Can my dog eat meat tenderizer? Here’s What to Expect

How Do You Add Meat Tenderizer to Your Dog’s Food?

If you’ve used a meat tenderizer to soften your meats, you know that you apply it when the meat is raw.

Most meat tenderizers come in powdered form. To add them to your dog’s food, simply moisten the surface of the meats.

Next, sprinkle a dash of the tenderizer and pierce the surface a few times with a fork to get the tenderizer to penetrate the meat.

Wait for a few minutes then start the cooking process.

What About Accent Meat Tenderizer on Dog Food: Is It Safe?

Accent meat tenderizer is another popular flavoring spice out there.

Its main ingredient is MSG, which is claimed to be natural. There’s no other harmful ingredient used in the recipe.

The reason it has a bad rap is because the media dragged the brand back in the day claiming MSG is toxic.

However, since the FDA cleared the air of the consumption of MSG, Accent tenderizer is safe to use.

Does Meat Tenderizer Have Any Health Benefits for Dogs?

Coprophagia is a behavior that some animals engage in due to innate curiosity and likely nutritional deficiencies. This condition is where giving dogs meat tenderizers to make poop less appealing originated. This condition is just part of a dog’s behavior, and there is no way to determine if a dog will engage in it.

What meat tenderizers do to fix this problem is found in one of the enzymes in the substance called bromelain. This enzyme comes from a pineapple plant’s stem and helps people and dogs digest proteins more efficiently.

Since protein digests thanks to this substance, the stool becomes less appealing to dogs if a protein deficiency is to blame for the behavior. Apart from this problem, giving a dog meat tenderizer has no inherent health benefits. Let’s take a further look at the ingredients in meat tenderizers and how they affect dogs.

Meat tenderizers typically come in either seasoned and flavored varieties or the preferable unseasoned type for dogs. The better with dogs and people’s foods, the blander and less-seasoned. The ingredients that make up unseasoned meat tenderizers usually include:

  • Bromelain. As mentioned, this ingredient is safe for dogs and is the primary ingredient that can prevent coprophagia.
  • Dextrose. Unlike the more common sucrose, dextrose is a type of simple sugar, and in small amounts, this ingredient is not toxic to dogs.
  • Sodium. Even in unseasoned tenderizers, the salt content is the most problematic ingredient in meat tenderizers. The unseasoned type includes roughly 400 mg per teaspoon, far more than a dog needs in a day.
  • So as you can see, the sodium content is the most cause for concern in tenderizers. Dogs should only consume about 200 mg of sodium per 33 lbs of body weight. This is fine if you are willing to heavily reduce the sodium in your dog’s daily meals.

    While dozing your dog with a meat tenderizer, you could feed your dog a raw diet that day to reduce sodium since one teaspoon of tenderizer would exceed their daily limit. But just how much meat tenderizer should you give your dog?

    Why does pineapple stop dogs from eating poop?

    Meat tenderizer is often used as a solution to stop dogs from eating poop (or medically known as coprophagia). Some dog owners found success with it while others did not. Regardless of other people’s experiences, if your dog is having a coprophagia problem, putting meat tenderizer in his food is worth trying. It’s easy to do and doesn’t give any side effects to your dog.

    So, how much meat tenderizer do you need to put in your dog’s food? Just a sprinkle is enough.

    The catch here is you need to make sure you are buying a meat tenderizer with MSG in it. The MSG makes a dog’s poop taste so bad so that your poop eater won’t want to eat it.

    If this solution doesn’t work for your dog, there are other ways you can deter him from eating his own waste. Let’s talk about what causes this seemingly strange behavior and how to fix it.