There Are Times We Don’t Recommend Raw - Here’s Why

Why Home Cooked Diets Can Be One of the Best Tools in Pet Nutrition

At Pet Grocer, we are huge advocates for fresh food. Our entire store is built around this feeding philosophy.

For many healthy dogs and cats, that might mean a properly formulated raw diet. However, there are times when cooked food can be a useful nutritional tool.

A well formulated home cooked diet gives us control over what goes into the bowl. We can choose the proteins, control the amount and type of fat, manipulate individual minerals, adjust fibre, alter caloric density and remove ingredients that simply do not belong there.

For pets dealing with medical challenges, sometimes that level of control really matters.

The important words here are well formulated.

Chicken, rice and vegetables may be “home cooked” food, but that doesn’t make it a nutritionally complete or appropriate diet! Dogs and cats have requirements for essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that need to be deliberately accounted for.

That is where formulation comes in.

When Does a Cooked Diet Make Sense?

There are many circumstances where we may recommend temporarily or permanently moving a pet from raw food to a properly formulated cooked diet.

After Dental Surgery

After extractions or oral surgery, veterinarians commonly recommend soft food while the mouth heals.

For a pet normally eating raw food, this can also be a sensible time to use cooked foods.

Cooked foods are typically a safer food (when prepared and stored correctly in the fridge) than some raw diets after a dental surgery. Some raw foods have excellent bacterial control (ask us in store at Pet Grocer about those brands!) and some less so. When there are fresh extraction sites and healing tissues in the mouth using a soft, cooked food after dental surgery might be the right choice for your pet.

A soft, properly cooked diet can make eating more comfortable during recovery.

Once the mouth has healed, the pet can transition back to its regular diet if appropriate.

When the Immune System Is Being Suppressed

This is another situation where we frequently recommend cooked food.

Prednisone and prednisolone, at immunosuppressive doses, can suppress the immune system and increase the risk of infection. Long term allergy medication treatment is also associated with increased infection risk.

Other medications used for immune mediated disease, inflammatory conditions and allergies may also alter immune responses. For example, Apoquel's prescribing information specifically states that it modulates the immune system and may increase susceptibility to infection.

This does not mean every pet taking an allergy medication automatically requires a cooked diet. Medication, dose, health status and the individual pet all matter.

When we have a pet whose immune system is intentionally being suppressed, there is a reasonable argument for reducing avoidable exposure to foodborne pathogens. Remember just because a food is shelf stable (like kibble) doesn’t mean that it is low in pathogens!

This can be particularly relevant to animals receiving immunosuppressive treatment for conditions such as immune mediated meningitis, autoimmune disease and some chronic inflammatory disorders.

In these cases, we can often take the principles of a fresh food diet and simply change the preparation method.

Same philosophy. Different tool.

Pancreatic Challenges and High Triglycerides

This is where custom formulation becomes particularly valuable.

For dogs with pancreatitis, controlling dietary fat can be critically important.

But "low fat" is not as simple as choosing lean meat.

Every ingredient contributes something.

The cut of meat matters. The amount of organ meat matters. Added oils matter. Eggs, seeds and other ingredients matter. Even supplements can change the final nutritional analysis.

For pets with hypertriglyceridemia, previous pancreatitis or other pancreatic challenges, we can formulate a recipe around a specific fat target while still supplying adequate essential fatty acids, protein, calories, vitamins and minerals. Understanding what nutrient has an effect on each medical situation matters. With high triglycerides, for example, you will see a much more aggressive use of omega 3s than in most diets.

This is different from searching online for a "low fat dog food recipe." We’ve put dozens of free recipes we found online into our formulation software and over 99% of them are not balanced, or don’t contain the appropriate levels of specific nutrients for that condition. Knowledge really matters when you use diet to help the body heal or manage a medical condition.

A therapeutic formulation starts with the nutritional target and builds the food around it.

Kidney Disease and the Pet Who Doesn't Want to Eat

Kidney disease is another area where we frequently see enormous value in fresh cooked foods.

As chronic kidney disease progresses, poor appetite can become one of the biggest challenges. IRIS notes that reduced caloric intake, weight loss and loss of muscle mass are major concerns and emphasizes the importance of maximizing palatability (how delicious the food smells and tastes) and maintaining adequate food intake.

And this creates a practical problem for the pet owner. The theoretically perfect kidney diet isn't very useful if the animal refuses to eat it.

A fresh cooked diet gives us another option.

We can formulate around the nutritional requirements of that particular patient while using ingredients they actually enjoy eating. The food contains substantial natural moisture, can be gently warmed to help it smell more delicious and can be adjusted as your pet’s condition changes. There is a chemical change that occurs in cooked foods, called the Maillard reaction, which makes cooked food smell delicious! Think of how you automatically know the smell of BBQ before you see it. You are smelling that Maillard reaction - and this matters a lot to pets who aren’t feeling well and are acting hungry but turn their nose up at the food you are offering.

