26 MarEpisode 4 | Let’s talk about dog food with Hanna Mandelbaum of Evermore Petfood
Meet Hanna. She eats her own dog food. No, really. In the latest episode of School For The Dogs Podcast, Hanna and Annie sit down to talk about food and dogs, and food for dogs. And dog food for humans.
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Episode 4: Let's talk about dog food with Hanna Mandelbaum of Evermore Petfood
Transcript:
Annie:
Hi, I am here with my good friend, Hanna.
Hanna:
My name is Hanna Mandelbaum and I do lots of different, wonderful things, but the reason I'm on this podcast,
Annie:
You do do lots of wonderful things.
Hanna:
The reason I'm on this podcast is I am the co founder of a fabulous pet food company called Evermore Pet Food.
Annie:
And I should mention one of the, one of the wonderful things Hanna does when she's not making pet food is she is a trapeze artist and more than anyone else, I know she does an amazing job of combining her passions, which, I think, the best example is when she did a whole trapeze act dressed as dressed as a dog, wearing a cone. And, uh,
Hanna:
I was a fresh spay.
Annie:
A freshly spayed dog. And then at the end of the trapeze act where she was dressed like a dog, she ate her own dog food.
Hanna:
I'm sure that you should link that in the show notes.
Annie:
Hanna and I first met because she and her partner, Alison, literally decided to eat their own dog food, which I didn't even know that it was an expression. Did you know that?
Hanna:
It is. It's a tech expression, um,from the wonderful world of technology where “eat your own dog food” meant use the product that you're developing. It's, sort of, it's about like a willingness to, like, use your own product and you can't really understand the thing that you're creating unless you use it.
Annie:
Oh, okay.
Hanna:
Well, I actually didn't know that it was a thing either when I started.
Annie:
Well, Hanna and Alison started to literally eat their own dog food. Their dog food brand is called Evermore. And to be perfectly honest, um, I met Hanna when I was just starting to become a dog trainer and I don't think I'd ever thought that much about dog food until I started to talk to her. And what I mean by that is I don't think I ever thought about it as anything that was that important to my dog's life. I knew he loved to eat and eating was obviously a big part of his life. And I knew I wanted him to be healthy and live a long time, but I'm not sure I ever put it all together in that I understood that it actually mattered what I fed him. I think I felt like at the end of the day, he's a dog and he can eat dog food because that's what dogs eat. And I think dog food to me was just like one category of thing that I purchased.
Yeah, yeah. Right.
Hanna:
Yeah. No. And a lot of, I think a lot of people think that way and most commercial pet food, isn't that great. Well, I didn't set out to start a dog food company or be a dog food mogul. I actually kind of fell into the industry. I was working as a dog walker Red Hook, which is sort of this wild west neighborhood of Brooklyn. And one of my many clients was the sort of older woman. She lived alone and had an Afghan hound and she actually had this cottage industry dog food business where she'd cook for people's dogs. And she'd scaled it a little bit beyond that. She had a couple of stores in Manhattan and one day, I got a call from her that she was in the middle of having a medical event, long story short, I stepped in to help her temporarily.
Annie:
What did you think of the fact that she made dog food?
Hanna:
You know, I didn't have dogs at the time, but it was taking care of a lot of dogs and I was starting to see, there were different methods of feeding, raw food was starting to be a thing. I sort of became more aware as a dog walker. Really food came to the forefront in 2007 when the melamine recalls happened. And a lot of you might not remember this, but there was this wave of tainted dog food and cat food from China.
Annie:
And it was actually the biggest food recall, actually… in the history of food recalls.
Hanna:
Yeah. Dog or human.
Annie:
Affected baby food also.
Hanna:
Did it.? I didn't realize that the melamine was in baby food too.
Annie:
There's an excellent book by, um, Marion Nestle.
Hanna:
I've actually read it. Is it the pet food book or is it a different book?
Annie:
It's about pet food and I think it's specifically about, um, ..
Hanna:
I probably forgot that little bit of the book, but I've read that book.
Annie:
Basically plastic got into the food in some plant in China and it affected all, all like almost all the brands, the major brands, the good or bad
Hanna:
This chemical melamine. What I think was it, I think it actually cheated the lab. It did something that impacted the way that the nutritional profiles showed up in the lab. So it was even more, like, insidious than that. But, a couple of my clients had animals that died. So after that happened, a few of them actually started cooking for their dogs. So that's really how we became aware of the food connection. And one thing that I also noticed was that the clients that were using these, sort of, more home cooked or the raw foods, their dogs would have way better poop. And I know this is a dog podcast, so we can talk about this. When you're a dog Walker that really matters.
