Interview: Lucy Postins - The Honest Kitchen - And Christine Mandrake - Well Beings - Part 1

Part 1 of 2: Interview With Lucy Postins - The Honest Kitchen - And Christine Mandrake - Well Beings

Interview Topics:
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The Honest Kitchen: about the company, dehydrated raw dog food line, ingredients, manufacturing, health benefits

Listen to the audio for part 1 of this interview. Running time: 7 minutes and 45 seconds.

Interview details:
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Interviewee: The Honest Kitchen: Lucy Postins
Interviewer: Well Beings: Christine Mandrake
Scheduled interview date and time: 9/27/2005 11:26 A.M. (Pacific Time)


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This interview was produced and edited by Well Beings - Senior Cat & Dog Products -
Copyright © 2005 http://www.wellbeings.com/ . All Rights Reserved.

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Interview Outline:
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1. Please tell us about how The Honest Kitchen came to be. How long have you been around, and how did you get started?
2. How is your dehydrated food different from the regular raw foods out there like BARF? Are there advantages to using the dehydrated form?
3. How did you come up with the three different recipes for your dehydrated raw dog foods: Verve, Embark, and Force? Tell us about the ingredients found in each one.
4. Dogs are classified as omnivores, but didn?t their digestive system evolve differently than ours? Can you compare what they?d get in the wild with what your dehydrated foods contain?
5. The label on your dehydrated dog foods says: "This product is made with 100% human food-grade ingredients." Will my dog actually benefit from eating "human-grade" food?
6. What does this mean for the quality of ingredients in foods that cannot make this claim?
7. What is meat meal, chicken meal, etc? Is there a kind of "meal" that we should stay away from?
8. You?ve mentioned the shady practice of "ingredient splitting" in a previous seminar. What is it, and what does it mean for those of us that try to read food labels?
9. Dog allergies are really common these days. Especially skin allergies. Which food would you recommend for this condition ? with the understanding that we can't give any medical advice, so listeners should always consult with their holistic vet.
10. New products from The Honest Kitchen. Dehydrated cat food: Prowl.


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Start transcript - Part 1 of 2:
Interview with Lucy Postins from The Honest Kitchen and Well Beings
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Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Good morning, everyone. My name is Christine Mandrake, the owner of WellBeings.com, Senior Cat & Dog Products. Today we are speaking with Lucy Postins, the nutritionist at The Honest Kitchen. Lucy, why don't we start with a little bit about your background and how you started The Honest Kitchen?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Yes, I am originally from England, and I have a Bachelor of Art in equine business studies, which is horses and business management, and the course involved a lot of nutrition, along with anatomy and physiology. I came out to the States about eight years ago and worked as a nutritionist, an equine and canine nutritionist for another pet food manufacturer, and I first became interested in the raw food diet for my own dog when he was a puppy.

The company I worked for doesn't advocate raw food, so I began doing homemade diets myself and kind of ended up in rather a messy kitchen, so I wanted to look into something that would make it a little simpler to prepare, something that's easy for traveling and camping and that, so I came up for the idea of dehydrated foods.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Okay, great, and so, basically, that's how your dehydrated food is different from the regular raw foods; it's not a frozen product, correct?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Right, yeah, it's not frozen. All of our ingredients are just gently dehydrated at fairly moderate temperatures, which is a much gentler process than canning or extrusion. All the meat and egg ingredients dehydrate at a higher temperature, above 120 degrees, and that's just a requirement of the fact that everything that enters our manufacturing facility must be human grade, so they just have to be dehydrated to kill any pathogenic bacteria that might be present to make them safe for human beings to eat.

And then, all the fruits and veggies are dehydrated below 104 degrees, so those would still be considered raw.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Great, and so what are some of the advantages to using the dehydrated form?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Basically, it helps to preserve the nutritional integrity of the ingredients. It's not quite the same as fresh or frozen raw food. It's a little bit different from that. One of the benefits is that it's a lot more convenient for transportation and storage. You don't have to store it in a freezer or refrigerator. It can just be stored in a cool, dry place, and it also hydrates to make a fairly large volume and large weight of fresh food. One cup of this, in its dry form, would make a pound of fresh food, so it's really convenient for traveling.

And sometimes people are concerned, especially if they have young babies or even senior pets. Although if they have a compromised immune system, they don't always want to feed a completely frozen, raw diet because of the risk of bacterial contamination, so this is a little bit more convenient for them too.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Yeah, that would make sense to me, and it does seem like it would not be as messy, and you wouldn't have to always be concerned with whether you pulled some out of the freezer or if it was fully defrosted.

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Right.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
And all that kind of stuff, so it's definitely a much more convenient way of serving raw food; and yeah, it's great, like you say, to have it. You can travel with it, and it's really easy to store. We use it on our own dogs, and so we know how easy and great it is.

