Pottenger's cat experiments

Between 1932 and 1942, Francis M. Pottenger, Jr., M.D., conducted his now
classic ten-year, multi-generation nutrition study on cats. This decade of
data has been neatly condensed into a concise, inexpensive 119-page book
entitled Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition, also incorporating
summaries of some two dozen of the doctor's nutrition papers.

Pottenger's cat experiments were, in a nutshell, a decade-long,
scientifically controlled "Supersize Me" experiment. Basically, there were
two groups of cats: the cats who daily ate the kitty equivalent of Burglar
King and McNothing foods, that is, nothing but cooked food. The other group
was fed raw food.

What do you suppose think was the result?

OK, class; let's not always see the same hands.

Yes, you're right. The raw food cats thrived. The cooked food cats did not,
and there were no merciful middle-schoolers there to save them.

I have a cat; her name is Dolly. She is asleep on my lap as I write this.
Dolly was cast off in a rural store parking lot. We brought her home hungry,
and to this day she retains the most amazing kitty appetite I have ever
seen. We have repeatedly discovered that she is inexplicably partial to
fresh Italian bread. She will energetically eat cooked green beans, zucchini
squash, and beets. As for raw vegetables, she is famous in cyberspace as the
Carrot Cat (photos at http://www.doctoryourself.com/cat1.html). The Carrot
Cat will eat raw carrot pulp left over when I make carrot juice. (Of course,
she is also fed a variety of animal foods.) As I write these very words, she
is using her forehead to lift my hand away from the keyboard and go feed
her. Again.

Even for the cat-lovers among us, the larger question must be, To what
extent do the Pottenger Cat Experiments apply to people? Chapters 11 and 12
specifically address this, focusing on children's skeletal development.
Chapter 9 provides an excellent validation for breastfeeding. I am
particularly intrigued with Pottenger's observations that cats fed on cooked
meat and milk develop "all kinds" of allergies, and hypothyroidism. When fed
raw foods, the cats' symptoms go away. (p 33) I personally have seen a case
where a 67-year-old woman, who was on a prescribed low dose of Synthroid, no
longer needed it after just a few weeks of raw vegetable juicing. She is 87
now and her doctors have confirmed that still does not require any thyroid
supplement.

At the very least, the Pottenger Cat Experiments show what an unsupplemented
lifetime diet of cooked meat can do to a carnivore. But the more important
message of the experiments is that they also show recovery on a raw-food
diet. I think we can reasonably infer that this applies to people.

http://www.doctoryourself.com/cat1.html

Tweet