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My dogs love green beans. I love green beans. But this isn't something I would have thought to add to my dogs' diet until a veterinarian recommended it for Sydney to help her lose weight. Today, green beans are a regular part of my dogs' raw food diet,, and I explain why in this blog post.

Nutrients in Green Beans

Green beans are a great source of the following vitamins and minerals; however, before you use green beans to “balance” your homemade dog food, ask yourself how bio-available these nutrients are for our dogs.

• Vitamins A, C, and K
• Folate
• Fiber
• Choline
• Calcium
• Magnesium
• Phosphorus
• Potassium

So, are these nutrients bioavailable? Some say “no,” our dogs don't have enough cellulase (the enzyme that helps release antioxidants) or amylase (the enzyme that breaks down carbs and starches) in their system. But this is what I learned:

• Freezing, blanching (lightly cooking in boiling water), and pureeing break the cellular wall, making nutrients more bioavailable.
• The pancreas produces amylase. Before wolves settled down with humans to start the evolution into the dogs we love today, they didn't produce amylase – it's believed that their systems adapted to a new diet that included starches when their hunting partners, the humans, settled and began farming.

I don't feed green beans for the nutrients they bring to the diet.

Why I Add Green Beans to My Dogs' Raw Diet

I source my green beans from the grocery store (or Costco), buying frozen, organic green beans. I grow green beans in my garden and other vegetables during the summer. I puree and freeze vegetable blends at the end of the summer.

1 – Green Beans Add Fiber and Support Gut Health

I add green beans and other vegetables to my dogs' raw diet because they are a great source of fiber. Some believe the best source of fiber is animal fur, but I believe this to be a fallacy. Animal fur is a source of keratin fiber, but this isn't dietary fiber. When looking for natural sources of fiber, I reach for green vegetables and organic pureed sweet potato and pumpkin.

I've learned to prioritize supporting my dogs' gut health because 80% of the immune system lives in the gut, a healthy gut can absorb more nutrients, and my dogs with a healthy gut have fewer health issues.

2 – Green Beans Add Antioxidants to the Diet

Antioxidants may help protect our dogs' cells from free radicals, which our dogs are exposed to daily. While there isn't a cure for many cancers, we can do our best to protect our dogs from cancer and other diseases by feeding them a fresh food diet, and, for some dogs, this includes vegetables.

3 – Green Beans Supports Weight Loss

I have two dogs that are overweight (but losing steadily), and green beans have helped their weight loss. I replace a portion of their meal (about 10% with green beans to help them feel full). When I realized I was overfeeding my dogs, I used green beans to decrease their meals.

Sometimes I added fresh green beans, but there were times that I used low-sodium canned green beans.

4 Easy Ways to Add Green Beans to Your Dogs' Raw Diet

1 – Create a Veggie Mix

The easiest way to add green beans to your dogs' diet is to puree them and add them to the bowl. I like adding green beans and other healthy vegetables like zucchini, yellow squash, broccoli, collard greens, cabbage, and asparagus.

To do this regularly, it's essential to have a perfect blender. The best one costs $400 at Costco; it blends vegetables into juice in seconds. But I don't have a spare $400 lying around, so I bought the best blender I could afford. I might look for something better on Black Friday.

If you're adding green beans solely for weight loss or as a treat, you can chop them up into small pieces and mix them into your dog's dish. Some believe chopping vegetables breaks the cellular wall, making the nutrients bioavailable. Others believe this isn't enough and the vegetables need to be pureed.

2 – Ferment Vegetables

I love adding fermented foods to my dogs' diet. Not only does fermenting make the nutrients bioavailable. The process also allows us to add a natural source of probiotics to our dogs' diet.

Fermenting vegetables is easy, but a time element prevents you from immediately adding vegetables to the food. In the summer, I ferment for ten days; in the winter, it's 20 days.

3 – Blanching Vegetables

Another way to break the cellular wall of green beans is to blanch them, which means you cook them in a pot of boiling water for about two minutes. I like to do this in the wintertime to add green beans to my dogs' meals and some bone broth. They love it.

4 – Dehydrated Green Beans

If you have a dehydrator, consider making green bean treats for your dog. These are easy to make, and you can get creative by sprinkling a meal topper over the green beans to give them a more tempting flavor for your dog.

I dehydrate my green beans for 8 to 10 hours at 125 F (51.67 C) – this can change based on your dehydrator, how much you're dehydrating, and your climate.

For Dogs that Don't Like Green Beans

I hear from people who have dogs that don't like green beans (or other vegetables), and there are a couple of things you can do if your dog isn't a fan of green beans:

• Mix the green beans (or other vegetables) with bone broth. I leave the meat in my bone broth, and mixing it with vegetables is a yummy treat for my dogs. I feed it warm in the winter and as a frozen treat in the summer.

• Mix the green beans (or other vegetables) with green tripe. Green tripe is a food that may tempt the pickiest of eaters.

• Mix the green beans (or other vegetables) with liver. My dogs love liver, and, on occasion, I'll cook them a big beef or chicken liver, and they go nuts as they smell the treat. Blending it up with vegetables and creating a frozen treat or meal topper is always a hit.
• Put a food topper over the green beans. Real Dog Box offers a few meal toppers in their Secret Shop that is available to subscribers. I will sprinkle a topper over the vegetables and feed them as a snack or side dish.

Feeding Fresh Food to Dogs

We're often warned not to feed table scraps to our dogs; but this doesn't preclude us from feeding fresh food. Whether you feed raw, cooked, or kibble, fresh foods can help boost your dog's diet while providing a healthy treat.

Read More About Raw Feeding

• How to Protect Your Dog's Gut from Antibiotics
• Books to Help Dog Owners Feed Their Dog Better
• The Truth About Raw Feeding
• What You Don't Know About Chia, Hemp, and Flaxseeds
• Vitamin D Deficiency in Dogs: Symptoms and Solutions