Enter a keyword below to search for articles and products.
Diet plays an important role in the endurance potential of canine athletes. The Alaskan sled dog might be considered the ultimate canine athlete, sometimes pulling a sled more than 1,000 miles in subzero temperatures. Providing a well-balanced diet is essential to meet the special needs of dogs in such nutritional-stress situations. Not only should the diet fed to these dogs be high in protein, but it also should be high in fat, which serves as the major energy source for exercising muscles.
A high-fat diet can help muscles burn fat more efficiently. During sustained exercise, fatty-acid oxidation is the primary source of energy for the muscles. Increasing the efficiency of fat metabolism spares the body’s use of carbohydrates, and because most dogs have in excess of 10 to 50 times more energy stored in fat than in muscle glycogen (carbohydrate), this might boost the animal's exercise performance.
IAMS™ studies1 have shown that in trained sled dogs as in ordinary dogs, exercise performance was enhanced by switching from a low-fat to a high-fat diet (from 25 to 65% of calories from fat), as indicated by increased:
When dogs were switched back to a low-fat diet, all of these criteria decreased to their previous values.
These results indicated that by increasing the availability of fat stores and capacity to metabolize fat for energy, a high-fat diet promotes exercise endurance in canine athletes.
1 Reynolds AJ, et al. “The effect of diet on sled dog performance, oxidative capacity, skeletal muscle microstructure, and muscle glycogen metabolism.” Recent Advances in Canine and Feline Nutritional Research: Proceedings of the 1996 IAMS International Nutrition Symposium. Carey DP, Norton SA, Bolser SM, eds. Wilmington, OH. 1996. 181–198.
Active dogs thrive on diets high in fat. To preserve a high-fat dry kibble diet, however, is a challenge. The IAMS research team met that challenge with an effective preservative system used in all our dry dog food products, such as IAMS™ ProActive Health™ Adult MiniChunks.
The preservative system features a special blend of mixed tocopherols. Tocopherols are antioxidants extracted from vegetable oils. There are four major types of tocopherols. Vitamin E, also known as alpha-tocopherol, is commonly used in dog foods, though a specific mixture of the different tocopherols protects against rancidity.
Our preservative system slows the rate of oxidation and allows for an extended shelf life.
Wet foods, such as IAMS™ ProActive Health™ with Chicken and Whole Grain Rice Pate, do not require preservatives because they are preserved by packaging. When the ingredients are mixed and ready for cooking, the mixture is packed into cans, trays or pouches and cooked in a retort. Similar in principle to a pressure cooker, the retort sterilizes and preserves the product.
The cans, trays or pouches are then cooled under conditions that assure product sterility and container integrity.
Thorough shelf-life testing is conducted on all our products. In general, shelf lives for various types of products are:
24 months for wet foods
16 months for dry foods
12 months for biscuits
By using a preservative system in our dry dog food and preservation through packaging in our wet dog food, IAMS makes sure the food your dog eats is well-balanced and nutritionally beneficial.
