Vegetarian and Vegan Diets for Dogs and Cats

 

We’ve lost count of the number of times we’re asked if dogs can eat a vegetarian diet. Often, the desire to eat a vegetarian or vegan diet stems from complete ignorance and confusion, such as “protein allergies” or because it’s “a healthier diet.”

Let’s break it down:

– Can dogs eat a vegetarian or vegan diet? They can.

– Is it healthy and complete? No.

The most common argument defending this type of diet is that, like us, dogs have nutrient needs, not food needs (IT’S TRUE), and therefore, ensuring these nutrients are provided ensures a quality diet.

A commercial vegan/vegetarian diet with adequate nutritional quality adds all the missing nutrients to achieve nutritional balance because, initially, plant-based sources are not sufficient to meet the needs of a dog as a carnivore.

On the other hand, if we’re considering natural nutrition, a vegan or even vegetarian diet is a real challenge to a dog’s digestive physiology! It’s not impossible to meet these nutritional needs, but we’ll always work within the recommended lower limit of protein. Furthermore, we’ll have diets with high amounts of carbohydrates that promote inflammatory pathologies and the development of diseases such as diabetes or tumors.

A brief aside: if we consider the digestive physiology of a true herbivore, we know that they have large fermentation chambers capable of harnessing nutrients from even the most fibrous and nutritionally poor foods. How can we expect an animal with a short digestive system, without a fermentation chamber, to absorb these nutrients in the same way and remain healthy?

Dogs are extremely resistant to nutritional deficiencies and typically don’t show symptoms immediately. Only after months of deficiencies do we see clear signs of these changes. This ability, which once helped the species survive, now allows us to experiment with humanizing and making a species that is inherently carnivorous more human. We, as humans, are endowed with certain tools that theoretically allow us to follow a vegan or vegetarian diet without experiencing nutritional deficiencies or harming our health… In fact, we are omnivores.

Thinking of a cat as a “vegan” animal is almost as irrational as thinking of a cow as a predator.

Dogs are extremely resilient and survive situations of extreme deprivation. However, the same is not true for cats. Cats are strict carnivores, dependent on animal protein to survive. Unlike dogs, cats will starve to death if they don’t receive adequate nutrition. While scientific advances allow for the development of vegan and vegetarian diets that allow them to survive, the same does not apply to felines.

The domestication of these species has made them completely dependent on us for food. It is up to us to respect them as individuals and as a species and feed them so that they can live to their fullest potential, not survive in mediocrity and poor health.