Annie:
Well, I think it's something that people, again, don't often think about is the connection between what goes in and what goes out. When you’re housebreaking, you want to set yourself up for success, which means having, you know, if you have less pee and poop to deal with then.. It makes housebreaking easier
Hanna:
Yeah. If you're reading a higher quality wet food, their body is going to absorb it better and they're also going to be drinking less water. So it will, it will make things better on the other end. So anyway, yeah, prior to stepping in, to basically take over the sick woman's dog food business, I did have exposure to the merits of better food just based on, based on my experience in pet care or being so intimately a part of so many dogs lives.
Annie:
So she, just a fast forward, she ended up dying.
Hanna:
She did. Um, yeah, this is, um, I mean, it was really, it was a tragic and devastating and very long story, but she did end up passing away. In the meantime, I had enlisted another dog walking client of mine, my business partner, Alison, who at this point is like a sister to me.
Annie:
Oh, I didn't know that. So you started out walking her dog.
Hanna:
Oh, I walked her dog Connor.
Annie:
And she, her background was as a chef.
Hanna:
Yes, she was. Her background was actually, she was a health supportive personal chef. So not only was she a chef, but she was a chef that was really trained in food as medicine and food as functional and how to provide food that is, like, nourishing and not just, you know, stuff that tastes good in a restaurant. So it's like a very specific type of chef that I think really ultimately served the vision of our company so well.
But her dog Connor was eating mostly, he was eating raw food and she had gone through periods of her life where she had done home prepared raw for him. She'd also done some home cooking for him. At that point, I believe he was eating a commercially available raw diet, but it was still high quality, raw food. He was six years old at the time. He was little, he was carrying a little bit of extra weight and she just figured, okay, he's a six year old dog. That's just what happens. And he was, he would eat his raw, but he wasn't, like, super crazy about it. Then when I sort of enlisted Alison to come help with this dog food project, she naturally started feeding him the cooked food, the frozen cooked food, and he started thriving. He lost the 10 extra pounds he was carrying, had so much energy. His stool was great. And he was excited about his food.
Annie:
You basically took over producing the food for her clients when she passed away. Is that right?
Hanna:
It was actually, while she was still alive, there was, there was an extended period of time where she was in the hospital and she could communicate, but she was incapable of really doing anything or running a business.
Annie:
How did ingredient-wise, how did you figure out what you wanted it to contain in order to bring it to a level where you could be selling it commercially?
Hanna:
Um, well, yeah, the formula, the first thing that we actually did was we lab tested the formulas that we had and what we saw was that they were, they were slightly imbalanced. So the first thing that we needed to do was to balance the calcium and the phosphorus. If anyone is cooking their own dog food, this is the first thing that they learn, that in order for like proper nutrient absorption to happen, certain minerals need to be in certain ratios and a calcium and phosphorus is really the big one.
**Music**
Hanna:
We had initially stepped in to help Mary out as, kind of, just a good Samaritan act. But at some point we had that Eureka moment where this is a product that people really want and can change the lives of so many dogs, but in order for it to actually work, we needed to run it like a real business. We needed to scale it and we need… So we had a talk with Mary and, sort of, explained to her, look, we want to do this, but we kind of need to start over and do it right. And that's what we did.
Annie:
And what did that mean doing it right?
Hanna:
There are… as unregulated as dog food is, there are certain things that you need to do correctly. The big one is making sure it is what the technical term is, is complete and balanced. And what that means is that it fits into these nutritional profiles. That just, sort of, guarantee that your dog, if you're feeding a certain food is getting everything that he or she needs.
Annie:
One thing I don't think I realized before I met you is really that all commercial dog food is perfectly balanced in a way that human food isn't because there is the expectation that someone is going to pick one kind of dog food and feed that to their dog every meal for the entire dog's life, which is not how we are expected to feed ourselves. But that, therefore, the FDA has mandated that basically every bite of food a dog has in his mouth at any one, given point is a perfectly balanced mini nutritional profile.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Annie:
Is that a good way to put it?
Hanna:
Yeah it is kind of a good way to put it. If it's being sold as food, like you can sell a partial or incomplete diets. You literally just can't call it food on the front of the box. So you can sell food that's not complete. And it would be marketed more as a topper and you couldn't actually call it food and there would have to be a disclaimer on the back, sort of, saying that this is not for complete feeding, it's only intended for intermittent or partial feeding.
One thing that I want to point out is that, as humans, yeah, we don't eat complete and balanced every single day. There's no way that you or I, or anyone we know really is getting all of the nutrients that they need every single day. What happens is we tend to attain balance over time provided we have diverse and well-rounded diets, and this is something we even tell our customers. A lot of our customers are people that want to home cook for their dogs, but don't feel like they have the knowhow or the time. But even feeding your dog, you don't have to feed your dog complete and balanced food every day at every meal, as long as you're feeding some food that you have that guarantee of balance for, and I've heard numbers as low as five meals a week, um, depending on who you ask, I like to say, as long as half the food is balanced, then you can be a little bit… you can experiment a little bit with the rest of your dog's diet. As long as you don't overdo it in one direction or another direction, it just requires a little bit of knowhow.
