Reviews

REVIEW OF MARKUS MUEHLE COMPLETE DOG FOOD

Autor Penny Taylor

Magazine: the country man's weekly 29.June 2011

As most readers will know, I feed my dogs on a natural, raw meat and bone diet, so it was with slight reluctance I agreed to do a food trial for Markus Muehle complete food, having been approached by their representative in the UK.
However, I found out a few things about the company which led me to believe that their food could be an acceptable alternative to raw feeding. Markus Muehle is made by a family run company in Germany and they’ve been making dog food for over 40 years, with the aim of producing a food which is as near as possible to feeding raw.
In other words, a meat, fish and egg based diet with the addition of vegetables, herbs and fruits. There is a small content of rice and corn, but no wheat or soya. A small amount of turnip and Jerusalem artichoke is also present for fibre content.
I decided to put my 16 year old terrier and my very allergy prone 8 year old lurcher on to this food for a month. I chose the 16 year old terrier as one of my ‘guinea pigs’ as her digestive system isn’t what it used to be, and although she is in very good health for her age I felt that she would be a good indicator of this food’s digestibility and nutrient content.
I have already documented Littlish’s allergy problems in previous articles: she’s one of those dogs whose skin flares up at the mere touch of any chemical additives or cereals in her diet.
What made me prick up my ears, when first reading about the Markus Muehle food is that it is cold pressed, as opposed to extruded. Extruded complete foods, which make up the bulk of the dog food market, rely on heat treating their products to a very high temperature, (over 100 degrees Celsius for up to 30 minutes) in order to sterilise the food and kill bacteria. The dough, made up of various grains and meat products, is forced through dyes to produce the shapes and nuggets with which most people are familiar. The nuggets are then usually coated with various flavourings and fats to enhance taste and appeal.
One of the problems incurred by treating foods at very high temperatures is that the chemical composition of certain fats and other nutrients is altered. There is evidence to suggest that some fats and oils can actually be rendered toxic if heat treated to over 100 degrees Celsius.
Cold pressing is the compression of the ground up ingredients into bite sized pieces after being pasteurised. Markus Muehle food is cold pressed at only 44 degrees Celsius for less than one second. The fact that the food is not treated to very high temperatures means that the amino acids and other nutrients, which are essential to growth, digestion and good health, have not been destroyed or altered in the process.
I also noticed that the vitamin and mineral supplementation written on the bag’s list of ingredients was considerably lower than those from extruded products. This is because there is simply no need to add large amounts of supplements back into the food, because they haven’t been destroyed in the first place!
I know that this all sounds very rocket science and probably over detailed for people who just want to feed their dogs well, but when I undertake to do anything, I approach the subject with my usual highly analytical approach! I couldn’t be satisfied unless I’d learned as much as possible.
The meat and animal product percentages (human grade products… apart from the tripe) are also reassuringly high, leading me to believe that this really is a product with the dog’s welfare at heart, rather than simply a get-rich-quick food corporation with profit as its only goal.
The percentages are as follows: poultry meal 28%, venison tripe meal 8% and sea fish meal 5%. There is also something called Acticell amongst the ingredients. Acticell is a product made from fruits which have an anti-oxidant effect, thus helping to support good health at a cellular level.
Finally, I found that this food didn’t make my ‘guinea pigs’ want to drink vast quantities of water, something I’ve noticed when feeding dry in the past. Yes, they drank slightly more than if they had been eating raw fresh meat and bones, but nowhere near as much as you’d expect from a dry food.
I also put both dogs straight on to the food without (not recommended) a gradual changeover, and neither suffered any problems whatsoever. Both dogs really liked the food, even Littlish who has a natural aversion to processed foods, probably due to her bad reactions to cereals. She suffered no reaction whatsoever to the food, and indeed looked very well on it.
So, if I was looking for a good complete food would I buy this? Most definitely. I’m committed to my raw feeding methods, which suit both my pocket and my dogs perfectly, but if I only had one or two dogs I’d seriously consider using Markus Muehle as a staple diet if I didn’t have easy access to raw. Sadly, you only get what you pay for in this world, and with my pack, feeding a manufactured food of this calibre would not be a viable option, though this ‘natural as possible’ food is priced to compete with the extruded, meat based brands.