Dr. Judy Morgan 0:00
Welcome to the Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. Let's get to it.
Dr. Judy Morgan 0:05
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Judy Morgan. I'm excited today to have Braeden Ruud as my guest. Today we're going to talk about why the way pet food is made matters which we all we all if you've been following me at all, you know that I'm kind of a nut about how pet food is made. Braeden, thank you for joining me today.
Braeden Ruud
Oh, thank you for having me today. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. So it's kind of surreal to be chatting with Dr. Judy right now. This is pretty cool for me.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Well, that's awesome. So we met quite a few years ago at Global Pet Expo. And I believe at that time, Karen Becker was in your booth standing next to you and she's a friend so it made it really easy to stop over and start talking. But for those of you who don't know Braeden, he's the co founder and CEO of Raised Right, a family owned human grade pet food company that makes home cooked style limited ingredient recipes that are high in protein and low in carbs. Braeden's family roots in farming and ranching date back for centuries, and which I think is really cool. What state are you in Montana?
Braeden Ruud
New Hampshire now.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Wait, what?
Braeden Ruud 1:32
Yeah, I recently moved to New Hampshire. I went to school in the Boston area. So that's where I met my wife. And, and yeah, we're back. We love it out here. But my family's all still back on on the farm. It's actually up in Alberta. So just north of Montana. Yeah.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Oh, holy cow. Yeah. Holy cow. It's cold there.
Braeden Ruud
Yeah, it gets cold, it gets cold.
Dr. Judy Morgan
How do you raise cows in that kind of cold?
Braeden Ruud
They're, they're amazing animals. You know, they adapt and, and we do our calving in the spring. So it's much warmer for them. Yeah, we don't want to put them through entering this planet in minus 40. You know,
Dr. Judy Morgan
no kidding. Yeah, I did. Our family won when my kids were small, we won a trip to a dude ranch in Wyoming which kind of amazing you know, put our little slip in a fishbowl and an event and when the guy called I was like, this is a joke, right? And so we got a free trip to a dude ranch in Wyoming and I was just like, I just want to herd cattle.
Dr. Judy Morgan 2:40
So they took us out and they were like, Okay, first we need to go find some cows. But it was amazing country and a really fun thing to do. And we did finally find some cattle. So do you only raise cattle on the ranch? Or do you have other animals as well?
Braeden Ruud
We have some horses too. And then obviously dogs, cats and growing up we planted crops like wheat, barley, oats, flax. And yeah, we don't we don't do any anything on the crop side anymore. It's just cattle now. we just rent out our our farmland to to a neighbor who who plants crops now.
Dr. Judy Morgan
So, your company decided or your family whatever decided at some point to start this pet food company. Do you use your own cattle in the food?
Braeden Ruud
No, because it's in Canada. It's pretty expensive to...
Dr. Judy Morgan
I was wondering about that. Okay, yeah, you're sourcing all of your animal proteins from the US?
Braeden Ruud
Yes. Yeah, all the animal proteins are from the US so everything gets made in Pennsylvania.
Braeden Ruud 3:52
There's there's a couple ingredients for example, like organic kelp powder that that comes from from Canada.
Braeden Ruud 4:01
Our cod liver oil comes from Norway. But I think everything else outside of that comes from the United States. And flaxseed oil actually comes from just north of the border in Saskatchewan, Canada too.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Getting anything across the border right now in either direction is just about impossible. So good for you. So why did you go from Hey, we have this really nice farm. How big is the farm by the way?
Braeden Ruud
It's a it's a couple 1000 acres.
Dr. Judy Morgan 4:34
We have 23 acres. I can't imagine a couple 1000.
Braeden Ruud
I mean, in Canada because it's so big. That's kind of, you know, that's not like, that's not like a huge operation. You know, it's it's, you know, maybe maybe slightly above average, but you know, it's I guess at what, it's what it takes to to create food for enough people to eat nowadays. You know?
Dr. Judy Morgan 5:00
Well, it's amazing and thank your family for withstanding cold winters out there feeding cattle and doing the things that you need to do. So why did you decide, hey, let's start making pet food? I'm sure you didn't need another thing to do.
