A reader asked how some of my recipes could be adapted to make them grain-free. In Feed Your Best Friend Better, I included recipes with and without grain so that people could make their own choice on how they want to feed their dog. Grains provide many vitamins and minerals, fiber that keeps your dog full and helps to regulate their digestive system. Plus grains help to regulate the cost of making homemade dog food.
However, some dogs do have allergic reactions to grains and some people are just looking for grain-free alternatives. Most grains are about 600-ish calories per cup before adding water and cooking. Here is the equivalent amount of beef, chicken, turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams. You could switch out the grains for one of the alternative ingredients or use a combination of additional meat and vegetables if you desire.
A few caveats:
- This conversion aims to keep the amount of calories the same per recipe. The amount of water, cooking time and serving size may need to be adjusted.
- It's always recommended to either feed a vitamin/mineral supplement or feed homemade foods in combination with a commercial food.
- You can also use the chart in reverse if you'd like to take meat heavy options and add a little grain to them. If you're adding grains, also use 25-50% more water than you normally would to cook the same grains for yourself (typically 3-4 1/2 cups).
- A couple examples of how I would use this.
If a recipe calls for 1 cup white rice and 2 cups water, I might omit both the rice and the water and instead use a 1 pound of turkey. In this case the resulting yield would be almost the same as the original recipe and the calories per cup would remain pretty close.
If I use maybe a half pound of turkey and 3 cups of sweet potatoes, the resulting recipe would yield an additional 2-3 more cups so it would be lower in calories. You might have to deal out a larger portion.
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It's really your choice whether you feed your dog meals with grain or make your homemade dog food grain-free. What's most important is that you continue to Feed Your Best Friend Better.
For more information about Adapting Homemade Recipes to Make Grain-Free Dog Food go to this article more about Adapting Homemade Recipes to Make Grain-Free Dog Food
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