The influence of vegan diet about the health of our pets creates heated debates on both sides.
But until now we have had no formal assessment of the scientific evidence. In new research published today in veterinary science, We compiled the health outcomes from 16 studies of vegan dogs and cats.
So if you’re wondering if 2023 could be the year for your best (pet) friend to adopt a meat-free lifestyle, read on to find out the benefits, risks, and what we don’t know yet.
An ethical diet?
In recent years it has been people in many parts of the world increasingly vegetarian or vegan diets spurred by ethical concerns about animal welfare, sustainability, or based on perceived health benefits.
Pet owners may also wish to feed their animals in accordance with these dietary choices.
Actually, a study found that 35 percent of owners who didn’t veganize their pets would consider them, but found too many obstacles.
Main concerns were diet adequacy, a lack of veterinary support and the fact that there are few commercially available vegan diets.
Traditionally, feeding vegan diets to primarily carnivorous species was thought to go against their “nature” and result in serious health effects.
There has even been debate over whether feeding pets vegan diets is possible borders on animal cruelty. But what does science actually say?
Necessary nutrients
Both dogs and cats are carnivores. Dogs are facultative carnivores, meaning they can digest plant matter and survive without meat, but may not thrive.
Cats, on the other hand, do obligatory carnivores. By definition, this means that their diet is more than 70 percent meat and they cannot digest plant matter.
The anatomy of the dog and cat intestines also clearly indicates their carnivorous lifestyle.
Their teeth are designed to shred and grind flesh and hold onto prey. Their intestines are also short with a smaller capacity relative to their body size, as unlike herbivores they do not have to ferment plant matter to digest it.
A major concern with vegan pet diets is that the proteins from grains or soy (the main plant proteins) contain fewer essential proteins amino acidseg omega-3 fatty acids or taurine, and don’t have all the essentials vitamins. These nutrients are necessary to maintain good heart, eye, and liver function.
A number of studies have looked at the nutritional makeup of vegan pet foods, and some have failed.
Homemade vegan diets are particularly popular are at risk of malnutritionbut some commercial diets may not meet the requirements of either various animal nutrition guidelines.
But all of this takes vegan diets into account with an input-based approach—it’s based on predictions. If we really want to know how these diets affect health, we need to measure it in animals.
The evidence is missing
We conducted a type of study common in evidence-based practice called systematic review. These studies provide a summary of all research on a topic; Quality is assessed, which allows us to make an assessment of how confident we can be when making recommendations based on the evidence.
Only 16 studies have examined the health effects of a vegan diet in dogs and cats. Cats were included in only six of these, despite being the species most likely to suffer from nutrient deficiencies.
A number of these studies used owners’ health reports as measured outcomes, such as perceptions of health or body condition. These are likely to be subjective and could be prone to bias.
In the few studies that have measured health directly by examining the animals or by laboratory testing, there has been little evidence of adverse health effects from vegan pet foods.
Nutritional values were generally within the normal range, no cardiac or ocular abnormalities were noted, and body and coat condition were normal.
However, it’s important to note that these studies often included small numbers of animals, with vegan diets being fed to animals for only a few weeks – so a deficiency may not have had time to develop.
In addition, study designs were often those considered less reliable in evidence-based practice, for example without control groups for comparison.
Owners’ perceptions of the health benefits of the diets were overwhelmingly positive.
Benefits cited included less obesity, better smelling breath and less skin irritation. The only downside was increased poop volume, which seemed tolerable for most owners.
Proceed with caution
Overall, it still seems unclear whether the vegan diet of our carnivorous four-legged friends is actually safe.
We can rest assured that both strong pro- and anti-vegan animal feeding arguments may be misguided and unsupported by evidence.
Owners who commit to feeding their pets a vegan diet should tread carefully for now. Use a complete and balanced commercial vegan diet formula and schedule regular health checks with a veterinarian.
Alexandra WhittakerSenior lecturer, University of Adelaide; Adriana Dominguez Olivaanimal welfare researcher, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana (Mexico)and Daniel Mota Rojasresearcher
This article is republished by The conversation under a Creative Commons license. read this original article.
