By Steve Brown and Beth Taylor

Dr. Mercola has been advising readers of his eHealthy News You Can Use newsletter for a long time that getting your antioxidants by eating healthy foods is the easiest and most natural way to fight against free radicals in your body and prevent damage from oxidation. Antioxidants are a necessity to every diet, including your dogs and cats.

That healthy diet for your dog and cat should include fresh vegetables. You may be wondering, "If pet food manufacturers produce healthy dry foods that include all those essential elements anyway, why does Fido need fresh veggies too?"

In their advertising, dry pet food manufacturers claim everything our animals need is inside that attractive bag with their beautiful pictures of meats, vegetables and fruits labeled "natural!" This would be great, but it's impossible to make such claims. No matter how good the ingredients are in a bag of dog or cat food, it is still a highly processed, grain-based food, lacking in live, whole nutrients.

If we follow the conventional advice, "Never feed 'people food' or table scraps to your animals," our dogs and cats would never have an opportunity to eat any of those whole foods we know to be critical for fighting cancer and promoting a healthy immune system: Vegetables and fruits in their original forms. This advice is not only out of date. If we follow it, we will be doing direct harm to our dogs and cats.

Think about it. Would we feed our children nothing but dry food in a bag? Dogs and cats are mammals just like us, with the same needs for fresh food.

Even the best of dry pet foods -- those made out of basic ingredients that are of human-edible quality -- are made with synthetic vitamins and minerals. These incomplete, unnatural forms of vitamins and minerals do not provide the level of nutrition required for your pet to live a long, healthy life. Moreover, the main ingredient in dry food -- some form of grain -- is not the best food for dogs or cats. Digestion of this highly processed food puts a burden on their little bodies that can be lightened considerably by the addition of some live, whole foods.

Healthy, Inexpensive Antioxidants

As an example, for almost no cost and little effort, you can improve the odds that your dog will live a long life with a broccoli stalk. Packed with the most micronutrients for your dollar, juice or finely chop a broccoli stalk to break the cell wall of the plant and make the nutrients more available. The stalk is just as nutritious as the broccoli flower and contains many important cancer-fighting nutrients that can help your dog live longer, but is often thrown away!

Broccoli stalks, along with dark green lettuce outer leaves and asparagus spear stalks, are good sources of chlorophyll, like all dark green vegetables. Natural chlorophylls exert protective effects against carcinogenic exposure in animals and people. Human studies in China show that chlorophyll may help to delay the onset of symptoms of liver cancer caused by mycotoxin-contaminated grains (products that have killed many dogs).

If your dog or cat grazes on grass that has not been sprayed with pesticides, herbicides or other poisons, consider it food (as long as she doesn't throw up on your carpet!). Foods like grasses which contain cellulose may not be completely digested (and you may see the grass unchanged in the dog's feces), but they are of great value in helping to maintain the bacterial balance in the intestines, helping the "good" occupants of the gut to survive.

Fresh grass also provides chlorophyll, vitamin C and hundreds of other antioxidants and enzymes. Do not let your dog or cat eat grass that has been exposed to chemicals, however. If the grass is in the woods, it is probably "clean." But, if the grass is part of a farm or suburban "perfect lawn," try to prevent your dog from eating it (or walking on it).

Give your animals bright green vegetables like broccoli several times a week. Juiced or chopped very finely, these green vegetables provide cancer-fighting and immune system-enhancing ingredients that can be found only in fresh foods. To keep the proper nutrient balance limit the total amount of the foods you add (unless you add raw bones) to dry food to about 15 percent by volume for dogs. For cats, however, a little goes a long way. "Cat grass," available at natural food stores, is a good addition, or a teaspoon of juiced veggies for medium-sized cats.

Broccoli is just one example. There are other good possibilities in the refrigerator of anyone who tries to feed their family a healthy diet that consists mostly of a variety of fresh foods.

In our book, See Spot Live Longer, we offer advice on how to add other important nutrients to your dog's diet. For little time or money, you can add priceless nutrition and know that you'll have a much better chance of keeping your Spot around for a long time.