Heart

When it comes to raw feeding pets, heart is actually classified as “meat” rather than “offal” due to the nutrition it provides our pets. Like meat, heart is a highly digestible source of complete protein.
Heart, along with offal such as liver and kidney, is a rich source of the important amino acid taurine. Taurine is a conditionally essential amino acid for dogs. Meaning that it is critically important for health but can be made by the body, providing its amino acid building blocks are plentiful enough in the diet. In the case of taurine, dogs need enough methionine and cystine in their diet to make this important amino acid that is critical for heart health.
A diet rich in high quality amino acids, such as a raw food diet provide all of the amino acids dogs need, including Taurine.
For cats, taurine is an essential requirement from the diet because cats cannot manufacture their own taurine from other amino acids, like dogs can. For this reason, Big Dog for Cats recipes contain large enough amounts of taurine-containing ingredients so that cats have enough naturally occurring taurine in their diet.
Taurine is important for eye health and also enables the digestion of fat from the diet, for the production of energy. Taurine also has an important role in regulating calcium through the body which contributes to its critical importance to healthy heart function.
Co Enzyme Q10 is also found in high amounts concentrated in heart tissue. A powerful antioxidant, CoEnzyme Q 10 is produced by the body but this production declines with age so obtaining this nutrient from the diet, contributes to overall health and wellbeing, cardiovascular health, and healthy ageing.
Heart is a low-fat protein and its inclusion in Big Dog raw food recipes increases the amount of high-quality protein in every meal, while helping to maintain overall healthy fat levels.
Like many other meats, heart is a good source of B vitamins as well as the minerals zinc, iron, and selenium.