Kidney

Kidney, like heart and liver is a rich dietary source of complete protein, particularly 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 acid’s 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.

Kidney is high in essential vitamins including vitamin A, B2, B6, B7, B12 and essential minerals iron and selenium. It also offers good amounts of copper and zinc.

Kidney also contains the amino acid L-ergothioneine which has been shows in animal research to benefit kidney health when consumed as part of the diet.

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