Kidney diet formulation is also far more sophisticated than simply reducing protein. Low protein diets for kidney disease is an extremely outdated nutritional belief. We still hear this daily in store - ‘my vet said I need low protein’. We moved away from ‘low protein’ to our current knowledge of ‘managed phosphorus’ decades ago (more than 30 years out of date now). There was early work of moving away from the low protein belief as early as 1979 - 47 years ago!

Phosphorus is particularly important. Depending on the individual pet, we may also need to consider protein quantity and quality, sodium, potassium, calcium, fatty acids, caloric density and other nutrients. IRIS specifically emphasizes phosphorus control and individualized dietary management for chronic kidney disease.

This is exactly why therapeutic diets should be formulated, not improvised.

A note about caloric density. Typically we mean that we want to have a high amount of calories per ounce of food. This is especially important for cats and smaller dogs. Imagine if your cat or small dog had to eat 5 large meals a day just to meet their calorie needs! Many diets require this because they don’t formulate to make it calorie dense. Yes, the recipe is technically a good pancreatic or kidney diet, but it puts stress on a body that already isn’t feel well, when they have to eat and digest huge amounts of food.  Aiming to get a high number of calories in a smaller volume of food makes sense - it is easier for them to digest which makes them more eager to eat. This is one of the hardest things to formulate to and a job we take seriously.

There Are Many Other Reasons to Cook

At Pet Grocer, we develop cooked recipes for dogs and cats with nutritional requirements associated with conditions including:

• kidney disease
• liver disease
• inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and chronic enteropathies (such as colitis)
• food allergies and intolerances
• pancreatic challenges
• hypertriglyceridemia (high triglycerides)
• urinary crystals
• bladder stones
• other urinary tract challenges
• immune mediated conditions
• medications that affect immune function
• ingredient restrictions
• unusual calorie requirements
• multiple concurrent medical conditions

For a medical case, we routinely work alongside the pet's veterinarian. Bloodwork, urinalysis, imaging, medical history, medications and the veterinarian's specific nutritional targets can all help us determine what the recipe needs to accomplish.

Nutrition should never exist in a vacuum.

Cooked Food Isn't Just for Sick Pets

There is another group we formulate cooked food for:

Perfectly healthy dogs and cats. Some pets simply prefer cooked food. Some households aren't comfortable handling raw meat. Some people want to rotate between raw and cooked foods.

Some animals thrive with different proteins and preparation methods incorporated into their rotation. My own dog loves cooked foods, even though I primarily feed her raw foods, she has a strong preference for cooked food.

Some owners simply like knowing exactly what is in the bowl.

A properly formulated fresh cooked diet can be an excellent everyday diet too.

But Is It "Balanced"?

This is where things become more complicated.

The word balanced gets thrown around constantly in pet food. Not everyone means the same thing when they say ‘complete’ or ‘balanced’. This is a case of buyer beware!

We have some accepted standards that are what we (and your vet) consider to be truly ‘balanced’. In North America, the nutritional reference people most commonly hear about is AAFCO, the Association of American Feed Control Officials. AAFCO establishes nutrient profiles widely used for commercial pet foods in the United States and also commonly referenced by Canadian manufacturers and formulators.

In Europe, the primary industry nutritional guidelines are produced by FEDIAF, the European Pet Food Industry Federation.

Both establish recommended nutrient levels for dogs and cats. They are not identical.

Why We Pay Attention to FEDIAF

FEDIAF's nutritional guidelines are regularly reviewed and its current publicly available guidelines are the 2025 edition. FEDIAF describes them as a comprehensive review of data and existing science, peer reviewed by independent veterinary nutritionists.

Its tables include minimum nutrient recommendations along with a number of nutritional maximums and European legal limits.

AAFCO does not update annually. AAFCO does not establish a maximum for every nutrient. That distinction can matter enormously.

Copper Is a Perfect Example

Copper is essential. Dogs and cats require it.

That doesn't mean that more copper is better!

AAFCO currently establishes minimum copper requirements for complete dog foods but does not establish a general maximum copper concentration for those diets. That isn't an assumption. AAFCO has publicly examined this exact issue.

During its review of copper in dog food, AAFCO noted that the previous maximum had been removed because there was insufficient evidence at the time to establish a scientifically supported safe upper limit. Its expert panel ultimately recommended that AAFCO continue without a general maximum unless adequate evidence becomes available.

Europe takes a different approach.

The European legal maximum incorporated into FEDIAF's guidelines is 25 mg of copper per kg of food on a dry matter basis for dog food. AAFCO's own expert panel specifically discussed this European limit during its copper review.

