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Here is an ingredient I have wanted to address for some time now.

Our society eats so much of it it really does seem like candy, doesn’t it?

If you have followed my blogs you know that I’m not all that crazy about corn; I believe far, far too much corn, rice, wheat and soy has been used in commercial bird foods for far too long. And why? Mostly because all of these ingredients are cheap. So cheap that manufacturers of pet foods use these ingredients in lump volumes in their commercial pet foods to bulk up their products; they use them as cheap fillers so they make more profit on their product. The quality ingredients come way down on the list of ingredients because ingredients, by law, must be listed in the order of volume they are contained in the food. So naturally it stands that most pet food manufacturers are going to use the most economical ingredients in the largest volume in their pet foods! Right? Right.

Then synthetic nutrients will be added after the food is processed by spraying on these nutrients to the finished kibble. Scientists still don’t know if synthetic nutrients are absorbed as reliably as naturally-occurring nutrients, but they are beginning to think they are not. In fact in the course of my research for the avian nutrition book I am writing I am finding more and more research indicating that synthetic nutrients are usually overly absorbed, and/or they cause other nutrients to be overly absorbed as well. This disturbs me because if too much of a fat-soluble vitamin is absorbed it can wreak some pretty devastating damage like cardiovascular damage, liver damage, kidney damage and the list goes on from there.

So what does all of this babble have to do with corn?

Many of you that read my blogs know that I emphasize berries and fruit in the diets of our exotic birds; foods they would be most likely to consume in their natural habitats. I try to remain in the realistic realm of fruits that would most likely be found in their native habitats, the berries and tropical fruits. But once in awhile I realize we all stray away from the optimum diet and we begin to feed “other” foods…but we need to try to stay within the fruit section of the grocery store because fruits contain far less of the damaging cellulose than true vegetables do.

Most of the cellulose, that tough, fibrous matter that doesn’t digest and quite possibly scrapes and scars the delicate digestive tract of our exotic birds, is on the outside of berries and fruit where they can easily separate it with their skillful beaks and simply discard it to the ground. This is not so with true vegetables; the cellulose is finely woven into the vegetable where the bulk of nutrition is found. So in consuming fruit our exotic birds eat the pectin fiber, still receiving the cleansing action of gentle fiber with all of the nutrients packed inside, with no scrubbing and scraping of their delicate digestive tract.

But where do we draw the line between true fruits and true vegetables? What can we feed to offer a large variety of food to ensure optimum nutrition without insulting their digestive tract with cellulose they cannot separate out from the main nutritional source?

As it turns out there are a lot of fruits to choose from…produce we normally think of as veggies are actually botanically classified as fruit.

I will not list the obvious berries and fruit because we all know what they are. But below is a list of produce you can feed and feel secure in knowing that you are actually feeding fruit.

• ·         Squash

• ·         Cucumber

• ·         Eggplant

• ·         Tomatoes

• ·         Peas

• ·         Corn

• ·         Legumes

• ·         Pumpkin

• ·         Bell Peppers

• ·         Rice

Now I want to be VERY specific about how to feed some of these items.  The best squash to feed is the Summer Squash and Zucchini. Winter and Butternut Squash is too high in starch. Cucumber should be peeled. Eggplant is a “nightshade” plant and contains solanine, a glycoalkaloid that causes inflammation. This is also true with tomatoes. But if tomatoes are fed in moderation and dried without sulfites they are a good source of a substance that mimics vitamin D3. Legumes should always be fed sprouted, not dry or cooked because of the high amount of “dead” starch they contain when cooked.  I never, NEVER feed rice; the FDA is currently performing an in depth investigation into the amount of arsenic in rice. As it turns out a high volume of “arsenate”, a very dangerous pesticide has been used on our crops for years and years.  They have found that arsenic does not leach out of the ground and because rice grows in paddy fields and rice is highly absorbent, our rice is laden with arsenic. Yes, even brown rice, whole grain rice and organic rice. Besides rice is high in Omega 6’s; more on this a little later. And we finally get to corn. Most corn nowadays is genetically modified (GMO). If, and only IF you can find organic corn then I say it is fine to feed in extreme moderation and RAW. Your bird will enjoy the inside of the kernels where the pectin is located and most likely discard the skin. But keep in mind that corn is very high in Omega 6’s which add to inflammation…which brings me to one of the reasons we should not be buying commercial bird food that is high in corn. Between the high possibility that GMO corn is used and the high Omega 6’s contained in corn we are causing inflammation in our birds.

What all of this comes down to is knowing the difference between our fruits and real fruits and vegetables. It is absolutely necessary for us to know what we are feeding to our birds, why we are feeding it, and what that food does to their digestive tracts and their overall health.

I wanted to post this blog in time for our birds to enjoy some of the Summer “fruits”! I hope you and your bird enjoys the expanded list of fruits this Summer…just don’t go too crazy with these added fruits…they still need the bulk of their diet to contain dark berries and tropical fruits for all of the anti-oxidants, vitamins and minerals they contain. More and more research is coming out chanting the benefits of diets high in dark berries and fruit because of the high amount of anthocyanins. Be on the lookout for that word because you will begin seeing it mentioned more and more as time goes on!

LOL, and you thought I was going to say something just awful about corn, didn’t you?

Ref:

http://mudfooted.com/fruit-vegetables-difference-explained/

http://www.biologyreference.com/Fo-Gr/Fruits.html

http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Name-That-Fruit—-Botanically-Speaking-250045.html

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