MEDIA RELEASE
Newcastle, Australia – 13 August 2019 – Bestie Kitchen, a Newcastle-based dog food start-up, today launches a new dog food and free app, designed to solve the key problem with the rising trend to raw and homemade dog food.
In essence, dog parents get the fresh meat protein and add the bestie balancing supplement to balance and boost it. They use the app to work out the quantity to feed for each protein.
Dog parents increasingly apply human food choices to their fur babies, using the logic that if they eat fresh, and avoid processed food for themselves, they should also feed the same to their dogs. However, an analysis of 391 diets found that the majority of homemade dog food is not balanced and nutritionally complete.
The bestie balancing supplement has been designed to provide the missing fatty acids, vitamins and minerals that are so often missing in homemade dog food, when added to the recommended amounts of fresh protein. It’s made from all-natural, human food-grade ingredients, and uses no synthetic vitamins.
“Dog parents are increasingly sceptical of commercial food, especially kibble," Bestie Kitchen Managing Director Amanda Falconer said. "They want to know and have control over what goes into their dogs’ food, and increasingly, they also want to feed fresh. These are their 'fur babies' after all, so it makes sense that they want to feed them like family.”
The bestie supplement is designed to support a high protein, low carb diet, biologically appropriate for dogs, and good for maintaining lean muscle mass. It includes five power-house fruit and veg, three super herbs, five Australian superfoods, green lipped mussel, cod liver oil, pre- and probiotics, bone broth and MCHA bone meal from pasture-fed Australian cattle.
The bestie app helps address the growing dog obesity epidemic, by working out food quantities based on the metabolizable energy of specific diets and the dog’s weight, age and activity level.
In Australia, 41% of dogs are overweight or obese, and worldwide, it’s 59%.
A small number of dog owners, and their dogs, has 'beta-tested' the first bestie supplement.
"Right from the start my little girl loved Bestie. She is usually a very fussy eater but didn’t hesitate to tuck into the Bestie no matter what protein I added to it. I’ve been home cooking for her for a while now and Bestie is so much simpler and saves so much time as all the hard work is done for you and takes all the guess work out of balancing your dogs meals," said beta-tester dog owner Margaret.
"After years of tweaking Axel's diet to manage weight and skin allergies, we're so happy to have found Bestie. The detailed food program information prior to starting gave us the utmost confidence we were dishing out the correct portions. Mixing the Bestie supplement was so much simpler than sweet potato. The app and meal plan really helped us switch up the protein rather than just relying on Roo meat for every meal. Axel gobbles the mix with no hesitation. After just a week with Bestie we noticed a shinier coat, less scratching and even a little weight loss that we needed!" said beta-tester Sam.
The first bestie supplement can be found here. The app can be found here.
