the summer, I ferment for ten days; in the winter, it’s 20 days.
Another way to break the cellular wall of green beans is to blanch them, which means you cook them in a pot of boiling water for about two minutes. I like to do this in the wintertime to add green beans to my dogs’ meals and some bone broth. They love it.
If you have a dehydrator, consider making green bean treats for your dog. These are easy to make, and you can get creative by sprinkling a meal topper over the green beans to give them a more tempting flavor for your dog.
I dehydrate my green beans for 8 to 10 hours at 125 F (51.67 C) – this can change based on your dehydrator, how much you’re dehydrating, and your climate.
I hear from people who have dogs that don’t like green beans (or other vegetables), and there are a couple of things you can do if your dog isn’t a fan of green beans:
We’re often warned not to feed table scraps to our dogs; but this doesn’t preclude us from feeding fresh food. Whether you feed raw, cooked, or kibble, fresh foods can help boost your dog’s diet while providing a healthy treat.
Source: https://gardencourte.com
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