Natural Diet for Parrots danger of cooked grains

[Pajarita]

Well, there are no studies about feeding cooked whole grains (as in the gloop)per se but there are lots of studies feeding grains processed with heat because of all the studies/tests on pellets which are made of just that and conducted by the avian nutritionists that put together the pellets formulas (starting in the early 80's with the famous Roudybush studies - and I am sure that Harrison's and Kaytee have both quite a number of them, too).

I don't know about the PH of nuts changing in the body, I could only find something on fruits going from acid to alkaline but nothing on nuts. In any case, I've been doing a bit of research on this and I am not convinced at all that the actual PH of food before you eat it has any importance on a normal diet because everything I have found says that the concept of an alkaline diet been healthy is based on incorrect information as chyme (food and gastric juices that go from the stomach into the small intestine) ends up been super acidic from digestive juices (1 to 3!!) but, as it goes on to the small intestine, bicarbonate ions are released by the pancreas which change the PH making it always alkaline (around 8). Now, there are no studies done on parrots, of course, and I couldn't find a single one done on any kind of bird but there is plenty on humans and some on dogs, and, of course, there is the knowledge we have of our own digestive system. But, all in all, everything I've found says that a healthy body will balance out the PH on its own regardless of whether the diet is acidic or alkaline. See below:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRel ... oral2.html

http://www.medicinalfoodnews.com/vol04/ ... cidity.htm

This one actually talks about the benefit of eating alkaline food in order to maintain a balance with very acidic food (which is, mostly, animal protein) but it refers specifically to people who eat diets of virtually only meat and grains and no produce.

http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/blog/?p=1942

These two (part 1 and part 2) are from Chris Kresser:

http://chriskresser.com/the-ph-myth-part-1/
http://chriskresser.com/the-acid-alkaline-myth-part-2/

[seagoatdeb]

A raw diet is based on eating natural raw things. there are enzymes that help digestion contained in raw foods as well as vitamins that are heat sensitive, so alkaline/acid balance is only a part. There is lots of evidence saying that a raw food diet with higher alkaline, which is my diet is a good one, just as there are many debunkers. But the only proof I need is whenever i over indulge myself and it is in my nature to do that, I go back to my raw food diet for a half a year or more and my radiant health is my proof. So my diet is perfect for me. In fact it was life changing.

It is my parrots that i am trying to get as natural a diet as they ate in the wild. I stick to as natural as possible and cooked foods arent natural so i limit them. But i am always open to new information.

I will give you a link to nuts and how they are low alkaline forming in the body, and some slighlty acid since you couldnt find one

http://www.livestrong.com/article/49484 ... e-forming/


The studies from the pellet manufacturers are ineresting. I believe what they really found was that pellet diets were better than and all seed diet. This makes a lot of sense to me since an all seed diet would be high fat and nutritional deficit. Pellets would be better because they had added vitamins and more foods incorporated in them. But they were selling the products so they had a vested interest in having you buy their pellets. Almost all avian nutritionists and vets now say you must feed a lot of raw vegetables and fruits. Do you have more info on their findings Pajarita?

[Pajarita]

No, that is the info they give: all pellets versus all seeds - and that's one of the reasons why they are useless, because they did not use any other type of diet like gloop or chop for the comparison. But the reference to these studies was not on the question of whether one should feed lots of produce or not, we all know that of course we have to and nobody is arguing that! The question was whether there were any studies proving that cooked grains were healthy or not healthy for parrots and that's what I was referring to when I mentioned the pellets studies. Because, as far as I can tell, apparently, nobody in the industry or in avian research has thought of questioning if it's good for parrots to eat grains (I am leaving the 'cooked' part aside as grains become more digestible when cooking so the cooking part can only be beneficial), I don't know the reason why nobody thought of questioning this but, if I had to give a guess, I would say it is because there was never any doubt in anybody's mind that they were not bad for them.

I had found the same info on the nuts but, unless I am not reading your link correctly, it doesn't seem to say that acidic nuts BECOME alkaline inside the body - although, if one wants to be exactly precise, all of them do because EVERYTHING becomes alkaline inside the body when it gets to the small intestine.

[seagoatdeb]

You are right about grains, no one has questioned them much for parrots but we know how common grain allergies are in people now.

To classify an acidic food, any food that increases the acidity of our urine after the consumption is classified as acid forming food. Vice versa if the food we consume increases the alkalinity of the urine, and then it is classified as alkaline forming food. So, although it is common for inside the small intestine to have a balance on the alkaline side of the scale, it is the correct balance that is necessary for good health. Just as its okay to have a skin balance that is on the acid side of the scale, it must be the correct balance.

But anyway, we are talking parrots and they have a different system than us, so we have no studies, but since cooked grains are not natural for parrots I will always feed them sparingly.

[Wolf]

You are right, I have never seen any bird, much less a parrot cooking any grains, either in captivity or in the wild, so it can't be natural for them.

There are indeed so many food allergies in the world today that affect humans the most, but are also showing up in our animals as well. It is a cause of great concern to me. Some doctors say that many of the food allergies are the result of not being exposed to these foods early or often enough. But then I can't go to the store and buy many foods that are not full of chemicals to preserve the food or to color the food or even to make it taste better and I can not help but wonder if this is not the real cause of these many food allergies.

We have discussed many things about grains including cooked grains and even the differences in old legacy grains and modern grains that have been altered in one or more ways, as well as whether our birds even consumed grains in the wild.

I would love to be able to give my birds the diet that is natural for them, but that is not possible so I try to do the best that I can according to my understanding. I think that is the best that any one of us can actually do.

