If you've observed your local super market or grocery, healthy pet foods take up so much of shelf space. Sometimes you really wonder whether you're in a pet store or a grocery store. I recall a time when we used to feed our pets with table and kitchen scraps. Now most pet owners just open ans of healthy pet food and plop it into the doggies bowl.

The pet food business, which, correct me if I'm wrong didn't exist many years ago has become a multi-billion dollar business. With money like this, pet food companies do their darn best to please their customers. By customers, I mean you (the one with the money) not your canine or feline pet.

I once read an article about a book writer who visited a pet food testing lab. She said that the executives of that company (Alpo, I think) go to great lengths to please the one who never eats the food. The check the "healthy" pet food for the plop factor (how easily the food slips out of the can), the color (as if dogs can see color), the smell, texture, etc...

In short, pet food companies do their darn best to mimic human food because they know for a fact that we believe that our pets like what we like.

The question is... do our pets really like what we like? I think not. They're not humans in the first place. A dogs favorite food would surely disgust its owners. Try reading the lable of a can of healthy dog food... (got one now? good)... it says "water and meat by-products". Sure as this hub is gonna get a .01 adsense click after two months... By-product doesn't mean a t-bone steak. My god... I don't think your pet parrot would care about your lamb steak. Would it? By-products are actually animal parts like lungs, intestines, gullets and the like. A healthy pet food has all these "organic pet health food" delicacies.

These by-products are the healthy pet food your dog or cat loves. Have you watched a lion in National Geographic chase down their dinner? You'll notice that they go for the stomach organs. Udders, intestines, lungs... these are the parts our pets love even though it disgusts us. So it happens that even though our pets love these raw organic health food... pet food companies also have to please the pet owners.

To the point that they worry more about us humans liking the food we never eat. We see in supermarket shelves health pet food labeled "Premium" or "Deluxe" or "Extra Special". These only means that "Premium" costs more.

Does that mean it's any better? Up to the time of this writing there is yet no scientific evidence to my knowledge that there are differences that matter. There's actually no reason to pay more unless you'll feel good about paying more. If it says "complete dog food", it will meet all the same requirements that any of the "Premium" expensive healthy pet food brands will meet. Really there's no need to pay more.

Now what do I feed our dogs? I've got a DoberDog and a Mestizo Labrador.

Practical Dog receipe your dog will kill you for:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milled corn
• 1 cup rice
• half teaspoon of salt
• 3 whole fish (the cheapest you can find)
• 5 spoons of milk
• a cup of water

Boil corn and rice until it looks like slurry. Boil the fish too. Then mix it with all the other ingredients. Add any table scraps available. Garnish with soy sauce. Serve warm.

Optional: Taste test it to see if you pet mollusk likes it.