Ingredient Breakdown — Salt

You may not know this, but cats and dogs can both taste salt. You may not know this either, but my cat food is not super salty, and I am not going to get high kitty blood pressure from eating the small amount in my food . Salt’s important, but I am definitely not throwing it all over my food like some humans do (even though they shouldn’t be), because it’s not a seasoning for pet food (now nutritional yeast, on the other paw, is totally seasoning!)

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What is it?

Salt is a mineral made up of two elements — sodium and chloride. Sodium mixed with water can explode, and chloride can become a gnarly gas that kills humans . But you put them together and you get salt, which sure can inadvertently kill you, but it won’t cause you to explode or anything like that.

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Why do pet food companies use it?

Funny enough, if cats and dogs don’t have enough sodium or chloride, we can get *low* blood pressure. We can also have problems like an increased heart rate, and gross mucus (the thought of your dog snotting all over you should be reason enough for you to want to make sure it gets enough salt!).

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What are its other uses?

Humans:

Humans have been using salt for-ev-er. In some places, it was used as money. In other places, it was used to help preserve their food. Heck, it’s even used to help make things like plastic!

Pets:

Two words: DOG MUCUS

*shudder*

Where do we get it?

I guess if you have a dog you can go digging for it? It comes out of mines. Or you can get it from the sea, whatever that is.

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Any issues with its use?

As long as us cats and dogs have a lot of clean water to drink, the chances of us getting salt poisoning are pretty low. But if you take Rover to that “sea” place I mentioned and he goes swimming and you didn’t bring water with you, well, you might wanna make sure your vet’s on speed dial.

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Writing about salt made me thirsty. Off to find some water! *jumps down from the laptop keyboard and pads away*