There are many areas of their diet that we really don't have any answers to, but if we keep talking about these things and asking questions and searching for answers perhaps the sciences will pick up on our questions and begin to do these studies so that perhaps one day we can say with some level of certainty that this or that grain or whatever is actually good or bad for our birds.

Keep asking questions and sharing what we think and researching these things to the best of our ability and then giving your birds the best diet and care that you know how to give them in accord with your understanding. And above all keep encouraging others with birds to give their birds the best diet and care that they can in accordance with their understanding.

[Pajarita]

You are right about grains, no one has questioned them much for parrots but we know how common grain allergies are in people now.

To classify an acidic food, any food that increases the acidity of our urine after the consumption is classified as acid forming food. Vice versa if the food we consume increases the alkalinity of the urine, and then it is classified as alkaline forming food. So, although it is common for inside the small intestine to have a balance on the alkaline side of the scale, it is the correct balance that is necessary for good health. Just as its okay to have a skin balance that is on the acid side of the scale, it must be the correct balance.

But anyway, we are talking parrots and they have a different system than us, so we have no studies, but since cooked grains are not natural for parrots I will always feed them sparingly.

Well, as far as I can tell, no avian nutritionist has EVER questioned feeding cooked grains to parrots plus I've been doing it for over 20 years (and to A LOT of birds) without a single bird showing any ill effects from it so those two facts combined give me peace of mind.

As to the urine PH, according to the links I gave above, it makes no difference because it's the blood PH that affects health and not the urine which is contained separately in the bladder and which PH is supposed to go up and down without really affecting anything.

But, in any case, I have to tell you that the argument that something in their diet is not natural is not one that I would use or accept as valid... I mean, NOBODY can feed a truly natural diet to parrots so if one is going to restrict foods going by what is natural and what is not, the birds would starve. I mean, ABSOLUTELY ALL the veggies and ALMOST ALL the fruits, seeds and nuts we feed are not part of their natural diet so if one went by that, what would one feed them?

[seagoatdeb]

You are right about grains, no one has questioned them much for parrots but we know how common grain allergies are in people now.

To classify an acidic food, any food that increases the acidity of our urine after the consumption is classified as acid forming food. Vice versa if the food we consume increases the alkalinity of the urine, and then it is classified as alkaline forming food. So, although it is common for inside the small intestine to have a balance on the alkaline side of the scale, it is the correct balance that is necessary for good health. Just as its okay to have a skin balance that is on the acid side of the scale, it must be the correct balance.

But anyway, we are talking parrots and they have a different system than us, so we have no studies, but since cooked grains are not natural for parrots I will always feed them sparingly.

Well, as far as I can tell, no avian nutritionist has EVER questioned feeding cooked grains to parrots plus I've been doing it for over 20 years (and to A LOT of birds) without a single bird showing any ill effects from it so those two facts combined give me peace of mind.

As to the urine PH, according to the links I gave above, it makes no difference because it's the blood PH that affects health and not the urine which is contained separately in the bladder and which PH is supposed to go up and down without really affecting anything.

But, in any case, I have to tell you that the argument that something in their diet is not natural is not one that I would use or accept as valid... I mean, NOBODY can feed a truly natural diet to parrots so if one is going to restrict foods going by what is natural and what is not, the birds would starve. I mean, ABSOLUTELY ALL the veggies and ALMOST ALL the fruits, seeds and nuts we feed are not part of their natural diet so if one went by that, what would one feed them?

Of course no one can feed the parrots their natural diet and we dont even know everything about their natural diet. They ate everything raw in the wild. So cooking is a huge leap from natural and raw veggies and fruits are not that big a leap from natural. An argument about not noticing ill affects is not valid, in my eyes, because it takes many years and reearch to show the affects. Hopefully we will all keep researching.

[Wolf]

We may not always agree and we may approach things from a different perspective, but I think that we can be pretty certain that we all care enough about the well being of these wonderful creatures that we will all keep researching and asking more questions and trying to find answers. All we can do is the best we can and keep pushing those boundries and sharing what we learn.

[Pajarita]

Seagoatdeb, you keep on missing the point about the cooked grains. Parrots eat raw grains in the wild and there are 200 year old accounts of this so this is, pretty much, an accepted premise by all avian nutritionists. The light cooking is done to make them more digestible (see this: http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=234) so, if anything, it's healthier for them than raw grains.

As to observation over a period of more than 20 years and of hundreds of birds not been valid... well, we will have to agree to disagree on this because, the way I look at it is that if one goes by the few scientific dietary studies on parrots, they are all only for a year or so and everybody seems to think that this is more than enough (which I don't agree with, mind you!) so I would say that hundreds of birds over a period of 20 years is not only valid but a pretty strong argument, too!

[seagoatdeb]

Seagoatdeb, you keep on missing the point about the cooked grains. Parrots eat raw grains in the wild and there are 200 year old accounts of this so this is, pretty much, an accepted premise by all avian nutritionists. The light cooking is done to make them more digestible (see this: http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&dbid=234) so, if anything, it's healthier for them than raw grains.

As to observation over a period of more than 20 years and of hundreds of birds not been valid... well, we will have to agree to disagree on this because, the way I look at it is that if one goes by the few scientific dietary studies on parrots, they are all only for a year or so and everybody seems to think that this is more than enough (which I don't agree with, mind you!) so I would say that hundreds of birds over a period of 20 years is not only valid but a pretty strong argument, too!

Nope I am not missng the point, all the studies show only some parrots, and it is a small percentage of their diet and there are no studie at all on amounts of 20 percent or more, and that is why I made this topic, sonce it may not be very healthy in the long term when studies finally do come out, so we will agree to disagree, since no one can get up to date data.