Is Your Parrot REALLY Eating A Good Diet?

[Jun]

According to this chart, there really IS a difference between sweet potatoes and yams, with yams the hands-down winner, containing almost 1� times the vitamin A as well as twice the calcium. (Nice to have THAT mystery solved!)

Now I am more confuse than ever about sweet potatoes and yams. First I don't know which one is yam and which one is sweet potato......in some store everything is sweet potato then you found out that it is yam yay!. Second......some says sweet potato has more Vit A than yams but not according to your source.

[Jun]

I found this.......

Sweet Potato and Yam Health Information
Sweet potatoes are relatively low in calories and have no fat. They are rich in beta-carotene , having five times the recommended daily allowance of Vitamin A in one sweet potato, as well as loaded with potassium. These nutrients help to protect against heart attack and stroke. The potassium helps maintain fluid and electrolyte balance in the body cells, as well as normal heart function and blood pressure.

Wild Mexican "yams" which are related to the sweet potato, seem to have anti-weight-gain, anti-cancer, and anti-aging properties, according to Dr. Earl Mindell.

True yams do not contain as much Vitamin A and C as sweet potatoes.

[magdalena]

What a great read (and funny). I think I'm going to feed nothing but pellets and beets everything else is now too complicated. And I thought parsley was toxic to parrots?

[chapala]

Re yams and sweet potatoes available in N. American grocery stores - they are both fine to feed, and both high in beta-carotenes. The true 'Yam' is a completely different species and genus of plant, and isn't available in grocery stores. So, don't worry, feed either, and you will be providing the all-important beta-carotenes the bird's body uses to manufacture Vitamin A.

[Alyx]

Great article and pleanty of new information for me, thank you very much!!

Now if only we could get an article defnativley telling us which pellot is best :P

[MaryG1959]

My birds "eat and consume" vegetables, every day twice a day. They get occasional fruit, pineapple, cherries, apple, banannas. They get occasional birdie bread with pureed baby food in it (such as sw potatoes and applesauce) and get pellets offered in a separate bowl "all the time". They get an occasional cooked yam.......also I will cook beets for them on occasion.

I dont feed junk, candy, cake, pie, cookies etc..........

I will ON OCCASION (possibly once a month) give them a small piece of pizza crust.

Other than fresh water twice a day, this is what they actually eat. All my birds even my cockatiels will eat the vegetable mix I feed. It contains Kale, dandellion, brocolli, carrots, peas, green beans, gr pepper, cranberries, mixed brown/wild rices, and organic rice pasta. I will often switch the greens out depending on what I can find, they also get collards on occasion.

[SouthAmericanFever]

Wow... I just lost a lot of respect for Liz Wilson....

[magdalena]

Care to share why?

[SouthAmericanFever]

Mostly, this part:
"So back to the subject of veggies vs. fruits. The problem with fruits is that they are often lacking in nutritional value --and this of course, means that most parrots adore them. Veggies, on the other hand, are generally much higher in nutritional value, which translates to parrots (and many humans, young and old) often not liking them as much. This is obviously due to the basic rule (I think it may be one of Murphy's Laws): if it's good for you, it does not taste good."

That second bolded part is the opposite of common sense. When we're talking about whole, natural food, animals prefer what is good for them. That's like saying Cheetahs hate the taste of meat because it's what their diet is. If it's in their natural habitat and IS a natural food (no chocolate cake, boiled potatoes, etc) it DOES taste good to them and is definitely preferred. Parrots (almost all species, depending) eat a large amount of fruit in the wild and it is not lacking in nutritional value--these same sources she gets nutritional information from should admit that it is a fact that we know less than 1/10-1/4 of phytonutrients found in raw plant foods. Meaning, there is no way for anyone to say that a fruit is "lacking in nutritional value" when we hardly have any idea what nutrition they do offer. I hate that in the research for this article she apparently decided to decrease her consumption of fruit....

Fruits are more energy dense than vegetables. It would be hard for most animals to live on mostly green vegetables. (Those that do have very specialized digestion--cecums in rabbits, multiple stomachs in cows, chewing cud, etc--it is necessary to get more nutrients from green food than most animals can in the first pass!) Undeniably veggies have important nutrients but that doesn't mean they are more important than fruits. They are no where near as energy dense and they have different vitamins, minerals and macronutrients.

Fruits are a better food source than pellets are, if we're going on nutrition. Pellets are mostly cooked grains (cooking = nothing parrots would naturally eat; grains/legumes like wheat, corn and soy = something MOST parrot species wouldn't have access to in the wild at all, at least not during evolution/whenever they first came to be) and synthetic (fake) vitamins. As she said, vitamin supplements can't compete with eating a complete diet... well, pellets ARE vitamin supplements with other unnatural things mixed in! Fruits have these vitamins plus the calories that living beings need to survive! I'm not as worried about her recommending pellets as I am about her degrading fruit.

Another thing is the water in fruit. Most tropical birds don't drink a lot of water in nature. (Sitting at a watering hole makes them pretty vulnerable--they do it when they have to, but naturally, they don't have to often.) This is because they get water from their diet, as they should. The water in fruits is clean and basically distilled, unlike what may be available in nearby water sources.

If you haven't guessed yet... I eat a lot of fruit. It's a natural food that tastes good to me and I have no doubt it IS good for me. My birds get a lot of fruit, too. In humans at least, diseases like diabetes that get attributed to carbohydrates have a lot more to do with fat intake than sugar intake. I don't claim to know the best diet for parrots but I AM sure it includes a lot of fruit (for most species).

[Alyx]

Thank you for taking the time Mandi!! I appreciate your effort to clearly explain your point of view and you do present very strong arguments.