Braeden Ruud 5:18
So yeah, this journey. This whole journey began back on March 16, 2007. Many of the people listening probably remember what happened that day. But I'll tell it from my point of view, I think I was 15 years old at the time, I just got home from school. And I walked into our house to find a bunch of fresh cooked food sitting on the kitchen counter there was like ground beef, steamed carrots, blueberries, and we had a rule growing up where we wait to eat together as a family but the bus ride home from school took about an hour and a half with all the stops because of how far out of town our family's farm is. And so being a hungry 15 year old kid who had the kitchen all to himself, I I tried to sneak myself a quick plate and and my mom came out of nowhere, it was like don't even think about it. that food's not for you. It's for the pets. There's leftovers for you in the fridge.
Braeden Ruud 6:23
What are you talking about? Are you serious right now and, and she said Braeden, there was a massive outbreak of pet food contamination today. 1000s Of Pets got sick and died. We're not risking it. We're making our own food from now on. So you know, as time went by, people heard about what my mom was doing and asked if she could start making food for their pets too because they didn't really trust the food they're feeding their pets either. And, and this is what inspired us to create a company that pet parents can trust through placing a really strong emphasis on food safety, on transparency and, and obviously on nutrition too.
Dr. Judy Morgan 7:07
Amazing. You know, I will never forget when that announcement came because I was actually speaking at an expo on horses Believe it or not, because I used to do a lot of horse work in Pennsylvania. And we were out getting dinner sitting in a restaurant and there was a TV on and on that TV was this big announcement and I kind of went Wait, whoa what? Like what am I missing here? And you know, I was blown away that I already didn't really trust the pet food industry but I was pretty blown away that something that massive could be that much of a problem. And the following year I traveled to China to study acupuncture some more and while I was there, they stopped allowing anyone to get dairy products so you would go to Starbucks which they have those over there and go to Starbucks and you could only get soy milk or almond milk because the melamine was being put into the dairy products again despite the protein and babies and children were dying from the melamine just like our pets had been killed by the melamine so you know the human food industry is just as scary. Maybe more scary? I don't know. Yeah, so well that is amazing. And I will tell you that my 15 year old son went all through high school. I used to have big pots of food cooking for my dogs and he would come in and do the same thing. He would dip it out take it upstairs and eat it and then I'd get home and he'd say dinner kind of needed salt. and I'm like I haven't made dinner
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:37
I'm like Well congratulations it was liver and heart and all kinds of fun things in there he's like, meah.
Braeden Ruud
Tasted pretty good.
Dr. Judy Morgan 8:45
But you know that's a testament when you are using human grade ingredients, your 15 year old sons can eat it and they're not going to die. However if you ate the pet food you might have died
Braeden Ruud 8:59
That specific time with the melamine, that that would not have been good.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Not good at all. So there's a little bit of confusion about gently cooked, lightly cooked, steamed that like whatever people different companies use different terms. And I will say I Raised rRight is one of the foods that is in my freezer for both my dogs and my cats and because they get some raw some gently cooked
Dr. Judy Morgan 9:27
the texture of your gently cooked food is a little more crumbly than a lot of the other ones that I see. what cooking method are you using something different than what everybody else is using? Why are we getting a different texture and it's not a bad texture? It's just different.
Braeden Ruud 9:48
Yeah, yeah, I know there there seems to be a few different ways companies are are making gently cooked food. some make it in kettle cookers. some sous vide it.
Braeden Ruud 10:02
and we make ours and stand up ovens. And so I think that could be why it's, it's different.
Braeden Ruud 10:10
I believe a lot do kettle cook and a lot do sous vide. I'm not aware of, of many that cook it in stand up ovens. And the reason we wanted the texture to be in a crumbled format is because, you know, there's, there's dogs that don't have any teeth, that makes it a bit easier for them to eat it. There's, dogs with very small mouths like little, you know, three-five pound pounders. And so we wanted the food to be able to be eaten by dogs with those specific situations, you know.