Well, how did you come up with the different recipes, and we know you have three flavors. You have the Verve, Embark and the Force?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Yes, the Verve was the first recipe that we came up with. That recipe contains beef and some certified organic grains, along with the vegetables and fruits. Really, the original taste testing just took place in my own kitchen with my own dog, and he would approve of or reject various different ingredients, and that really dictated what made it into the first formula.

As we got started, I became more and more interested in the concept of a no-grain or grain-free diet, which is what a lot of people who do the BARF or raw-food diet follow, and so that's where the idea came for the two grain-free recipes, which are The Force and the Embark.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Okay, now also, a lot of people are looking for grain-free because of the allergy epidemic, correct?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Yeah. Food allergies; the term allergy is kind of a complex and sometimes an overused issue. We prefer to use the term intolerance or sensitivity.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Okay.

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
An allergic reaction would usually be something that's fairly extreme, something like hives or an immediate swelling rather than a low-grade intolerance or sensitivity, but there is a great deal of empirical evidence now that many dogs are intolerant of one or more grains, and particularly the high gluten grains. Wheats, corn, soy, beet pulp and rice are among the top culprits for food sensitivities or allergies in dogs, and they can lead to things like GI upset, chronic irritable bowel or diarrhea; things like that, as well as ear infections are particularly common, and it's amazing when you eliminate grain from the diet, things like those chronic ear infections literally disappear within a few weeks.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
So, not only are the dogs going to suffer less, but it's going to lead to a lot fewer vet bills for people.

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Right.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Which is a great thing.

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Yeah, definitely; yeah, as long as you can get the dog's immune system in good order and not feed them a food type or an ingredient that they're intolerant of, then you can definitely avoid a lot of steroids and overuse of antibiotics and that type of thing, which is often prescribed by non-holistic vets for ear infections and skin irritation.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Another benefit to that is a lot of the side effects to those kind of drugs can harm. They help them one way, but then they harm in another, so you're eliminating a lot of...

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Yeah, it just goes around in one big vicious cycle, and, of course, vets need to make money, and not all vets are into holistic modalities, and a lot of vets do make their money by prescribing antibiotics and steroid use on a perpetual basis, so it's not always in their interest to see a dog in top condition because they make their money, obviously, from sick pets, so it's only now that more and more vets are learning about holistic and eastern and alternative medicine and really having a true understanding of how to maintain a dog in its optimal condition, rather than just treating symptoms.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Yeah, and I do have a question about one of your formulas, and I ask about this one in particular because not only do we have a very senior dog, one of our animals, but our web site tries to highlight the special needs of seniors, and so you do say with the Verve formula, though, that this is an ideal diet for adult maintenance and less active or senior dogs. Now what about that one in particular is good for the senior animals?

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
It's mostly so because it has fairly low fat and moderate protein. It's also fairly high in fiber, and it just contains a fairly simple selection of ingredients. We don't really advocate very restricted protein for senior dogs. I know a lot of manufacturers do, but most of the modern research has shown that it's the quality of the protein rather than the quantity that's most important.

You can have something that's very low in protein, but the protein it contains might be made up of something like poultry byproducts, which is chicken feet, beaks and feathers and things like that that are extremely difficult to digest, and those actually put more of a toll on a senior dog's kidneys than if they were to eat a high amount of good quality protein, such as proper meat.

Christine Mandrake [Well Beings]:
Yeah, well, and that makes logical sense because dogs and cats in the wild do get most of their food through prey, so it makes sense to keep a good quality protein rather than restricting that.

Lucy Postins [The Honest Kitchen]:
Definitely, yeah, and all our foods also have the benefits of balanced calcium phosphorous ratios so that extra meat can be added if you want to do that, and we do advocate and encourage the addition of fresh ingredients to all of our foods, so if you want to incorporate some extra ground beef or turkey or something like that, you can do that if you wish to, just depending on your own dog's requirements.



====================================================

This interview was produced and edited by Well Beings - Senior Cat & Dog Products -
Copyright © 2005 http://www.wellbeings.com/ . All Rights Reserved.

====================================================


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End transcript - Part 1 of 2:
Interview with Lucy Postins from The Honest Kitchen and Well Beings
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Related Products:

The Honest Kitchen - Verve: "Ideal for adult maintenance, for dogs who do well with some grain in their diets. Verve is a low fat., low calorie formula, with beef as the protein source."

The Honest Kitchen - Embark: "It is particularly suited to puppies and more active dogs and is ideal for those who are intolerant of grains."

The Honest Kitchen - Force (grain-free): "For adult dogs who are intolerant of grains. Force is formulated with moderate protein, higher fat and total calories, with a moderate level of carbohydrates."






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[Related Tags: the honest kitchen, well beings, dehydrated raw dog food, dog allergies, dog digestion, holistic dog food, holistic veterinarian, human food-grade ingredients, meat meal, chicken meal, ingredient splitting]