What is a Meat Tenderizer? Meat tenderizer is a naturally extracted enzyme powder that typically contains enzymes from papain and bromelain. You are supposed to sprinkle meat tenderizer over your dog’s food so that it can break down the meat fibers inside.
This product comes in various tastes, and you can find meat tenderizers with and without seasonings. The seasoned varieties might taste better, but they can contain potentially harmful substances for your dog. That’s why we suggest choosing unseasoned meat tenderizers.
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:
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?
What is Meat Tenderizer?
A meat tenderizer is a product that is used to make meat softer. It is generally either powder or sometimes a liquid that is mixed in with the meat. A meat tenderizer is made up of a variety of active enzymes which break down the proteins in meat, making it more tender. These enzymes can be extracted from plants or fruits, or they can be produced through fermentation.
If you intend to feed your dog meat tenderizer, the most important thing is that it should be unseasoned. Seasoned meat tenderizers may contain toxic ingredients. Many seasoned meat tenderizers contain garlic or onions, both of which are not good. Before buying any seasoned meat tenderizer, always double-check to ensure that these ingredients are not in it. There are a variety of seasonings that are safe for human consumption, but not all of them are safe for dogs. Dogs have a much more sensitive digestive system than humans, so it’s important to avoid giving them seasonings that could upset their stomachs.
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.