**music**
Hanna:
Evermore is a gently cooked food that’s slow frozen. We use all high quality human grade ingredients to make it a home-cooked style meal. And we, you know, package it up and sell it to customers. So basically it's cooking for your dog with a guarantee of balance and you don't have to do the work. We also do go above and beyond, pretty much everyone out there, from an ingredient sourcing perspective. So for example, all of our meats are from humanely raised animals. All of our red meat is a hundred percent grass fed. Our poultry is free range. Our eggs are pastured and our produce is certified organic.
Annie:
For those of you who haven't seen Evermore, it comes frozen. It's about the size of a book. You cook it, you cook it in the casing it comes in.
Hanna:
Yeah, that's actually, it is a sous vide style
Annie:
Are there other sous vide style dog foods out there?
Hanna:
To our knowledge, there are not.
Annie:
So, why the sous vide process and to people who don't know about cooking like me, can you explain what sous vide] is?
Hanna:
Sous vide is ust a fancy, or should I say French way of saying, under vacuum? And the idea is that the raw ingredients are combined and put into these pouches that are very food, safe material, like we don't do anything that's going to leech to any chemicals into the food. We get a lot of questions about that. But they're…so the pouches are sealed. The air sucked out of them. And then the way, in a restaurant setting, it would actually be submerged in warm water and very slowly brought up to temperature, but in an industrial kitchen setting it's actually more of a steaming process. But that gives us a lot of control and brings the food up to temperature. From a handling perspective it's great because once you go through that kill step, there's no chance that anything else can recontaminate it.
There's also the nutrient perspective of, one of the things that happens when you cook is food is exposed to oxygen and the process called oxidation happens and that is one of the things that causes nutrient loss and degradation. So the whole reason why we do this process is to maintain the maximum, kind of, nutrient load and also it's also great for flavor. ‘Cause one of the things that we like to say is when you, when you smell a whole kitchen filled with aromas, when you're cooking something over an open kettle, you're smelling the flavor. That's flavor that's like escaping the food, essentially, and we're sort of just locking that all in with our process.
Annie:
Why, not canning?
Hanna:
Canning, which is a very.. probably one of the most traditional ways to get dog food is actually a really high heat process. It destroys a lot of the nutrients in the food. And one of the other things that a lot of people don't talk about with canning is the epoxies in the liners of the cans themselves. Most cans actually contain BPA. But in addition to BPA, there are other chemicals that are in the lining of cans. So these are all really not great.
And I don't know about you, but I don't really love the way food tastes coming out of a can. Like if you have canned vegetables, can anything, it just kind of is like inert and flavorless, same thing with the dog food. I wouldn't wanna eat something that comes out of a can everyday, so I wouldn't want my dog to.
Annie:
I guess, but my dog would eat anything.
Hanna:
My dog would eat anything too. I want to say that my dog is really picky, but she, like, her favorite thing is going to the cat box
Annie:
Yeah. Why don't you start making that as dog food?
Hanna:
Cat snacks?
Annie:
But, you know, I have a suspicion that on the hand, I think my dog will eat anything. On the other hand, I encounter people who have dogs who are picky eaters. And I always think, and this is not scientifically shown, or tell me what you think about the theory. But I think if a dog doesn't want to eat something, it means it's like not the right thing for that dog. Although I should say that, but then there's, like, the caveat of like cat poop or something like that. I don't if that actually… like my dog would eat snicker bars. That doesn't mean it's good for him, but I feel like if he turns his nose up at something like that's a sign.
Hanna:
Yeah. I actually believe that too. I've got all these people who will tell me about their really picky dogs and they complain about how picky their dog is. And I'm like, you know, I don't think he's picky I think he's discerning. And I think that there's a lot to be said. And what's really interesting about it is that the dogs that tend to be, and this is also like a theory that I have no actual basis for this, but the dogs that tend to be the pickiest dogs are these like smaller, more bred, like further from wolf breeds. Um, so I mean, occasionally you'll get like picky kind of more kind of mutty or like dogs that are these more ancestral breeds. But I'm always, I'm always kind of struck like, okay, these dogs are just like more evolved in a specific direction away from the wolf. And they're pickier in a way. And it's like, they're less…dogs are basically these like highly evolved, like, scavenger garbage eating machines and these dogs that are more bred or like somehow selected away from that.
Annie:
Yeah. Well when you put it that way thought and then you're like, and there are dogs, are these garbage eating machines and here, if there's something they don't want to eat, then maybe means something.
Hanna:
Then that’s even worse!
Annie:
You know what I mean?
Hanna:
I feel like the dogs that are like that are the pet dogs that are like, these like bred as like these toy, non-working dogs are the ones that are more likely to just like turn their nose up. And that can also be behavioral too. Um, because those are the ones that it's like, you know, the grandma's feeding them the table scraps.
