Fat vs. protein

[tielfan]

We also shouldn't assume that wild birds have a perfectly balanced diet. As it says at http://www.voren.com/articles/are-natur ... tritional/

"There are populations of birds and animals in habitats all over the world that survive and reproduce on grossly deficient diets. All a pair of living things has to do in order to maintain a population is survive long enough to produce two offspring that, in turn, survive long enough to reproduce. Living a long, healthy life has nothing to do with this."

The wild diet is obviously good enough to keep the species going but it's not likely to be a "perfect" diet that maximizes an individual bird's life expectancy. The food supply is too variable and unreliable for that, and there are probably days and possibly large chunks of the year when the diet is not ideal. Wild birds have a much shorter life expectancy than pets, largely because so many of them get picked off by predators. But predators prey on the weak, and how many of their victims are weak because of diet deficiencies or diet-related disease? The papers I saw today about protein starvation and liver damage make me wonder how many wild birds have this issue.

[Wolf]

Which also brings to mind that there are also genetic predispositions to specific diseases with different liver diseases being among them. Reading more on fatty liver disease it was brought to my attention that there are a lot of undiagnosed cases of fatty liver disease because it produces no symptoms and appears to have no real impact on the functioning of the liver, until there develops an issue with the processing of proteins, at which time we become aware of the problem. This points to excess fat and carbs as being the initial cause of the disease with protein metabolism being a secondary cause, but in no way does that mean that the secondary cause is of any less importance that the original cause and in fact the secondary cause may be more important in the progression of the disease than the original cause. Hard to say with what I have been reading lately. While this is just speculation it still shows that protein in the diet is a major player in fatty liver disease and can not be discounted just because it is less abundant than the other two.

[Pajarita]

The 'missing' link is fat. Fat is the direct cause of the most common form of fatty liver in companion birds. Fat is ingested as plain old fat (as in the fat content in seeds), as excessive protein (which converts into fat) and excessive carbs (which also convert into fat and for which conversion protein has a role). And it is this same fat that causes obesity, high cholesterol and cardiovascular problems as well as gonadal hypertrophy (hormonal aggression). You can have cardiovascular problems and fatty liver without obesity but you can't have obesity without fatty liver and, in the greatest majority of the cases, when you have obesity, you will have high cholesterol (which, by the way, it's another unknown when it comes to accurate normal levels in all the different species) and, if you have high cholesterol, you have a higher chance of cardiovascular problems.

The problem is that, in reality, nobody knows at what level protein becomes too much for the different species of pet parrots and, even if we knew, there would still be a large range because it would depend of the conditions the bird was kept (flighted or not flighted, exposed to elements or always under the same temperature, etc) or if the bird was a breeding bird or not.

Personally, I would much rather give them a conservative amount than risk it as my birds are non-breeding, sedentary -even though almost all of them are flighted, and kept under very comfortable temperatures and conditions. This has worked like a charm for over 20 years and with a large number of parrots so, as far as I am concerned, 'it ain't broken'.

[tielfan]

This points to excess fat and carbs as being the initial cause of the disease with protein metabolism being a secondary cause, but in no way does that mean that the secondary cause is of any less importance that the original cause

Um, no. This points to problems with protein digestion being a RESULT of the disease, not the cause. The links provided previously on the treatment of liver disease instead of the cause of liver disease show the same confusion about the difference between cause and effect. Do you understand what fatty liver disease is? It's a fat buildup in the liver caused by fats coming in faster than the liver can process them. That's what it says in the Hepatic Lipidosis section of the Liver chapter of Clinical Avian Medicine. http://avianmedicine.net/publication_ca ... -medicine/ Excessive fat and carbohydrates are listed as causes and their relationship to triglyceride levels is explained. Dietary protein is not mentioned except to say that amino acid deficiency can cause FLD. Websites on human nonalcoholic fatty liver disease agree that this is a fat-processing issue, and add the information that the fat accumulation is inside the liver cells, as opposed to being a separate lump of fat within the liver. This accumulation can cause inflammation and swelling in the liver, which can lead to liver damage and inability to function correctly. The only time protein is ever mentioned as a cause of FLD is when they're talking about methionine deficiency. There are a lot of good human articles on the subject and here's one of them: http://www.medicinenet.com/fatty_liver/article.htm

In any case, your post basically says that excess fat and carbs are the biggest problem but protein is also the biggest problem. It looks like preconceived notions are going to rule the day not the evidence, so there's no point talking about it any more. I think you believe that you interpreted your sources correctly, but I can't share your optimism since no one else agrees with your viewpoint. An open-minded person would be questioning their beliefs at this point but I don't see it happening.

