HPP and Pet Food
Processed. It’s kind of a dirty word nowadays. We’re constantly told processed food is bad for us, to avoid it all costs, it’s dangerous to our health, etc. But here’s the thing — not all processed food is the same.
Let’s take hummus, and orange juice, and salsa, for example. Do you consider those processed, and therefore unsafe? They’re definitely processed, but the processing done makes them safer for human consumption. They’re treated with something called high-pressure processing (HPP), which is used to extend shelf-life, and lets food retain its nutrients. In fact, studies have been done on Vitamin C, which is one of the most fragile nutrients, and it was found that HPP has relatively no effect on Vitamin C in quite a few different foods. And HPP is considered so safe that it isn’t required to be listed on the label.
So what about raw pet food that’s been HPP’d? Doesn’t HPP reduce nutrient availability by denaturing the proteins?
One pet food company, Steve’s Raw Foods, set out to do their own research on raw food to see how accurate the concerns about denatured proteins and bacteria were.
And with regard to bacteria, Lactobacillus, which is a good bacteria, only had a 2 log reduction (99%), which then was regained after only 6 days of cold storage, as opposed to Salmonella, which had a 4 log reduction (99.99%) (What is a log reduction? Click here to find out!) and zero recovery after 60 days of cold storage.
Finally, recontamination is always a concern. This is why Balanced Blends opts to HPP in final packaging. Once our food is in its chub, nobody sees or touches it until our customers buy it and open the chub themselves. Thus, no concerns about recontamination after HPP.
So is high-pressure processed raw the right choice for your pet? Only you can decide, but we hope that this information will make your choice a little easier.