Annie:
Right. Which brings me to a question, which I'm sure you hear all the time ‘cause I hear it all the time. Which is, is it okay to give people food to dogs?
Hanna:
That question drives me nuts.
Annie:
And I want to hear your take on this. Mine is always like food is food. And dogs are like, I have access to this food. I don't have access to that food. And that's the difference between human food and dog food from their perspective. But tell me, tell me from a production perspective, what you think about human food for dogs?
Hanna:
I mean, I'm all for it. Like I, when we're cooking in the kitchen and I'm completely reinforcing terrible behavior and my dog is staring up at me chopping up sweet potatoes, she gets some sweet potatoes.
Annie:
Right. Well, I think you just brought it to, you know, the point, which is that it's about the behaviors that you're reinforcing and so you could feed your dog food from your plate while you're eating and that might reinforce the begging, but that doesn't have anything to do with the actual food, which you could also just be putting in their bowl and calling dog food.
Hanna:
Exactly. Yeah. I mean, from my perspective, food is food and highly processed food is highly processed food. And if anything, dog food is less like food than food that we're eating at the dinner table.
Annie:
So you and I agree that food is food, but so why is that so far out a concept for, for most people? My prior self included, like I think like I didn't always, I don't think I always thought about food, my food and dog food all the same, but..
Hanna:
It's all marketing. Um, I mean really the reason why we are conditioned to believe that dogs need these, like, hard little nuggets is that major corporations with lots and lots and lots of money own dog food companies, like 85% of all pet food is produced by something like five companies. Um, and these are like huge companies like Mars and Nestle and Proctor and Gamble. And they have, I think, it's like pet food seems to be like a $23 billion industry this year or something crazy like that. There is so much money in pet food and it is very much in the best interest of these companies to promote that idea. And it happens in like these very insidious ways, all the way back to like vet school. But you know, up until a couple of hundred years ago, dog food didn't exist. They just ate our scraps. Um, there's actually even like ancient Roman cookbooks for dog food.
Annie:
Um, right. And there is a theory that dogs evolved because they started..
Hanna:
… smelling our food cooking.
Annie:
Right. That, you know, wolves began to evolve into dogs as we know them when we started having settlements that had dumps. When we were more nomadic, we didn't have dumps. And once we did, that was the, the wolves that were brave enough to come closest to our dumps that were the ones that eventually…
Hanna:
…that led to our dogs. Yeah. And we benefited from that arrangement too because they would form their little dog colonies outside of our settlements and whenever maybe other not friendly hominids came by, they would start barking and alert us to enemies. So it was a really…and we could sleep more and that would let our brains grow. So, I mean, that's the whole co-evolutionary theory and I think it's so beautiful. And I think it really speaks to the really unique relationship that we have with dogs.
Annie:
And also it's, I mean, it's not that crazy to compare our diets and their diets,
Hanna:
Not at all. Actually, so a lot of what we know about human nutrition and what happens with certain vitamin deficiencies, uh, comes from research studies done on dogs. I'm not a huge fan of animal experimentation, but you know, it would happen a lot. And a lot of these like food studies were done, you know, by giving dogs or depriving dogs, different things. So that's how we know a lot about vitamin deficiencies. And in some ways we know more about dog nutrition than human nutrition because of this
Annie:
Actually, you know what? I never even thought about this in these terms before, but you know, we all know that Ivan Pavlov who, you know, is credited with discovering, I guess you'd say, classical conditioning. I mean, it existed beforehand, but he's credited at least with codifying classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning. He wasn't studying anything having to do with behavior necessarily. He was studying a dog's salivation and their gastrointestinal systems, which speaks to what you're saying and studies that were done on dogs. Yeah.
Hanna:
I mean, because they were so docile, um..
Annie:
and available…
Hanna:
and easy to condition. So they work out really well for, for a lot of kind of scientific purposes.
Annie:
So when I talk to my clients about dog food, often, it just comes to, should I be feeding them dry food or something else? And often it's a question about housebreaking since I specifically work a lot with puppies. And I usually just explain it as you know, I think you're better off feeding something that's close to a fresh food or closer to a whole food, because if you can get away from more processed foods, you're going to get less pee and poop in your life. And when you're dealing with housebreaking you certainly want less pee and poop rather than more. I don't usually go too deeply into the health implications of it all because I feel like it's already, it's already asking a lot of people somehow to get them to think beyond canned foods and dry foods. Do you think that….I mean like when I just explained Evermore to people and I'm like, okay, the food I give to my dog is frozen and I put it in the fridge overnight. Like that as a concept is already really difficult for a lot of people.