Dr. Judy Morgan 10:54
Okay. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's a little harder to hide powders in it, but it's great for liquid tinctures. It just adds a little more moisture. And I was talking to somebody at our event recently, and they said that their older dog, they had been making one of my pancreatitis recipes, and their older dog was now turning his nose up at it. And what I find with older dogs quite commonly that have been eating raw for a long time or eating homemade, they get too wet, their digestive system can't handle that dampness anymore. And I said, we'll go talk to the people over at Raised Right because it's going to be a little more crumbly, a little bit drier. And I think that your dog will like that texture a lot more. And you know, every animal is individual. And they all have their own preferences. So, but particularly with these seniors, so this is a little tip to those listening, if you have a senior who's been eating food that's kind of soupy, if you try something, so sometimes we'll go to like a freeze dried food or something that's a little drier. And you can leave it a little drier when you rehydrate it. But this food is great. For those dogs who are like, I just need something a little, denser.
Dr. Judy Morgan 12:06
It's also really good when you're trying to transition a dog or a cat from kibble that they're very used to that crunchy texture. So this is a little more solid and not so soupy so they'll recognize it a little bit closer. You know, texture is incredibly important to our pets and what they get used to.
Braeden Ruud 12:33
Oh, yeah. So I mean your one question there about lightly cooked, gently cooked.
Braeden Ruud 12:39
Does it mean the same thing so. So it does, it does mean the same thing. And we've actually went back and forth with what we've called our food in the past when, when we first launched we called it gently cooked. But then it seemed like most retailers and customers were calling it lightly cooked. So we changed our packaging to say lightly cooked instead. And then as time has went by, most people have been calling it gently cooked. So we actually recently changed our packaging back to saying gently cooked. And it looks like that's what the category has been officially named. So we're not changing our packaging.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Those damn consumer keep changing your name.
Braeden Ruud
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're not changing again. We're sticking to gently cooked.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Gently Cooked it is! All right. We need we need to take a break to hear from our sponsors. We'll be back in just a couple of minutes. I've got more questions for Braeden.
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Dr. Judy Morgan
Welcome back to the naturally healthy pets podcast. I'm your host Judy Morgan. My guest today is Braeden Ruud, CEO and co founder of Raised Right, a family owned human grade pet food company that makes gently cooked, limited ingredient recipes that are high in protein and low in carbs. So I want to talk about that because I have a dog with cancer and I want him on a really low carb diet. How low in carbs, like how low can you go? What are you doing with your foods?
Braeden Ruud 14:40
Yeah, so most of our recipes contain less than 2% carbs because we don't use any what we call high carb fillers like potato or rice or wheat or corn or anything like that. So I think the recipe of ours that's highest in carbs is that 3.5% I think that's our original pork adult dog recipe and then if I remember right, every other one is less two and others even less than 1.5 so...
Dr. Judy Morgan
amazing, but they do have some vegetable matter and they have fiber so we're looking at the non starchy vegetable matter that's used in there. But you guys have an ingredient that I haven't seen in anything else. And that is spearmint. Why the spearmint I mean, I love it. But why the spearmint?
Braeden Ruud
So we use organic spearmint. And the reason for that it's because it's a it's a really good source of manganese and potassium. And there's, there's some people that comment too that an extra benefit is it helps with their their pets' breath. So I guess, I guess that was an unintended consequence and people seem to like that.
Dr. Judy Morgan 15:57
Yeah, so it's interesting, I hear from people that are like, you know, I love the smell like you open it, you can smell the spearmint. That also means our pets can smell the spearmint. And it's not something that is commonly included in their diet. And it's really interesting, because there's two herbs that I use a lot for digestive upset. One is ginger, which is warming to the digestive tract. And the other is spearmint, or peppermint, which are cooling to the digestive tract. But they're really, really good for digestion. So I love that it's in there. Now. My dogs said, great, no problem. You know, they're dogs, it's it's hard to find picky dogs, I think although some people say my dog won't eat anything. I'm like, I that makes me crazy. If I have a dog who won't eat, because I'm just so used to them cleaning their plates in like a minute. But my cats were kinda like you want us to eat what?
Dr. Judy Morgan 16:53
So they're used to raw food. So it was really interesting to bring in a gently cooked for them, and one that had a strong smell of peppermint or spearmint. And every time we bring in a new food, even if it's just another raw, they're kind of like, it's not my brand. And we have a lot of cats. So even all of our Barn Cats are eating raw food. So my mom is the cat feeder, and I got all this food, it's really good for them, you know, I want you to see what you can do. So every time we get something new, she mixes it in with the old and just kind of mashes it all together. So they can't pull it out. And now they love the food. It's like, oh, we can feed it by itself. But at the beginning of it had to be mixed with something else. But now they're like, oh, spearmint, no problem.
