Can Dogs Eat Chips?

Can Dogs Eat Chips?

If you’re enjoying a bag of chips when with your dog, it’s only a matter of time before he/she starts begging for a taste. However, you should avoid feeding your dog any amount of chips to avoid any hazardous side effects. Here’s why a bag of chips is not a terrific homemade treat for your dog.

Chips Don’t Offer Any Health Benefits

Though chips are made from natural food substances like potatoes, they don’t offer any health benefits to humans and dogs. Chips are basically empty calories which the body doesn’t need. These processed foods are not good for your dog as all the nutritional benefits get lost during the processing.

Unlike what most manufacturers want you to believe, baked chips are also processed food and not healthy for your mutt. As such, chips expose your dog to a lot of potential health risks without any benefits.

Effects of Chips on Dogs

To both humans and dogs, chips themselves are not dangerous or toxic. However, the fat, salt content, and other ingredients such as tomato paste will certainly lead to multiple health issues on your furry friend. Here are the dangers of feeding chips to your dog:

• Salt poisoning and kidney damage

The presence of too much salt on the chips may cause salt poisoning or even kidney damage to your dogs. Some of the most common signs you’ll observe if this happens to your dog includes vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and lack of balance when walking. You should see your veterinarian immediately you note any of these signs for proper diagnosis.

• Unhealthy feeding habits

Feeding our dogs with chips creates an unhealthy habit that takes time to break. Once the dog gets a taste, it becomes extremely hard to stop eating this junk food all the time. In some cases, the dog may start to reject healthy foods, and this will have adverse health effects on your furry friend.

For people, it can be easy to stop eating too much chips since they have the willpower and also experience social pressure to live healthily. However, this “keep in check” system doesn’t exist in dogs, and they’ll always reach out for chips whenever they are hungry.

Since the energy from chips doesn’t last long, especially when your dog is active, they’ll always try and eat more to sate their hunger. That creates a vicious cycle that makes the dog overweight and can lead to other complications caused by excessive weight.

• Harmful flavors

While spices make the food interesting and tasty for humans, only rare breeds of dogs can handle spicy food. That’s because dogs have fewer taste buds than humans (only 1700 compared to about 9000 in humans). It doesn’t mean they can’t eat spicy foods, but they find it less amusing than people.

Chips manufacturers also add various artificial flavors to make them tasty and highly appealing to people. Nonetheless, while an average person will find the burst of flavors amusing, the variety of flavoring added tastes merely the same to dogs.

These artificial flavors cause a range of problem to dogs, including diarrhea, gas, and stomach pain. As such, it’s not worth the trouble to feed your dog chips when they can’t enjoy the same satisfaction as you.

• Dehydration

If you didn’t know, salt makes the dog thirsty. That’s why your dog will reach out for the water bowl after eating chips. However, if they don’t find any water in the bowl, they might suffer from dehydration without you knowing as most people don’t always know what the mutt is up to.

In the wild, dogs get their salt fix from the meat they eat, which makes up about 80% of their diet. As such, they rarely eat any salt. That means you should keep away salty snacks from your dogs and always make sure the water bowl is full of water in case they eat salty food around your house.

• Choking hazards

Chips are presented in modern bags that are quite hard to tear apart. That poses a huge danger to dogs as they can easily get stuck in the bag while reaching for the chips. As a result, the dog can easily suffocate and die as dogs don’t anticipate danger in the home environment like humans do.

To avoid this, always keep your chips out of your dog’s reach in a closed cabinet and clean your kitchen to remove any potentially hazardous food substances. You should also dispose the chips bags properly after eating the chips.

What About Plain Potatoes?

Can dogs eat potato chips? You can feed your dog plain potatoes, but it depends on the state they are in. For most dogs, green potatoes can lead to gastrointestinal problems, weakness, confusion, and lethargy. That means its best to eliminate raw potatoes in your dog’s diet.

On the other hand, sweet potatoes are safe and healthy for dogs. They offer a range of benefits, including supporting a healthy digestive system due to their high fiber content. Additionally, they are low in fats and offer essential vitamins such as vitamin A, C, and B6. However, boiled, mashed, and baked sweet potatoes should only be fed to dogs occasionally.

It’s common to boil, dehydrate or freeze sweet potatoes for dogs, but you should start with small portions. Keep in mind that the dog may have a sensitive stomach, and some may not like the taste. You can also try boiling or steaming the sweet potatoes and mix them with dry kibbles to add nutritional value.

Conclusion

So can dogs eat chips? There is your answer. With all the adverse side effects associated with junk food, its best to avoid feeding chips to your dog. The dog may love the taste, but these foods are unsafe and you may putting his health at risk by sharing your delicious chips with your furry friend. However, if the dog eats chips without your knowledge, make sure the water bowl has enough supply of fresh water to help with dehydration issues.