Healthy Raw Diet for Parrots

[Pajarita]

Wolf, the terminology is actually explained in detail on one of the articles.

I couldn't open the last one but none of the other three actually says that saturated fats are good. The first one actually says that the study that concluded that is faulty and the other two only say that, under certain circumstances and with specific exchanges, they are not bad. There is a big difference between the two concepts! I mean, the woman that wrote the third one went from a fat-free diet (which is real bad for the body) to a healthy diet where she ate only grass-fed beef once a week and 1% milk instead of skim as well as fresh, locally-sourced produce, increased her intake of antioxidants and reduced the processed products made with white flour switching to spare whole grains - well, duh! of course her cholesterol was going to go down on that diet! I hardly eat any meat but the one I eat, as well as the eggs, are from pastured animals, I eat whole grains and brown sugar but my daily products are whole (milk, butter and yogurt) and my cholesterol is great!

[seagoatdeb]

Seagoatdeb;

Since you are using these terms, I think that it might be helpful to those reading your post if you would provide a definition for the terms saturated fats, unsaturated fats and trans fats. This is only a suggestion, but it is based on the premise that many people, although they are vaguely familiar with the terms, really have no working knowledge or definition of them.

The information for what the fats are is in the links I provided, so all the info is there, but perhaps a more detailed account of transfats woud be helpfull since that is the bad fat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat

[seagoatdeb]

Wolf, the terminology is actually explained in detail on one of the articles.

I couldn't open the last one but none of the other three actually says that saturated fats are good. The first one actually says that the study that concluded that is faulty and the other two only say that, under certain circumstances and with specific exchanges, they are not bad. There is a big difference between the two concepts! I mean, the woman that wrote the third one went from a fat-free diet (which is real bad for the body) to a healthy diet where she ate only grass-fed beef once a week and 1% milk instead of skim as well as fresh, locally-sourced produce, increased her intake of antioxidants and reduced the processed products made with white flour switching to spare whole grains - well, duh! of course her cholesterol was going to go down on that diet! I hardly eat any meat but the one I eat, as well as the eggs, are from pastured animals, I eat whole grains and brown sugar but my daily products are whole (milk, butter and yogurt) and my cholesterol is great!

They dont actually say they are good I agree, only that saturated fats did not affect cholesterol, so were not bad. Glad your cholesterol is good. I do eat a lot of raw cocout and coconut oil, I do eat some meat occasionally, and it is natural fed and free range which is very available around here. I will eat butter and cheese, and I dont use milk (i have a milk sugar sensitivity) only whip cream. Also do eat a lot of raw whole food. My cholesterol is great too. I dont give my parrots milk products, and they dont have transfats in their diets. My husbands cholesterol is better now and he has gained some weight back, now that he went off gluten because of his celiac, but he ate a lot of junk food with his gluten full of trans fats so his diet is more healthy too.

I dont know why the last link woudnt open, but the main point was that this wildlife expert was saying that saturated fat was good for birds in the wild, when they needed a fat that took longer to break down, because it provided energy over a longer time. I want to research more on this but I am very busy for the next few days, so it will be a few days until I have time.

[Wolf]

Sorry, I must have missed seeing them.

[Pajarita]

They dont actually say they are good I agree, only that saturated fats did not affect cholesterol, so were not bad.

I am not trying to be contentious, it's only that your sentence begs for clarification. I am sure that you understand exactly what the articles say so this is not meant for you but for the people who might get confused. Saturated fats DO affect cholesterol by themselves, they don't affect it IF you are also ingesting non-saturated fats, whole grains, etc. The point of the new research is to show that saturated fats are not the poison that needs to be completely eliminated from a human diet (as it was on the fat-free diets we had years ago), they are fine as long as they are consumed in moderation and along with other foods that either counteract their effect or cleanse them adequately (the exchanges).

[Pajarita]

One more thing (I kept on thinking about this...). One needs to take into consideration that this new research about saturated fats is done and meant for humans and not parrots. We really do not have that many studies done on parrots so we often have no choice but to take the results of human studies and extrapolate the information for parrots but, when it comes to dietary issues, one needs to be super careful because humans are omnivores and evolved to eat saturated fats while companion parrots are herbivores and did not evolve to eat saturated fats - and that makes a big difference.

Saturated fats are found in animal protein in their natural form (meat, eggs, milk, cheese, etc) while, when it comes to plant material, the only saturated fats we find are in processed products and never in any significant amount in a natural state (coconut oil, cocoa butter, palm kernel oil, etc).

For anybody who is interested about learning more about coconut oil, I recommend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil

[DanaandPod]

My parrot won't eat unless cooked. I'll look up crean on fb.

[seagoatdeb]

My parrot won't eat unless cooked. I'll look up crean on fb.

If you have trouble finding the group let me know, I will pm you the link

[Greg]

I found the group and it is full of people wanting to learn more about raw diets and I found lots of answers to questions I wanted to ask. We have slowly been moving our parrots over to a more raw whole diet. Some are taking to it faster than others.

[seagoatdeb]

Right now my parrots are getting lots of nice greens from my garden, spring is finally here!