Diet and Nutrition Thread: Grain Free Is Not The Way To Be

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Pet Island > Diet and Nutrition Thread: Grain Free Is Not The Way To Be

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

PET FOODS!

It's a huge industry with over 30 billion dollars in sales in the US annually and rising year by year. We got pets and we gotta feed 'em!

As you can imagine, there are many different companies and even more different products out there, from specialized prescription foods that actually treat illnesses, to Old Roy.

So, what food should you buy? Who should you ask? Are veterinarians just bought off by the food companies so you can't trust them? Does a pet store sales person have a degree in nutrition?

The simple answer is the best food is the one your personal pet does best on. You also need to be able to afford it. There are companies nowadays making individually shipped products that are made of only human grade ingredients that might be a better diet than what you yourself eat. Can everyone afford that kind of diet? Nope! Should you still own a pet if you can't feed them home cooked kangaroo every day? Yep!

The answer to what product to choose can be overwhelming.

There is an excellent guide to selecting a pet food written by Tufts Veterinary School:
https://vetnutrition.tufts.edu/2019/12/pet-food-decisions-how-do-you-pick-your-pets-food/

It's so good that I don't think I could say it any better, so I'll quote the majority of it here...

quote:

Common Mistakes in Selecting Pet Food

Do you do base your decision on any of the following?

The ingredient list. Many pet owners select diets based on ingredients in the ingredient list that sound good to them, rather than on the diets that are most nutritious and made with the best nutritional expertise and quality control. Remember that pets need nutrients, not ingredients. You can learn more about information in the ingredient list that is helpful and what can cause more confusion from our past Petfoodology posts.

The most persuasive labels. Most of the information on the pet food label is marketing, rather than factual information. Just because diets contain ancient grains or superfoods doesn’t make them the best options for your pet.

Ratings websites. Current ratings websites base their ratings on marketing information (or myths), not on which diet has the best nutrition or quality.

Recommendations from the pet supply store: Your veterinarian can help you select the best food for your pet. Pet supply store employees may be promoting the food that has the highest profit margin, the store’s private label brand, or the ones with the best marketing, rather than what is really the best food for your pet.
If any of these are part of your decision-making process, you might be falling victim to pet food myths and misinformation and not really selecting the optimal diet.

Making Good Decisions for your Best Friend

You love your pet, you’re passionate about her nutrition, and want to feed her the best diet possible. What can you do to ensure you’re buying what is really the best food for her?

Talk to your veterinarian. In our study, veterinarians were the most common primary source for nutrition information and were also rated as the most important source. Not every veterinarian likes discussing nutrition as much as we do, so if it’s not your veterinarian’s favorite topic, schedule an appointment with a Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist® (some will even do remote consultations with owners) .

Ask important questions about your pet food – most of the important factual information you need is not on the label, such as whether they employ qualified nutritionists or use rigorous quality control practices, but this information should be available from the manufacturer. Some of the important criteria from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association have been compiled in a tool from the Pet Nutrition Alliance (updated annually).

Be a skeptic about nutrition on the internet. The internet can be a tremendous resource but also can be an unreliable source of myths, misinformation, or even completely false information. Learn to be a more objective user of the internet, especially for pet nutrition topics. Researching the site’s author and sources of information, as well as discussing the information with your veterinarian can help you to avoid common pitfalls with nutrition on the internet.

The jist of it is - don't get caught up in marketing hype. Do your research. I recommend sticking with major well established pet food brands vs exotic or boutique foods that haven't been around as long, in general. Don't buy the cheapest thing you can get either. But don't just buy the expensive stuff thinking it MUST be good!

What about grain free?
There have been FDA reports of heart disease connected to grain free diets. It is not generally recommended to feed these diets right now. There is just too much we don't know about why this is happening. Here is more info:
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterina...etween-diet-and

What about raw feeding?
I don't recommend this. There's just too much risk of contamination with microbes and there isn't really good science to back up its claims.

What about home cooking?
The truth is home cooking usually isn't worth the time or expense, but if you feel strongly that you want to do it, I recommend using balanceit.com or similar nutritional supplements. BalanceIt gives you recipes to add their supplement powders to. They should be well nutritionally balanced this way. Our nutritionist at school recommended it. You can always also consult with a Veterinary Nutritionist but this is pretty pricey so not that many people do it. It is the best, though, if your animal has multiple health issues that affect their diet (such as kidney disease and skin allergies).

I hope this thread is helpful and I would love to hear any brands that people stand behind or that you feel like your pet does so much better on this particular food.

Edit: for those who are interested in home cooking, or want to talk to someone with the most expertise possible about their pets diet, there are veterinary nutrition services out there. Most of them will work through your gp and you can get a referral to consult with them via phone and or email.

Some examples:
https://vetmed.tennessee.edu/vmc/SmallAnimalHospital/Nutrition/Pages/default.aspx
https://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/hospital/small-animal/nutrition

There's also this search tool on the American College of Veterinary Nutrition website
https://acvn.org/directory/

Dixville fucked around with this message at 20:50 on May 5, 2020

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 01:23

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 12:22

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

Stealing this from the old thread...