Hanna:
It is a lot for people and I'm actually glad that…you know, when I entered the marketplace there weren't very many other companies and making even like the type of product we make and now there are a lot more so that concept, because it's being driven by people investing money into getting it out there, I think it's becoming more widespread. But when it comes down to it, I think the prevalence of kibble is never going to go away and it's a cost and convenience issue. Look, kibble is cheap. It is the cheapest, most economical way to feed your dog. It's cost effective, you know, it's shelf stable, so you don't have to worry about your kibble going bad. You can travel with your kibble and if your dog will eat it, it's, you know, it just is what it is. Like I don't, I don't want to make people feel bad about giving their dogs kibble, but I think if people can broaden their mentality about this food being food thing and realize that there's so much you can do, even with things that are probably already in your own kitchen to enhance that kibble, you can just put other food items in your dog's kibble.You will drastically, drastically improve their health and wellbeing.
Annie:
So what do you say to the people who say, well, that's just spoiling a dog?
Hanna:
I would say it's not spoiling your dog to invest in your dog and making it, it's an investment in their health and in their longevity.
Annie:
and you want your dog to be healthy because that benefits you in the end.
Hanna:
It benefits you, it benefits your wallet if you don't have to drag your dog to the vet every week to figure out what their GI issue is. You know, feeding your dog better, giving them more Omega-3s in their diet can reduce their risk of cancer. I mean there's just so many reasons to want to enhance your dog's diet and it doesn't have to be expensive. I remember I was at a conference and I got to see Dr. Karen Becker speak and for those of you who aren't familiar, she's just this, as celebrity of vet can be like, she is kind of like this rockstar holistic vet.
And in the conference she was saying, you know, you can buy like even the crappiest, commodity meat that you could get at, like you know, Costco. And if you just add that to your dog's kibble, you are going to do more for their health than anything, just by adding a little bit of fresh meat into their lives.
Annie:
Just like, you know, ground chuck.
Hanna:
Yeah. Chuck, like fresh chicken. Just add a little bit of meat to their kibble, a little bit of real meat will do a world of good. Some oil, you can use olive oil, coconut oil, like fish oil, like any, you know, any of that stuff. Just to get a little bit extra into their lives. There's all kinds of nutraceuticals that you can kind of sprinkle over their food that are things that are in your kitchen that will make your dog's life better.
You know, one of my favorite moments whenever I'm introducing anyone to our product is I'll just hand them a box and let them read the ingredient list on the back and just watch their face and watch that moment where they realize, Hey, this is better than what I eat.
**music**
Annie:
I know that you and Alison actually did eat your food for a while. Tell me how that came to be.
Hanna:
That was actually, so we're on the seven year anniversary of that month of our lives. Um, I guess the way that came to be…was we were just getting out there in the marketplace and we were like, okay, we need people to know about us to want to buy our food. And we didn't have a marketing budget, so I just had this Eureka moment like, “Hey, we could get attention by eating it. Like, let's just, let's just do it.” And I kind of came up with this whole concept based on Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. And I decided we would call it “Evermore Me,” but instead of eating McDonald's for a month, we would eat our own dog food for a month. Um, which we did.
And we set very specific parameters. We weren't eating the dog food like three meals a day every day. We did it for lunch. We actually live streamed our meals on our website. Um, you can still watch the archived footage at evermorepetfood.com
Annie:
You ate it for lunch but you, your other meals were from the same ingredients?
Hanna:
We limited ourselves to ingredients on the box. So we made, and since Alison is a chef, we actually came up with like a whole array of really cool recipes. Like we made these like breakfast bars with like the pumpkin seeds and like barley syrup as like a sweetener and just these really cool creative… we did these kale oatcakes that were really good. So we made all these really cool recipes. It was super healthy. I, at that point, I'd been carrying like an extra like eight pounds or so from college that never went away. By the end of the month I was, like, in the best shape of my life. I had a ton of energy. I saved a lot of money from not eating out all the time. Like it made grocery shopping super simple. I mean I won't lie.
Annie:
I've fed Amos Evermore sometimes and I'm like, um, I wish I could just feed myself so easily out of a box and like not have to think about it and know that there was lots of good stuff in here.
Hanna:
I know it's enviable.
Annie:
I've never gone as far as like frying it up as a hamburger, but I have thought about doing it.
Hanna:
It's an acquired taste. I have to say, like for me, like there's a texture issue. There's things like the pumpkin seeds that are ground up and the kelp kind of like give it like a little bit of grit and there's, there is organ meats, so if you don't like the taste of liver, which frankly, I find appalling, it's definitely takes a minute to get used to it. But a little hot sauce and salt, seriously work wonders.
You know part of the thing with the food is that it's bland. Um, dogs don't have the same taste buds that we have. They don't need salt and spices to want to eat something. They just need it to smell like meat.
You know what's funny is that this whole concept of like complete and balanced food, like there's more of a movement to get that kind of dog food experience for people now. Like that the company is Soylent and I think that there's some other ones now where they're these kind of like complete meal replacement drinks and I find them all creepy frankly because they are deriving most of their nutrients from sort of just like synthesize lab vitamins and not really using the whole foods as the basis of the nutrition.
Annie:
Which is really though the basis of commercial dog food.
