This is the kitchen's food list, read as a cook would read it. For each group: what the plan actually picks, how to prepare it, and what to watch. The grams come from the kitchen, which weighs everything raw except the cooked carbs.
Nothing from the family pot goes in. No salt, no masala, no tadka, and never chocolate, grapes or raisins (kishmish), onion, garlic, xylitol, macadamia or avocado. Older lists call avocado safe; it stays on the kitchen's never list. Why each one is there, and what to do if your dog eats one, is in the toxic foods record.
Meat and fish
In the kitchen: chicken, goat (mutton), rohu (rui) and mackerel (bangda). Lamb sits in the table as a specialty row, and the week doesn't pick it.
- Chicken: breast or boneless leg from any poultry shop, skin off. Buy it fresh and freeze it yourself in day-sized bags; frozen meat ordered online spoils fast.
- Goat: ask the mutton butcher for boneless leg, and trim the visible fat at home.
- Rohu and mackerel: from the fish market. Mackerel is easiest to find in coastal cities.
How to prepare it: soft boil it. Bring the water to the boil, add the meat, lid on, gas off, and leave it 30 to 45 minutes; the water goes in the bowl. Don't brown or fry it, and don't pressure cook it. Fish goes into water that has just boiled, lid on, gas off, until it flakes, then pick through it with your fingers for bones.
What to watch for: every fish bone comes out. Cooked bone never goes in at all, because it splinters. Beef and pork are left out of the plan since they're restricted in many Indian states and many kitchens won't cook them; that's the whole reason. Fish carries fewer kcal than chicken (rohu is 102 kcal per 100 g raw, chicken 168, in IFCT 2017), so a fish day weighs more. The plan already accounts for that. This is a cooked plan; raw feeding has its own record.
Organ: liver, heart, gizzard and kidney
In the kitchen: chicken or goat liver (kaleji), chicken gizzard (pota), chicken or goat heart (dil), and goat kidney (gurda).
- Liver: the poultry shop often sells chicken liver with the gizzards; goat liver comes from the mutton butcher.
- Gizzard: cheap, and most shops clean it if you ask.
- Heart: in smaller towns, ask a day ahead.
- Kidney: trim out the white core.
How to prepare it: soft boil it with the meat. Organ goes into the water first, since it spoils fastest, and the meat follows. Chop it fine once it has cooled.
What to watch for: liver is capped at 5% of the bowl for its vitamin A, and never more than half the organ share. Don't add an extra piece for good measure. Heart, gizzard or kidney make up the rest. Two recipes carry no organ at all: Tail-Wagging Tasty Meal and Nutribowl Delight, which carry more meat instead.
Egg, and where the calcium comes from
In the kitchen: one egg (anda) from any kirana store. Most recipes use one egg per 500 g of food, about 50 g of edible egg. Chicken and Goat Meat Meal and the meat-and-fish recipe use none.
How to prepare it: boil it and peel it, yolk included.
What to watch for: the calcium doesn't come from a weighed dose. A balanced bowl with real bones to chew, raw or dehydrated and never cooked, gives a dog enough calcium. Eggshell powder is optional: a pinch on top, never weighed and never a rule. A growing puppy gets no calcium supplement, and a dog with a history of stones gets no eggshell. If your dog can't have egg, leave it out; the plan scales the meat up to cover its kcal.
Vegetables
In the kitchen: spinach (palak), carrot (gajar), pumpkin (kaddu), bottle gourd (lauki), cucumber (kheera) and French beans, all from any sabzi market. Broccoli and shiitake come in only on the day 7 Immune Weekly bowl.
- Palak: wash it well, leaf by leaf, and steam it.
- Gajar: grate it, or steam it soft.
- Kaddu: take out the seeds and the rind.
- Lauki: peel it.
- French beans: top, tail and steam them.
- Broccoli: supermarkets and larger sabzi markets. Steam the florets.
- Shiitake: metro supermarkets.
How to prepare it: steam until tender, then chop fine or mash. Keep the fibre; don't juice it.
What to watch for: shiitake is always cooked, never served raw. The week rotates through three vegetables, so the same one isn't in every bowl. The family sabzi stays out even when the vegetable matches, because it was cooked in the household base.
No fruit
The kitchen puts no fruit in the bowl. Fruit is the first thing to come out when a dog itches or licks his paws, so the plan leaves it out from the start. Grapes and kishmish are never safe in any amount.
Cooked carbs
In the kitchen: sweet potato (shakarkandi) and kani rice (broken chawal). Quinoa is in the table as a specialty row, and the week doesn't pick it.
How to prepare it:
- Shakarkandi: peel it, boil it until soft and mash it.
- Kani rice: rinse it and pressure cook it until it mashes, with no salt. Kani, not basmati or kolam.
Let it cool, then weigh it.
What to watch for: weigh carbs after cooking, never before. The kitchen's kcal figures for rice and sweet potato are for the cooked food, so raw grams against a cooked figure throw the whole day off. Nutribowl Delight carries 15% carb, Vitality Feast 10%, and Chicken and Goat Meat Meal and the meat-and-fish recipe 9.5%. Balanced Bowl Blend, Tail-Wagging and Immune Weekly carry no carb.
Oils
In the kitchen: cold-pressed coconut oil and ghee, and fish oil on the Immune Weekly day. Buy a plain fish oil with nothing else in it. The daily bowls use one oil all week: coconut oil, or ghee if you leave coconut out. No sunflower or other refined oil.
How to prepare it: measure with a teaspoon and stir it in last, after everything else is cooked and mixed. Balanced Bowl Blend and Tail-Wagging take half a tablespoon per 500 g, Nutribowl Delight one, Immune Weekly one and a half, and the 2025 recipes a third.
What to watch for: oil is the densest thing in the bowl, about 876 to 902 kcal per 100 g. One tablespoon (13.6 g) is roughly 120 kcal, so pouring by eye can undo the day's arithmetic. Keep fish oil in the fridge once it's open, and throw it out if it smells off. A dog that has had pancreatitis needs its fat set by a vet, along with the rest of its diet.