John Burns BVMS MRCVS, owner and founder of Burns Pet Nutrition, has been recommending simple, natural, wholesome food as the key to long-lasting well-being and vitality in pets for over 40 years.
John Burns knows that good health starts on the inside. Recommending a natural diet to pet owners has been an effective way of not just maintaining good health but also in managing a wide range of pre-existing health conditions. This approach, however, isn’t inspired by John’s scientific training and experience as a veterinary surgeon, but rather a deep interest in holistic health. This came about with his post-graduate study of Traditional Oriental Medicine and a variety of complementary therapies. Of these, nutrition has been the most authentic, practical and effective way of managing the health and wellbeing of our pets.
Realising the significance of this approach, John Burns put it into practice in the 1980s by recommending that his veterinary clients avoid feeding commercial pet food. Instead, he advised pet owners to feed a homemade diet of brown rice and vegetables with chicken, fish or meat as a source of protein. Clients who followed this recommendation saw remarkable improvements in the health and wellbeing of their pets, even in those with severe and chronic health problems.
Unfortunately, what also became apparent was that many pet owners didn’t have the time or capacity to prepare food at home constantly, and John eventually realised that to manage the health of pets through diet, food also had to be convenient. This is how Burns Pet Nutrition came into being.
Based on a homemade, natural and wholesome diet, Burns Pet Nutrition uses simple, healthy and wholesome ingredients to create award-winning recipes that pets love. With the creation of their original chicken and rice recipe almost 30 years ago, they’ve released a variety of healthy and hypoallergenic pet food ranges for pets of all ages and activity level.
The aim of holistic nutrition is to let the body get on with what it does best, to maintain and repair itself and to prevent deterioration of the organ systems. This all happens in a natural, subconscious way as a result of billions of years of evolution from simple cells to complex beings. This is the basis John applied to his pioneering pet food brand and the most important way of promoting natural health; through lifestyle and food choice. Needless to say, pet owners are the ones who make a choice on behalf of their pets, so they’re the ones with the capacity to do the most good when it comes to health and wellbeing.
According to John, owners find that when their pet goes on to natural, wholesome food, the pet’s condition is transformed. Skin and coat condition improve, hair stops falling out, itching stops and the coat becomes glossy with a silky feel. Unpleasant odours disappear and older pets become livelier, less stiff and more interested in life. These remarkable changes, which can take about 4 weeks, show the amazing improvements that can be made when the body is allowed to clear itself of accumulated toxic waste products.
Compared with a holistic, natural approach, even medications have a very limited capacity to influence the metabolism of the body. A new puppy, for example, is more able than the most skilled physician to maintain its health and heal itself.
If you’re a pet owner, you might think that if your pet seems healthy right now there’s no need to feed a higher quality food. Some pets, and even humans, seem capable of thriving on poor quality food, but this should be regarded as more of an exception and not the rule. Unfortunately, pet owners sometimes miss symptoms of incipient health problems, and many pets suffer from sub-clinical disease for some time before they’re diagnosed.
Other than during growth, reproduction or vigorous physical exercise, all of which require high-energy foods, owners should be feeding pet food that’s high in complex carbohydrate and low in fat and protein, containing no absolutely no chemical additives. This minimises the amount of waste which the body has to eliminate.
When searching for a pet food for your pet, you should make sure the ingredients are clearly listed by name somewhere on the packet, pouch, tin or tray. Many commercial pet foods list ingredients in a very ambiguous way, e.g. ‘meat and animal derivatives, cereal and cereal derivatives’ or ‘permitted preservatives.’ This allows manufacturers to change formulations as and when cheaper ingredients become available. This is a huge problem for our pets, because many health problems are caused by an undiagnosed intolerance to food ingredients, which would be hard to identify if their basic diet keeps changing.
It’s important to find a pet food brand you can trust. Luckily for pet owners, Burns has been at the forefront of the healthy pet food market since the company was founded by veterinary surgeon John Burns in 1993, and since then, they’ve won numerous awards, sold over 2 billion bowls of healthy and wholesome pet food to date and in all of that time, they’ve continued to support shelters, charities and community projects across the UK by donating 25% of their profits every year. For Burns, wellness doesn’t just start and end with a good diet, but extends to the happiness of pets, their owners and communities everywhere
For more information about Burns Pet Nutrition visit www.burnspet.co.uk