Hanna:
So yeah, it's like moving towards, like, dog food for people. Most commercial pet foods are made from pretty inferior ingredients and then they hit those specific nutrient profiles that we spoke about earlier by just spraying them with a lot of vitamins and minerals. And, you know, what's funny is it's actually debatable as to how bioavailable a lot of this stuff is. So you're getting the vitamins into the dogs, but they're not necessarily even absorbing them in the most optimal way.
Annie:
And is that, like, in order to turn a chicken into dog kibble, you have to do so much to it that it ends up taking out the necessary vitamins and minerals so they have to put it back in? Am I understanding that right?
Hanna:
Yeah. And there's just other vitamins and minerals too that you're not necessarily getting and you know, just inthe chicken, but what they, and it's actually also the cooking, like the heat processing that they're using. When they're making kibble through these extrusion machines, like, we're looking at like 400, 500 degree cook processes. I mean, there are a couple of companies that do a slow bake, lower temperature kibble out there.
AnnieL
I guess it's also because they're trying to make something that's going to live in a bag for a really long time.
Hanna:
Yeah,exactly. And they just need to cook all the moisture out of it.
Annie:
Um, which is funny when you think about it because it's like you shouldn't be buying something based on how long it's going to be able to go uneaten.
Hanna:
You wanna hear something gross actually about kibble.
Annie:
Tell me. Yes.
Hanna:
Food allergies are big problem with dogs and a lot of times people assume, “oh, it's chicken, it's beef.” One thing that a lot of dogs are actually turning out to be allergic to is something called kibble mites. Um, yeah, your bags of kibble, pretty much after a long enough timeline, they will all develop these mites that live in the kibble, kind of like, you know, how those weird mites that live on our eyelashes at night and like come out. It's like that but in dog food.
And a lot of the dogs, newer theories are, is that this is one of the things that they're allergic to. You know people will get a small bag of something to test it out for their dog and they're like,” oh, the dog's not allergic to this thing.” And then they'll get the bigger bag and then they think that their dog is getting sensitized to the new thing and is developing a new allergy, but it's actually the mites that they're allergic to all along. Super gross. Right.
Annie:
That's so gross.
Hanna:
If you have a small dog, don't buy the bigger bags because they're cheaper.
Annie:
Another thing that is interesting about Evermore that I didn't know made a difference, but once you explained it to me, it made sense-is that you do batch testing.
Hanna:
Yeah, we actually lab test every batch before we ship to customers and we test for a couple of different things. We test for pathogens. You know, there's a lot of recalls right now and the big one that you hear about is salmonella. But there are other pathogens that can be in pet food as well. And we test for them. And the other thing we test for is nutrient balance and just, uh, making sure that our vitamin and mineral and fat and protein levels are where they should be. Um, because sometimes we're shipping 16 pounds of dog food that's gonna stay in the freezer. You know, it's a little different from keeping a bag kibble out for like some five pound dog. And these people are going to keep this food for months to feed their small dog. So if you're feeding the same thing, day in and day out and it's not complete and it doesn't have what it's supposed to have in it
Annie:
or it has some toxins.
Hanna:
…or has some toxin that's going to cause real problems. And this is something that we take so seriously.
Annie:
You've actually thrown out huge batches haven’t you?
Hanna:
You know, we don't like talking about it. But yeah like there has been like once or twice in like the history of our company. We haven't found anything pathogenic but there was like, you know, one time there was, like, a balance issue where we no longer work at this kitchen but they forgot to put in our calcium. And we couldn't sell that food or that would really cause a problem. So we, and we're lucky we tested it before we sent it out cause that's what… You know, recalls shouldn't happen if companies are doing their due diligence. Part of the reason we have so many recalls is because the correct steps aren't happening ahead of time to ensure that doesn't happen.
Annie:
With something like pet food, from what I now understand because you're feeding your dog who is, you know, a 10th of your weight or whatever, it depends how much you weigh.
Hanna:
Or how big your dog is.
Annie:
But you're feeding an animal that is smaller than you probably who's eating the same thing every meal. So if there's something wrong with what they're eating, it's going to have a much bigger effect than like you having one bad…
Hanna:
…meal at a restaurant. Yeah. Like you have something bad at a restaurant, you have a bad night.
Annie:
Like there could be some small amount of something that's not good that is going to build up in your dog’s system because they're eating the same thing over and over.
Hanna:
Look at what has happened with the pentobarbital recalls, which I mean that is like, I mean that would never happen with us cause we're buying like clean healthy meats from like good sources. But this is something we've now seen with a couple of different companies. So I mean this is particularly relevant. Recently, there was a major recall because…dog actually died from pentobarbital that was found in trace elements in…
Annie:
What’s pentobarbital.
Hanna:
Pentobarbital is actually a drug that is used to euthanize animals. Um, it's used, you know, in both…veterinary practices. Like I mean it can be used to euthanize pets, it can be used to euthanize livestock.
