Dr. Pottenger's Experiment.

Ever heard of Dr. Pottenger's cat experiment? Well, if you haven't, you're going to today! It's really quite interesting and really gives you something to consider. Wikipedia is obviously public knowledge, so here is a brief summary of the study taken from there.

Pottenger's cats

Pottenger used donated laboratory cats to test the potency of the adrenal extract hormones he was making. The adrenal glands of these cats were removed for the experiments and Pottenger noted that most of the cats died during or followng the operation. He was feeding the cats a supposedly nutritive diet consisting of raw milk, cod liver oil and cooked meat scraps of liver, tripe, sweetbread, brains, heart and muscle.

When the number of donated cats exceeded the supply of food available, Pottenger began ordering raw meat scraps from a local meat packing plant, including organs, meat, and bone; and fed a separate group of cats from this supply. Within months this separate group appeared in better health than the cooked meat group. Their kittens were more energetic and, most interestingly, their post-operative death rate was lower.

At a certain point, he decided to begin a controlled scientific study. Pottenger conducted studies involving approximately 900 cats over a period of ten years, with three generations of cats being studied.

[edit]Meat study

In one study, one group of cats was fed a diet of two-thirds raw meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil while the second group was fed a diet of two-thirds cooked meat, one-third raw milk, and cod-liver oil. The cats fed the all-raw diet were healthy while the cats fed the cooked meat diet developed various health problems.

• By the end of the first generation the cats started to develop degenerative diseases and became quite lazy.
• By the end of the second generation, the cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination.
• By the end of the third generation the cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span. Many of the third generation cats couldn't even produce offspring. There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over 90 percent in the third generation of deficient cats. Kittens of the third generation did not survive six months. Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes. Males became docile while females became more aggressive.
• The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.

At the time of Pottenger's Study the amino acid taurine had been discovered but had not yet been identified as an essential amino acid for Cats. Today many cats thrive on a cooked meat diet where taurine has been added after cooking. The deficient diets lacked sufficient taurine to allow the cats to properly form protein structures and resulted in the health effects observed. Pottenger himself concluded that there was likely an "as yet unknown" protein factor that may have been heat sensitive.

[edit]Milk Study

In another study, dubbed the "Milk Study," the cats were fed 2/3 milk and 1/3 meat. All groups were fed raw meat with different groups getting raw, pasteurized, evaporated, sweetened condensed or raw metabolized vitamin D milk. The cats on raw milk were the healthiest while the rest exhibited varying degrees of health problems similar to the previous cooked meat study.

This particular Pottenger cat study has been cited by advocates of raw milk as evidence that it is likely healthier for humans than pasteurized milk.

[edit]References

[edit]Books

• Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition. ISBN 0-916764-06-0
• Fundamental Chemistry in Lab. ISBN 0-673-07877-9

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So, what do you think? If you have time, you could do some research and find that there are some opposing thoughts to this study. They have come up with multiple reasons why the study wasn't good or valid, but bottom line: it matters what you put into your body. So, take it for what it's worth, and consider yourself a little more educated today!