Braeden Ruud
Yeah, yeah. Well, you did it right. You know, you did the transition process. And, and I think, when it doesn't work out with cats and our food, I think most of the time people don't take their time with the transition. They just put it all in front of them and and who knows, maybe it is the spearmint. I wish they could talk to us. And we could ask.
Dr. Judy Morgan
no, because I mean, it might be the spearmint. But like I said, we've bought other brands that don't have anything weird in them that are that are just meat, bone and organ and the cats are so like, that's not my brand. Yeah, so I guess you know, poultry and meat coming from different farms and different manufacturers has a slightly different texture, slightly different smells, you know, it's slightly different formulation. Cats are just kind of that way. You know, one of the things that you guys do is you do testing on all of your batches. So what kind of testing are you doing?
Braeden Ruud
So we do a variety of different things. So we test every single batch. During the production run we're doing swab testing for pathogens like E coli, Listeria and salmonella. And then at the end of every production run, we send finished product to a third party lab to be tested for pathogens like E coli, Listeria and salmonella as well. And then we have a holder lease program where we don't ever ship our food and unless it passes the lab safety tests. So you know, it's very important for us to do all that testing. Especially with with that whole big contamination outbreak back in 2007. Really, really inspiring us to make the safest pet food we possibly could. So that's really, really important to us.
Dr. Judy Morgan 19:34
So do you think that by gently cooking the food do you think that helps minimize your any pathogen load?
Braeden Ruud
It does, it does because I think what some people can get confused about with gently cooked as people wonder, Oh, is it does that mean it's fully cooked? And and the answer is yes, it is fully cooked, but the reason it's called gently cooked is because it's cooked to the minimum temperatures required to kill pathogens, like E. coli, Listeria and salmonella. So for reference, that's 145 Fahrenheit for beef, pork and lamb. And 165 for poultry, like chicken and turkey. So once it hits that temperature, pathogens are instantly killed. And so that that does kill the pathogens. But to be extra cautious, we test every single batch. And to kind of give some reference of why it's called either gently cooked or lightly cooked is because
Braeden Ruud 20:45
if you look into how canned food's made, it goes through retorting process that reach temperatures as high as 279 Fahrenheit, and kibble goes even higher through the extrusion process reaches 350 Fahrenheit. So that's where the term gently cooked or lightly cooked comes from is it's cooked at much lower temperatures, but still low enough that the food is fully cooked.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Right. And it also just retains so much more moisture. I mean canned food pretty much retains moisture, but it's cooked in the can. Yeah, but kibble just loses it. Purposely they take out all that moisture. And so not only does it go through the extruder at 350, but it already, the meats already went through our rendering process, and then it goes through the extruder. And then it goes through a heat drying process. Just when you cook things that many times there's not a whole lot of nutrition left in there. So and that's why when we look at things that are cooked at higher temperatures, they generally have that vitamin mineral mix, the chemical soup added back in because they've destroyed so much. And the problem is they have no idea what's left after they're done, and they don't generally test to see what's left.