So what's happening is that when meat is made into, like, meals for kibble, the meat that goes into most kibble comes from rendering facilities. Rendering facilities get their meat from a wide variety of places and this can include meat that's considered not fit to go into the human food supply chain. So that, basically, the disease dying animals that are coming from big agriculture are going to these rendering plants where they, you know, go into this meat protein slurry, get dried out and turned into meal. And that's what goes into your kibble.
Theoretically, if this were happening from clean traceable sources, it would just be a highly concentrated source of protein and like shouldn't be terrible. But because these are sick animals that are being used as you know, we don't know what's going in there. Basically like there's no accountability. And what's happened a couple of times recently is that yeah, there are these euthanasia drugs are being found in pet food and in some cases killing people's pets.
Annie:
Something that I learned from reading that Marion Nestle book is that a lot of commercial dog food is made in the same kitchens, right? I mean, or same
Hanna:
factories.
Annie: Yeah not kitchens, factory. So you know, you think you're buying, you might, whether you're buying what's like a high brand or a low brand, let's call it, you know, chances are…
Hanna:
…it could in the same place yeah.
Annie:
With a lot of the same ingredients. Right?
Hanna:
I mean, really at the end of the day, half the time you just don't really know.
Annie:
Like right now, there, since I've known you, there are all these other brands that have come out and some of them seem extra appealing because they come to your door fresh. They're not frozen. Right? But from what I understand, um, that might not afford them the opportunity to do the kind of batch testing that you guys do. Isn't that right?
Hanna:
That's correct. It takes 'em, particularly, usually most lab tests take a couple of days, particularly things where you're looking for bacteria. You need to culture that bacteria. And that doesn't happen right away. It's not an instant like, “Oh the salmonella is here.” You have to like kind of put something on a slide and let it grow to figure out what's actually in the food.
And I have yet to find a lab that will give me a mineral analysis overnight either. Um, you know what's interesting is actually a lot of the companies that started out doing just fresh are actually sort of walking away from that. Um, there are a couple that still do it, but I think that they are realizing that there are hazards involved, which is a good thing. There is definitely duration involved and that's why it's a good idea if you're going to be buying your food from a commercial source to like have the assurances that they're testing it before it's coming to you.
Annie:
Do you think that the industry has changed in a meaningful way since you started out?
Hanna:
That's a really good question. Um, I think that the most meaningful changes are happening from the bottom up. I don't think… I think anything that the bigger companies are doing are mostly like lip service to like capitalize on trends and maybe they're using different language. But I think, you know, even the promotion of like or not the permission, the sort of appearance of more companies making food similar to ours. I'd argue that we're the best, but the bottom line is there are more companies out there to address this real demand for human grade food. And that's a term that you're going to see, that we are seeing a lot more now. Human grade meaning, it's actually undefined. There's a lot of nebulousness around the term “human grade”, but in theory, human grade…
Annie:
look at, look at what humans eat.
Hanna:
Serious. I know, I always like make that point. It's like, yeah, like you know, you get a steak at Peter Luger's and a hamburger at McDonald's. It's both human grade. It's both beef.
Annie:
Cheetos are human grade.
Hanna:
Yeah Cheetos are human grade. I really questioned that. Cheetos are pretty close to kibble I guess, just spray it with vitamins.
But I think that there is a real, what we're noticing, what I'm noticing more and more of is that the consumers are more educated. I am getting a lot more inquiries from people. There's more people seeking out alternatives. So I think that there is a real awareness around food that's being led, it's mostly young people, mostly people actually younger. I don't think of myself as old, but it's these millennials, they really care and um, they really are driving kind of a shift in how and how food is, you know, thought of, which is a good thing. But I think from the top down, not so much.
Annie:
Right. Well, and also in why do you think the millennials care? I mean, why like, I mean, we're sort of stereotyping a group. I care and I don’t know if I’m a millennial
Hanna:
I'm technically a millennial actually. I think we're both technically zennials. There’s a micro generation between like 1977 and 1983.
Annie:
Oh, really?
Hanna:
Also called the Oregon Trail generation.
Annie:
Oh my god, Oregon Trail really?
Hann:
Yeah. Basically there are whole big pieces about this, about how there's this micro-generation where basically we were before everything went digital. So we're not digital native. We're like basically the last generation that wasn't digitally native, but we were young enough as this technology was emerging that we like really picked it up. So we're either the Zennials between Generation X and Millennial or the Oregon Trail generation depending on who you ask.
Annie:
So this Oregon Trail generation that you and I are in, and those who follow us.
Hanna:
Whenever I hate on millennials, I remember that, I'm like, okay, I'm technically an older millennial.