That means it is possible for a food to satisfy AAFCO's nutrient profile while containing considerably more copper than would be permitted under the European framework.

There is debate about whether or not high levels of copper in food is safe or unsafe in pets. We know that some breeds are prone to copper storage disease and this becomes a more important conversation if it is YOUR pet with this challenge, or any liver challenge. Pet Grocer applies the ‘do no harm’ rule first and foremost in all our recommendations. This includes when we formulate foods. We make every effort to ensure we don’t ask a pet’s body to process more copper than it needs to, and we pay attention to our copper levels and other nutrients. This is not the case with other formulators, or even with many of the ‘balanced’ commercial diets available today (including dry diets).

"Meets AAFCO standards" should not be the end of the conversation.

Standards are a starting point.

Someone still has to understand the nutrients, the ingredients supplying them, how those nutrients interact, the individual pet eating the food and what current science tells us.

Software can tell you that a number falls inside a range. It can’t replace the person interpreting what those numbers mean.

Formulation Still Requires a Knowledgeable Human

This is one of the most important parts of what we do at Pet Grocer.

We don't believe nutrition should be reduced to clicking ingredients into a computer program until every box turns green.

A formulation needs to make sense as an actual food.

We look at the complete nutrient profile, the ingredients providing those nutrients, caloric density, nutrient ratios, fat, protein, minerals, vitamins, essential fatty acids and the needs of the individual dog or cat.

For therapeutic diets, that becomes even more important.

The nutritional priorities for a dog with pancreatitis may be completely different from those of a cat with kidney disease.

A dog with bladder stones may require a very different mineral strategy from a dog with liver disease.

A pet with two or three conditions at the same time makes the formulation considerably more important to carefully formulate.

That is why Pet Grocer works with pet owners, veterinarians and pet food manufacturers to develop recipes for individual pets, as well as commercial products.

What if You Don't Want to Cook It Yourself?

This is one of the biggest barriers to feeding a home prepared diet! People love the concept. Then real life happens.

Buying ingredients, weighing everything, chopping, blending, breaking down the capsules or vitamins, cooking it, portioning it, packaging it and doing it all again next week can become a lot of work.

That is why we were particularly excited when we met the owner of Zoomy's Pet Food in Ottawa.

Zoomy’s Pet Food

Zoomy's prepares both raw and cooked fresh foods and also offers custom diets for pets with allergies, special preferences and medical requirements. The foods are made using 100% human grade ingredients in its Ottawa kitchen.

Pet Grocer works with Zoomy's regularly on custom recipe cases.

A client may have a dog or cat with a medical or nutritional challenge. We develop the formulation for that pet, and Zoomy's can take over the cooking and preparation.

For those clients, it creates a rather nice combination:

Pet Grocer handles the formulation.
Zoomy's handles the kitchen.
The pet gets the food designed for them.

Zoomy's then prepares and ships those custom diets to its clients, taking much of the time and work out of feeding a specialized fresh diet. They are currently able to ship these custom diets to most of Ontario, Canada.

We have also formulated Zoomy's recipes that are available in store at Pet Grocer in Alliston.

Cats really, really like the cooked ones.

For anyone who has spent twenty minutes opening different cans while their cat stares at them in disgust, that may be the most compelling nutritional argument in this article.

Sometimes the Best Diet Is the One We Can Design Around the Pet

There is no single feeding method that is right for every dog and every cat.

Raw can be an excellent choice.

Cooked can be an excellent choice.

Sometimes one is clearly more appropriate than the other.

The advantage of fresh food is that we aren't forced to choose a diet simply because it happens to exist on a store shelf.

We can ask a better question: What does this particular pet need?

Then we can build the food around the answer. Bio-individualized.

That may mean a simple balanced rotational recipe for a healthy adult dog.

It may mean a carefully controlled phosphorus diet for a cat with kidney disease.

It may mean a low fat recipe for a dog that has pancreatitis.

It may mean removing multiple allergens while still meeting every essential nutrient requirement.

Or it may mean temporarily cooking food for a raw fed pet while their immune system is compromised or their mouth is healing.

That is what custom formulation allows us to do.

At Pet Grocer, we formulate fresh food diets for healthy dogs and cats, pets with complex nutritional needs, veterinarians looking for another dietary option for a patient, and manufacturers developing complete products.

Because sometimes the right food isn't sitting on a shelf waiting for you.

Sometimes it needs to be created.

For healthy pets interested in pre-made cooked diets we offer some in store and can ship to you in Ontario. Raised Right, Zoomy’s, Pet Grocer’s own Beef Meatloaf (chicken coming soon), and other cooked diet versions. If you are willing to cook at home, there is a pre-mix with 15 different recipes available from our friends at Wellychef. Contact us for guidance on selecting the right one for your pets.