The BARF diet: My Review
In this second book review, I’m going to tell you if I enjoyed reading “The BARF Diet” written by Dr. Ian Billinghurst and if I recommend this book. If you haven’t read it yet, my first book review was on a book that I really enjoyed: “Dog Food Logic”.
What is the book about?
Unsurprisingly, the goal of this book is to explain to a beginner raw feeder what is a BARF diet and how to feed it to their pets. Dr. Ian Billinghurst came up with the BARF acronym (and diet) which stands for “Biologically Appropriate Raw Food” or “Bones And Raw Food”. The BARF diet is now one of the most popular types of raw diets, especially in Europe. However, many communities which claim to be following the BARF diet don’t follow exactly the ratios and recommendations of Dr. Ian Billinghurst, but evolved from them.
The first part of the book explains the principles of an evolutionary diet like the BARF, as well as the benefits for our pets and why grain-based pet foods are dangerous for our pets.
The second part of the book is more of a practical guide on how to put this diet in practice, with an example of a “recipe” and some troubleshooting advice.
The book doesn’t go into much detail, so it’s a light read and you don’t need any previous knowledge in nutrition or raw feeding to read it. It’s also very short, so you could easily read it in one afternoon.
Is the book relevant when you have a cat and not a dog?
While the subtitle mentions “Raw Feeding for Dogs & Cats”, it feels like most of the book was written exclusively for dogs and then only a paragraph here and there about cats was added. As it’s often the case for those types of books, don’t expect half of the book to be about cats. There are generally 4 pages about dogs for every one page about cats.
Did I like the book?
The bad
Let’s start with what I didn’t like or agree with in this book.
As you know, my cats are raw fed and I have seen on them the many benefits of a raw diet. I dedicated an entire article to the benefits of raw feeding as reported in the scientific literature. So, while I recognize the many benefits of a raw diet, I wasn’t comfortable with the way they are presented in the book. The effect of the raw diet seemed so extraordinary that it was almost hard to believe and Dr. Billinghurst doesn’t provide any sources for his many claims. This would be fine if only it were clearly stated that these benefits just come from anecdotal evidence, from his personal experience.
I’m not going to make an exhaustive list of everything that I don’t agree with that I found in this book, but here are some examples.
I found several pieces of advice questionable, such as the addition of garlic without mentioning that high doses can be toxic, or the advice of fasting a cat for a day (or two!).
According to Dr. Billinghurst, the most important supplement to feed is cod liver oil. I don’t like this recommendation because cod liver oil is easily overdosed: just two teaspoons a day of it would provide 40 times the daily requirements of vitamin A and vitamin D for a cat. I would personally not be comfortable feeding such a high level of vitamin A and D, even if it’s still below the safe upper limit.
For the actual recipe and feeding suggestion, I would not recommend following them for two main reasons. First, the amount of raw meaty bones is far too high and which would cause constipation (but later on, it’s specified that constipation is apparently normal!!). Secondly, the feeding quantity is roughly double of what most approaches to a raw diet recommend and it would definitely provide far too many calories. It made me question if he ever actually fed a cat.
Finally, I also noticed some incoherences in the recommendations, such as claiming that raw meaty bones would provide all the minerals needed in the diet, but then it’s still important to supplement kelp to provide iodine, which is a mineral.
Overall, I don’t really agree with the philosophy of the BARF diet. In fact, while feeding a diet that is close to what cats eat naturally is important, I don’t believe that the diet of a wild cat is necessarily perfect. Similarly, I think that there are a lot of useful things that we can learn and apply in a raw diet from nutrition science and from nutrient requirements such as the ones of the NRC.
The good
To the credit of Dr. Billinghurst, many of his recommendations are really good and often under-represented in many raw feeding communities. Like the importance of fiber in the BARF diet, as he recommends the addition of vegetables.
He also isn’t against the idea of supplementing a diet. For example, he suggests adding as supplements a source of omega 3, vitamin E, and kelp. All of those are important to cover common nutritional deficiencies in raw diets.
He also suggests feeding ground bones whenever a cat or a dog can’t eat entire raw meaty bones, which some communities are strongly against.
The book also includes a reminder of hygiene rules when manipulating raw meat which is essential when you are feeding raw.
The formatting
While I believe that the content prevails on the form, I have to say a few words on it. The formatting of the book is very confusing, with highlighted sentences that can easily be confused with a title. The lack of consistency in the units (sometimes written as ounces, Oz, oz, and even 0z!), as well as many formatting issues such as an entire paragraph where all the closing parenthesis were replaced by open ones, make the book very unpleasant to read. I found this lack of proofreading quite unprofessional.
Who should read it?
Honestly, I can’t recommend this book. Especially if you are a beginner and you want to learn how to raw feed as the recipes are not well adapted.
The only case I would recommend it is if you want to actually know what is the origin of the BARF diet and the point of view of Dr. Ian Billinghurst.
About the author
Dr. Ian Billinghurst is an Australian Veterinary and he also has a B.Sc.Agr. (Bachelor of Science in Agriculture) as an Agronomist and Nutritionist. He is one of the most famous personalities in the raw feeding community as the creator of the BARF diet since the beginning of the ‘80s. Before this book, he wrote two others: Give Your Dog a Bone, and Grow Your Pups with Bones, which focuses on raw feeding for dogs and puppies, respectively.
To conclude, while I don't recommend following the recipes present in this book, it was nevertheless interesting to see what the original BARF philosophy actually is, as each BARF community will now have its own variations.
This actually comforts me in the idea to keep calling the diet I'm feeding my cats a raw diet rather than a BARF one, as BARF doesn't really reflect my philosophy.