Braeden Ruud 22:06
Yeah, 100%. No, you, you explained it perfectly. You know, that's, that's why you see a laundry list of synthetic vitamins and in those recipes. And, you know, the other reason, I think, is because they're cheap, you know, it's it's much cheaper to use synthetics than whole food ingredients. So it increases the profit companies make. And sadly, this comes at a cost of the pet eating the food for for a couple reasons, you know, the first is that when it comes to bioavailability, the body doesn't recognize synthetic nutrients as easy as nutrients coming from Whole Foods. And then there's also the lack of cofactors with getting nutrients through synthetics instead of through Whole Foods, because whole foods contain things like antioxidants and phytonutrients. And where synthetics are typically isolated to just one specific vitamin or mineral. So for these reasons is very important for us to have as many nutrients coming from whole foods as possible in our recipes. And we were actually able to formulate our adult dog recipes to meet AAFCO's requirements for a complete and balanced diet through using only whole foods without having to add any synthetic vitamins and minerals. And we weren't quite able to achieve this with our puppy and our cat recipes. But if you look at those recipes, you'll see there's just two or three vitamins or minerals, depending on the recipe and, and so we just added the bare minimum, we absolutely needed to in order to meet AAFCO's requirements.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Right. You know, AAFCO is, their requirements are a little shaky to begin with. And I mean, we, I just I've done this lecture so many times on the myth of complete and balanced when it comes because the veterinarians keep saying well, you have to go through the big pet food companies who have those scientific nutritional formulators on staff, and 94% of the canned foods that were tested didn't meet AAFCO standards and 62% of the dry foods. so it's like, complete bounced on those? I don't think so. I think I think frankly, we do a better job with the whole food, fresh food options, because it is the nutrients are coming from Whole Foods. But there's batch variation. The cow that went into that batch is not the same as the cow that went into that batch and so there's there's always going to be some variation and it's it's egotistical to think that we can control Yeah, every single thing that goes in there. So what are you seeing in the pet food industry? Like you guys started after 2007?
Dr. Judy Morgan 25:15
How are you seeing a lot of growth? Is it? Is it a continuing climb? When you look at the stats?
Braeden Ruud 25:23
Yeah, I mean, for us, at least, definitely, you know, it's been, even though everything was inspired back in 2007. We didn't, we didn't actually launch Raised Right as a formal company until 2018. And, and since then, we've we've grown a lot and and I've specifically seen the category we're in, the gently cook category grow a lot when when I was first doing the market research, there was just a just a select few companies that were that were even around. And, and nowadays, I don't even think I can name every single one. So it's encouraging to see though it means that a lot of people are wanting to feed their pets a fresh food diet.
Braeden Ruud 26:19
I think a big credit to that is is people like yourself, Dr. Judy, who are, you know, leading the revolution of, of getting people on a fresh food, whether that's raw or gently cooked. And, and the difference I've seen in so many customers that have come to us is it's incredible. If you if you look at the reviews page, on our website, you'll see hundreds and hundreds of reviews of pets who have come to us with a variety of health issues and, and how much it's been helping their pets and, and it's it's amazing to think how big of a difference nutrition can make in pets lives. And the unique thing about pets, which is different than us humans is, for the most part, at least we can control what they put in their body. Us humans, we will cheat.
Dr. Judy Morgan
we can control what we put in but...
Braeden Ruud
Yeah, exactly. Well, we'll dive into the chips, the chocolate, you know, but but pets, we can actually use them as a test case to see like, okay, you know, if you actually commit to eating really good foods, great things can happen. So.
Dr. Judy Morgan
Exactly, exactly. I certainly see the difference in my own pets, and I've been doing fresh food for them for gosh, at least 20 years now. And it makes a huge difference. Braeden, thank you very much for what you and your family are doing. We are so happy that we have these really good pet food companies in the pet food space. And you formulate the way I formulate which is low carb, because I really firmly believe that's what our pets are supposed to eat. So for listeners, you can go to RaisedRightPets.com Use the code PETS20 to get 20% off your first 16 bag box of their human grade pet food. They do have food for cats and dogs. It's hard to find cat food, not too many companies have it so. So that is amazing. Braeden, thank you very, very much. And for anybody looking for information, we'll have it in the show notes but also RaisedRightPets.com
Braeden Ruud
All the thanks is all mine for having me Dr. Judy. There aren't many people out there who are making the kind of impact you're making in pets lives. So thank you for everything you do. And it was it was a real pleasure chatting with you here today.
Outro
Thanks for listening to another great Naturally Healthy Pets episode. Be sure to check out the show notes for some helpful links. And if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. We value your feedback and we'd love to hear from you on how we're doing. Visit DrJudyMorgan.com for healthy product recommendations, comprehensive courses, upcoming events and other fantastic resources. Until next time, keep giving your pet the vibrant life they deserve.
DISCLAIMER
The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. It is no substitute for professional care by a veterinarian, licensed nutritionist or other qualified professional. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Dr. Judy and her guests express their own views, experience and conclusions. Dr. Judy Morgan's Naturally Healthy Pets neither endorses or opposes any particular view discussed here.