Transition Slowly - If your pet eats the same thing every day and you suddenly feed him something new, he's probably going to get diarrhea or barf everywhere. You need to make a gradual change. Decrease the amount of old food and increase the amount of new food (mix them together) over a period of at least a week. If your pet starts having softer stool, you're probably going too fast.

Don't feed "exotic" protein sourcesunless you have a good reason - A lot of brands offer "fancy" flavors of food like bison, venison, rabbit, duck, etc. Unless your pet has a food allergy or won't eat anything else, pick a normal flavor of food like chicken, turkey, beef, etc. Food allergies can develop at any time in a pet's life for no reason, and the best way to manage them is to feed a protein source that the pet has NEVER eaten before (a "novel protein"). If you feed your pet a bunch of weird protein sources like bison and kangaroo and rabbit, and then he develops food allergies a few years down the line, you're not going to have any good options for a novel protein.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2020 01:30

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

Boogalo posted:

Wet food is better for your cat (mostly due to moisture) but is also expensive so you're not a bad person if you feed high quality dry food that your cat likes. If you feed dry, try to have a fountain since that'll help your idiot drink more.

My delicate princess with IBS needs prescription selective protein no fish at all food and wet for a month would be $300 so she gets dry and its only $60/mo.

Yeah this is how I feel about it. Mix of wet and dry might be a good compromise too. I need to replace the fountain that broke it really did make a difference for water intake for my cat.

Yeah there are obviously some pretty big differences from the old thread. I'm open to any discussion on that and anything I may have left out. I decided not to do a list of "good and bad" brands just because that can change over time, companies buy each other out and whatnot so I felt it would be longer lasting advice to just say how to choose a diet in general vs listing certain brand names.

I know the old thread was really big on ingredients and recommended more meat vs corn soy etc, I stand by the advice from Tufts on that, some of these diets with corn and whatnot are from companies that thoroughly test their foods and have shown that they are good through scientific testing. The nutrient profiles are good even though you wouldn't necessarily feed your dog a plate of corn. It's not the same as that. I have no problem with people looking for meat based foods as long as they are still well tested and the ingredients are high in quality. Keep in mind that meat, if it's included in ingredients, will contain a proportionately higher amount of water than more processed ingredients so it will show up sooner on the ingredients list due to weight of the water as well. So labels can be a little misleading in that way.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 01:18

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

Main Paineframe posted:

To throw my anecdotal experience into the mix, my dog used to be on a grain-free food, Acana Limited Ingredients.

Now he's on a prescription cardiac diet, after he went into congestive heart failure before age 5 due to severe DCM, which the cardiologist said is almost certainly caused by the grain-free food because it's extremely rare for this to happen this badly to a dog that's this young and doesn't have any particular aggravating factors.

Obviously this is just one anecdote, the FDA still says that the number of cases is still very small and that only a tiny percentage of dogs are likely affected, the link is neither clear nor conclusive, and so on. But even if the overall risk is low, the prognosis can be pretty lovely if your dog is one of the unlucky ones, so think twice about taking that bet unless your dog really needs to have specifically grain-free food.

This is my feeling on it too. The other concern is how many dogs may be out there with subclinical heart disease that hasn't been diagnosed because the only way to see it would be xrays or echo.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2020 01:25

Dixville: Nov 4, 2008; I don't think!; Ham Wrangler

Fluffy Bunnies posted:

We literally know exactly what's causing this and it isn't just grain-free diets; there are plenty of legume-heavy (vegan, for instance) diets that are coming up in this, too. The uptake of taurine is being blocked by large amounts of legumes in carnivore pet foods. The percentage of pets it effects is almost 0. The DCM you're referencing but for some reason not getting into here is literally based around the lack of taurine available to the dog/cat/fox.

Homemade is amazing. Raw is great. Kibble is fantastic for lots of dogs, too.

If anyone wants to talk about pet food from someone who has spent years researching it, worked with several pet food companies, and has worked elbow to elbow with vet nutritionists in creating specialized food plans for animals in zoos, at home, and everywhere in between, feel free to PM me. I will talk animal food all day long.

E: If your pet's food is leaving much to be desired, speak to veterinary nutritionists who devote their lives to what goes into your pet not general practice vets. They aren't hard to find and almost all of them take phone calls for simple questions like "what value does pork kidney have for my dog?" and will work remotely with you. Your GP vet may be the one pulling the blood and sending information to the nutritionist, but your GP vet does not get the depth of education in this field that the specialist vet does. I'm also happy to direct people to them, so just hit me up if you need it.

That's a good point and I'd be happy to add nutritionist info to the op. I'll add some of the nutrition services I'm familiar with.

# ¿ May 5, 2020 20:42

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Pet Island > Diet and Nutrition Thread: Grain Free Is Not The Way To Be