For anyone else who still may be reading: due to the difficulty of getting enough complete protein in the diet, the risk of underfeeding protein is higher than the risk of overfeeding it, and the consequences of underfeeding are more certain and severe. So don't try to lowball the protein content in the diet, and don't go crazy with high-protein foods either. It doesn't look like it's possible to feed dangerously high amounts of protein using a sensible variety of ordinary plant foods. But the highest-protein seeds are also very high in fat, and you need to limit the quantity to keep the calorie count from getting out of hand.

[Wolf]

I do not agree with you and it is rude of you to accuse me of not being open minded just because I have a different point of view than you do and do not reach the same conclusions that you do. So if you are going to have that type of attitude then you are correct in stating that there is no further point in this discussion with each other. I was hoping that you would not do this with me and did voice this in a previous post. That is fine however as I am still researching this and other things and have no need to discuss it with you.

I was under the impression that this was a friendly conversation and while I could say that with what I have presented that you should be questiong your opinion that the protein levels are inconsequential in relation to the fat and carbohydrate levels, but not even the medical community is willing to say this. I also stated that I was still rebuilding my information, but you can be assured that although I do not agree with your interpretation that I have more questions than answers. I know for a fact that in my previous information there was stated a direct correlation with protein being one of the causes of fatty liver disease. At no point have I attempted to discredit any of your information nor do I intend to do so, but neither can I dismiss the information that I had and am continuing my search for that as well as any other information in regards to this disease. I am sorry that it has obviously been your intent all along to discredit my information so as to establish that you alone are correct, it is a real shame as this is not about you or me, it is about our parrots and only them and their well being. Good bye.

[Pajarita]

We also shouldn't assume that wild birds have a perfectly balanced diet. As it says at http://www.voren.com/articles/are-natur ... tritional/

"There are populations of birds and animals in habitats all over the world that survive and reproduce on grossly deficient diets. All a pair of living things has to do in order to maintain a population is survive long enough to produce two offspring that, in turn, survive long enough to reproduce. Living a long, healthy life has nothing to do with this."

The wild diet is obviously good enough to keep the species going but it's not likely to be a "perfect" diet that maximizes an individual bird's life expectancy. The food supply is too variable and unreliable for that, and there are probably days and possibly large chunks of the year when the diet is not ideal. Wild birds have a much shorter life expectancy than pets, largely because so many of them get picked off by predators. But predators prey on the weak, and how many of their victims are weak because of diet deficiencies or diet-related disease? The papers I saw today about protein starvation and liver damage make me wonder how many wild birds have this issue.

I just want to make a comment about this. The example given by the author was of a bird that had altered its natural diet due to man cultivation of a grain that was not natural to the environment. This, unfortunately, happens a lot nowadays because of man's destruction of their natural habitats. But, when one talks about a bird's natural diet, one talks about what the bird evolved to eat, not what the species is eating now because it can't find anything else. And, although this natural diet might seem nutrient deficient to us, it doesn't mean that it is to the bird. I once took in a female Northern Cardinal from a rich lady from Manhattan. Her husband was the bird person and he had died so she was looking for somebody who would take in his show and breeding lovebirds and she chose me after attending a workshop I gave on canaries at the Manhattan Bird Club. At the time, she did not mention anything about the cardinal because she knew that it's illegal to keep them in captivity but, when I went to her apartment (a penthouse on Park Ave that took the entire floor!) to pick them up, she asked me if I would take her, too. The bird had like brownish plastic sheets sticking out both her legs, kind of like weird hard wings. I had never seen anything like it and, although I did a lot of research, I couldn't find a single reference to this condition and neither did my avian vet. So she consulted (this was my beloved Dr. Jodie, the best avian vet I've ever had!) wildlife experts, ornithologists and a zoo vet - and it was the zoo vet that knew about it. It was an acutely severe case of hyperkeratosis caused by her liver not been able to metabolize protein properly any longer. And do you know what had caused it? The diet been too rich all year round! Cardinals are 90% insectivores - 10% herbivores during the warm months and 90% herbivores - 10% insectivores during the cold weather months but she had been fed a warm months diet all year round, screwing up her metabolism to the point that she could no longer utilize protein correctly! It took three years of the proper seasonal diet (and she also ate gloop) and liver supplements to get her liver function back where it was supposed to be. The point I am trying to make is that what might look like a better diet to us doesn't necessarily have to be good for the bird... It might very well be that less is more even when we don't agree.