The Dog Food Diet… For Humans?

I can absolutely see eating organic or maybe even vegan in an effort to clean up our diets, but would you ever consider going canine?

Paws Natural Pet Emporium store owner Dorothy Hunter has, and she plans on keeping up the act for an entire month.

One day when restocking the shelves of her store in Richland, Wash., instead of stopping to grab a snack from the break room, Hunter decided to sample an especially tasty looking bag of dog treats sitting on the counter. After checking the nutrition information on the package, she was surprised to find that most of the ingredients were healthier than most of the stuff we buy at the grocery store.

“You would be surprised how tasty dog and cat food can be when it’s made right,” Hunter says, and whether or not we’re entirely convinced that kibbles and bits can taste as good as cheese grits, we can definitely understand where she’s coming from.

“I decided to eat this food for a month just to prove how good it tastes, as well as showcase its nutrition,” Hunter says.

With this heightened interest in nutrition in mind, is dog food really a safe way to improve your diet? Maybe, but probably not in significant quantities. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is responsible for setting human food safety guidelines to prevent against illness and contamination - dog food isn’t held to the same standards and contains different proportions of proteins, carbohydrates and fats that could actually be harmful to humans.

While all these new and trendy dieting options sound... interesting, to say the very least, I'll be stick with good old fashioned salad and water. Oh, and the occasional steak, because this is America, after all - where we have the freedom to choose whether we eat human or dog food.