Um, I think, I just think that there's, with all of the information in the world at our fingertips, people are just more educated consumers. They're reading more about the bad things that are happening. They're reading more about the good things that are happening. We've been in this like, you know, that whole like baby boomer, everything is processed like postwar, like when processed food really came, we were kind of reacting against that. And I think that that reaction against processed food, moving more towards, like, natural, organic, sometimes obnoxiously like super foodie, like you know, way off the deep end levels of things. Um, that's partially a reaction, but it's partially just like a growing consciousness because we have all of this information available to us.
Annie:
I mean like the thing about Whole Foods, It’s called Whole Foods because it's about whole foods as opposed to,
Hanna:
Yeah, exactly. And it's just so funny because eating not whole foods was such like in the whole of human history, like such a small blip.
Annie:
That's interesting.
And in the whole of dog history, such a small blip, you know, of eating these like these like postwar frankenfoods. We weren’t eating super processed foods before, you know, the 1950s.
Annie:
No, it's true. It's, kind of like, trendy to like bash the industrial food movement and, you know, hold up all the reasons why the paleo diet or whatever is a more natural diet. But it's like we're combating, we're combating a whole, a relatively small moment in time.
Hanna:
Yeah.
Annie:
We're combating something that was popular during a relatively small moment in time at which we're maybe like towards the end of that.
Hanna:
Hopefully. I mean, it's still, don't get me wrong, processed food is still, like, prevalent around the world and in a weird way, like it's like the wealthy industrialized nations that are able to step away from it more while developing nations are kind of falling into it.
Annie:
Right. And I think it's easier to, it's something that's easier to control about our dog's life than it is about our own life.
Hanna:
Oh yeah. I mean, the beauty of putting your dog on a diet, man. If it's a little overweight and you want that dog to lose that weight, all that it requires is like, unless there's something is a measuring cup and a little bit like stronger willpower than they have. Like your dog can't cheat on their diet until they develop thumbs. As long as you're like, as long as you have the willpower,
Annie:
It’s so true. You know, while we're here, you know, like talking down about processed food. I know that I love my M&Ms and ice cream and smart food,but it's, it's not hard for me to feed my dog a whole food diet. I mean, it's not hard for me to feed myself a whole food diet because my husband does most of the cooking around here.
Hanna:
Really the secret to eating really well is having somebody else like cooking really well for you.
Annie:
Yes!
Hanna:
As soon as that's an ounce of work, then yeah, it's easier to like open the package of something.
Annie:
Which is why I got married.
Hanna:
My boyfriend’s are pretty good cook too.
But, yeah, it's funny that you mentioned that. Yeah. No dogs can slim down like that as long as you actually stick to their diet. Right, like I said, we cheat for them, not the other way.
Annie:
Right. Um, and table scraps are only tables scraps if they come from the table.
Hanna:
I wanna get to the flip side of this to actually just like while we're kind of talking kind of more broadly, it's also not going to kill you, if your dog eats like relatively health most of the time, they can also have some junk food sometimes, like, you know, it's all about the balance. Like you don't, you don't have to think like, “Oh my god, my dog can only eat this, like organic, healthy, like whatever for his entire life and he can never get a Milk-Bone.” I mean, I think that's like also kind of like,you're being orthorexic for your dog. They did evolve to eat garbage.
Annie:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's nothing wrong with, you know, when I've been on the road with Amos, he certainly indulged in some cans of Alpo and I don't feel too bad about it, but I just now knowing what I know now as a better pet food consumer, I would just worry about giving him something like that all the time because I understand the buildup and to me it was just so fascinating that dog foods are balanced. So, um….
Hanna:
…specifically?
Annie:
Specifically. But just this idea of looking at a bag of dog food and being like, oh, every single piece in this thing is like a micro perfect little meal and that it's been designed in that specific way.
Hanna:
I know it's super weird. I know you do get jealous, don't you? Like, Oh, I wish my life could be this easy.
Annie:
You yes, I do wish my life could be this easy.
**music**
Annie:
You can learn more about Hanna and Evermore Pet Food at evermorepetfood.com and visit Anniegrossman.com to see some things I've written about Hanna both recently and in the past.
Our Woof Shout Out of the day goes to Evermore client Lucy, who lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and this is what her humans had to write to Hanna about giving their dog her food.
“I am sure at one point in our correspondence I mentioned our now 14 year old rescue Dalmatian. We've had her for 13 years. I wanted to let you know that we had stopped running Lucy three to four years ago as she just didn't want to do it anymore at her age, which seemed to be catching up with her. Well, after several months on her new Evermore only diet, my wife and I both began to notice an increase in her energy level, but this morning was a shocker. She surprised my wife on their walk by breaking into a run nonstop for well over a mile before letting up probably only to let my life get over the shock. She had not run in years. We are over the moon about her response to the food. We know she won't live forever, but the fact that her quality of life is again so awesome at this age is a blessing. Thanks again for the wonderful product.”
Annie:
Fun dog fact of the day: Did you know that the same person who came up with the idea of creating dog biscuits in the shape of little bones also invented both margarine and polyester? It is true. His name was Carlton Ellis.
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