 Barked: Sun Sep 27, '09 10:59pm PST |
 | |  | | There has been many questions about supplements and balancing lately. I thought I’d write a short little ditty about how to make sure your diet is balanced by using Nutrition Data. If anyone wants to write a “So you are” thread in this forum, feel free to use my “illustrations” or this whole dealy-whopper if you want.
Step 1. Download the Personal Nutrient Spreadsheet found here. Then go to the Raw Forum and hug one of the raw feeders that made it. The thread
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Step 2. Open the file. In box B2 type in your dog’s name.
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Step 3. In box B3 type in your dog’s ideal weight in pounds. Then click on to another square. When you do that you see some numbers pop up (in the red square). This pertains to raw feeders mostly so you do not need to pay much attention to it.
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Step 4. Scroll down a little bit. In box D31 enter your dog’s “energy value” found in the box labeled Box 1. You’ll probably have to scroll over to see the numbers there. Click off onto another box. When you do that you’ll get your dog’s nutrient requirements.
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Step 5. Take a gander at your dog’s nutrient requirements. The Intake column is the one you need to pay attention to. Go to File: Save As, and save the file. If you have multiple dogs do the above steps for each dog.
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The nutrient requirements listed in this example are for one day only. Most people do not strive for balance each and every day. Balancing the diet over 1 to 2 weeks is just fine. To find your dog’s nutrient needs for one week, multiply your dog’s daily requirement by 7 and use that number. For two weeks’ worth of nutrient needs multiple by 14. And so on.
Step 6. Now head over to NutritionData.com. Register an account. Fill out the information. If you have multiple dogs it will be easier to make an account for each of them.
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Step 7. Once you have a valid account, hover your mouse over My ND and click on My Preferences.
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Step 8. Scroll down to the Individualized Daily Value section. Plug in the information from the spreadsheet into the appropriate boxes. Skip Vitamin A for right now. Pyridoxine is B6. Use the Folate number given in the spreadsheet; no need to convert. Multiply Calcium, Phosphorus, Potassium, and Vitamin E values by 1000 then put that number into Nutrition Data. Multiply the Vitamin D value by 40 then put that number into Nutrition Data.
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Step 9: Vitamin A is tricky. Vitamin A from animal sources (liver) and Vitamin A from plant sources (carrots) are two totally different creatures. Let’s just say Vitamin A in animals is whole A, and plants have A precursors. It would be extraordinarily hard to die from hypervitaminosis A by eating carrots but just one ounce of certain types of liver can kill a grown man. So you need to decide where your dog is getting it’s vitamin A from. If you add liver or kidney to your dog’s diet, she is getting most of her A from animal sources even if you add some carrots or orange bell peppers in her food. Lots of supplements have liver in them. So the vitamin A in that would be from animal sources.
If your Vitamin A comes from meat – multiply the number on the spreadsheet by 3.33 and use that number on Nutrition Data.
If you rely solely on vegetables for A – multiply by 10.
In this example I’m going to use meat sources of A. Organs provide tons of nutrients. You should use them in your home cooked diets.
Click Save Preferences.
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Okay folks, the hard part is over. Let’s add a supplement! But first take some time to look around the site and familiarize yourself with the features.
Step 10. Find the nutrient information for the supplement you use. Hover your mouse over Tool and click on Custom Entry Tool.
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Step 11. Click over to the Advanced Entry tab.
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Step 12. Be sure to watch for unit differences (IU, RE, mg, g, mcg, ug, etc). I’m going to use the Nupro Joint Support formula that Hudson posted the other day. So Name it. Put down the serving size. Then begin filling in the nutrient values. When you’re done click Add to My Foods.
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Recipe time. There a tons of ways to do this, but I’m going to use the recipe feature.
Step 13. Go to My NB. Click on My Recipes. Then click on Create Recipe. Since you took some time to familiarize yourself with the website this will be a breeze.
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Step 14. Enter Recipe Name. Pick how many serving this batch of food will give you (I’m just doing one day so I’m picking one serving). Enter your Prep instructions with as much or as little detail as you want.
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Step 15. Use the Add Ingredient thingy at the bottom to start adding foods to your recipe. Type in the food you’re looking for and click search. Find the one that most closely resembles what you’re using. When you find it, click on the little orange addition symbol.
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Step 16. Select the amount you’re using in your recipe (In this one I’m using 2.5oz of chicken breast meat and skin stewed).
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Step 17. Repeat steps 15 and 16 until you have finished adding all foods into your recipe. To add the supplement search for what you named it and pick however many servings you’re using.
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Step 18. When you’re done click Save and Analyze to take a look at your recipe’s nutrient profile.
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Step 19. Make a recipe for all the recipes you cook for your dog.
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Step 20. You are almost done. Let’s use the Tracking Tool to combine these recipes. I made three recipes and for this “day” my dog is going to get 1/3 of each.
Go to My ND and click on My Tracking. Click Add to Tracking and a window pops up. Click the My Recipes circle and search for the recipes you made. Check the box for all of the ones you want to “track.” Pick how many servings/amount of servings for each recipe (in this case I’m doing 1/3 of each). Then click save and close.
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Step 21. After you click save and close it will take you to the tracking page. Here you can add extra stuff that isn’t in any of your recipes. You can do a lot of stuff with the Tracking feature but today we aren’t doing anything with it. Play around with it. You can make “recipes” using it too. See this thread for the how to.
Click Save and Analyze. It gives you the nutrient breakdown of the combined recipes. The percentage of Daily Value (%DV) comes from the numbers you entered in step 8 and 9. Compare the amounts of nutrients your dog is getting to their needs from the spreadsheet (or go to My Preferences as you can view them there too).
The Tracking tool is handy in lots of ways. Play with it. Figure out the website.
PicEdited by author Sat Mar 9, '13 4:52pm PST
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n-3 or whatever means nothing to me! [Docosapentaenoic acid].
