https://theconversation.com/vegan-d...plicated-230319

Basically what they're saying is that vegan dog food is no worse for the dog than conventionally produced dog food.

Of course that's only based on a a 12 month study (the longest one), so one would imagine that if the study were continued for 10 years, the vegan dogs would have at least as many problems as the ones eating conventional dog food.

Instead of asking the owner's opinion of the health of their dogs on a vegan diet, perhaps they should be asking the vets who care for both vegan and conventionally fed dogs for their opinions on the health of dogs fed vegan vs conventional dog food.

This is like comparing a vegan UPF human diet to a conventional UPF human diet - there's not going to be any real difference, at least not until some nutrient deficiencies start to show up.

Most commercial dog food is full of starches.

Yes it is - and that's why if vegan dog food is made to the same nutritional standards as most regular dog food, the vegan dogs are going to end up just as overweight and sick as the dogs on Purina.

It's not complicated. Dogs aren't vegans.

The difference is eventually significant, but I agree this matters far more than the article suggests.

It also means cat food is becoming more vegan, and that's even more certain to be a bad idea. Dogs are omnivores, while cats are obligate carnivores.

And, just like us, they prefer the junk food until they detox off it.

But they waaaaaant their dogs to be vegans!

Back before so much commercially made cat food, no one ever heard of a diabetic cat - now it's almost to be expected as they get older and fatter. They get hooked on their starchy food and don't even want real meats or fish.

If they really want a vegan pet, they need to get a rabbit. But don't feed it more than very small amounts of commercially made rabbit pellets, because just like with other commercially produced pet foods, those pellets are junk food for bunnies, and they will get fat and sick on a diet of nothing but pellets. Instead, they need greens - if you can get things like raspberry leaves, carrot greens, mint leaves, clover and dandelion greens and flowers - those are great for bunnies, but grocery store greens such as leaf lettuces, kale and parsley will do in a pinch. They should have unlimited hay, but the most commonly available hay for rabbits is alfalfa hay - which of course is junk food for bunnies. They do much better on grass hay or timothy hay.

That is the danger. I'm having good luck by creating a good-food-zone where my cats eat half their meals, in our working studio upstairs. Downstairs, big softy DH feeds the junkier versions of what we accept, and I test the better quality options upstairs.

This way, we both escape the pestering, because the cats know DH has what now passes as "goodies." Because Mom has the healthy stuff and some of it is even good. This turns out to mean their intake is at least half upstairs, especially the senior guy who I am trying to build up with real food, like canned mackerel, freeze-dried chicken, and heavy cream. Which are only available upstairs, and are the new "treats."

Your good advice explains why my pet bunny lasted eight years, starting as a baby in the summer, in a heated outdoor hutch to keep him safe from our dogs and anything else that might nab him, with access to his patch of natural grasses and getting walked (our fenced yard, dogs inside at the windows) on a leash.

He lived in the catio and was a good friend to the cats

We've had a total of 3 rabbits over the years.

The last one lived to at least age 13. I say "at least" because we got her at the shelter and they had no idea how old she was when she was brought in, but we had her for 13 years AFTER that. She was a small one (holland lop), which Google tells me have a typical lifespan of 7-10 years. By the time we'd had her for 13 years, she had developed cataracts, was nearly deaf, and had become arthritic to the point that she wasn't moving fast enough to catch all her cecal pellets, and if she lay down on her side, she would have a difficult time getting up on her paws again. Nutritionally speaking, they really need the cecal pellets in order to extract sufficient nutrients from their food. She was living with DD2 in another state by that time, so rather than allowing her to suffer, she was treated to as much of a whole banana as she wanted in the vet's office before a merciful end. (she loved bananas, but we'd normally only give her a small piece so she wouldn't get sick)



Back to Dogs and food that's not good for dogs:

I read a story recently where a vet's office keeps a jar of chocolate candy specifically for their euthanasia patients - "because every dog should have a chance to taste chocolate at least once in their life."

Dogs are primarily carnivorous. They have carnivore teeth, an alimentary canal of a carnivore, and enzymes to digest meat.

Why would anyone consider feeding a dog a vegan diet? That sounds like animal abuse to me.

But that doesn't matter to the really hard core vegans who are determined that every human and every animal was really meant to be vegan.

The fact that some animals are more inclined to eat meat than vegetation is simply considered to be an inconceivable and violent aberration in the cosmically intended relationship between all creatures - one that they feel compelled to do their best to put a stop to, so that all animals and people can live in harmony and no creatures will ever be used for food again.

I have seen them interviewed while they explain: by following this line of thought to the bizarre conclusion which ignoring the Cycle of Life will lead to: death.

Death to all predators, including us, and then they talk about morbid stuff and you realize the importance of B-12. Most people bail on veganism around 2-3 months in, when the "fasting effect" has worn off and misery appears, but not in a way we can point to. That's about how long I lasted on vegetarianism, which might explain why my childhood avoidance of vegetables was actually my body working as it should.

The latest information on plants is about how they do sense things and communicate and where will that leave them? Fruitarians, because fruit does tend to WANT to be eaten... but has zero protein and fat as a food group.

The devastation is worse. Their sensory system starts doing strange things, they find everything too much effort, and become obsessed with "purity." Then it's Breatharianism, I suppose.

They are wrong. Carnivores are a necessary part of the balance. Example:

The Marine Iguana of the Galápagos Islands. They are vegans. Like all iguanas, it's cold-blooded and will go into torpor if it gets too cold. If it says in torpor too long, it dies.

When the land iguana drifted to the Galápagos so many millennia ago, it found an island with plenty of plants to eat, and zero predators.

It ate and ate with no carnivores to control its numbers, until it completely stripped the island of everything it could digest. What now? No more food? We ate it all? Shall we starve now?

Solution: Seaweed.

But the water is cold, luckily the seaweed was close. We can just dip in a bit, gorge ourselves and get out before we go into torpor.

But before long it ate all the close to shore seaweed and had to dive deeper and deeper into the cold water to get a bite of seaweed.

Today, the iguana has to dive as deep as it can in one breath to get a single bite. No time for two bites, or it'll die of hypoxia before it reaches the surface again.

By the time it surfaces, it has to lay in the sun for a long time to get its body temperature back up so it can go back down for another bite.

If it can't dive deeper than the others, it starves to death.

If it goes into torpor in the cold water, it will drown.

If it takes too much time, it's hypoxia.

Only the strongest marine iguanas survive, and the weaker ones either starve or drown. So now, without predators, their access to food in a hostile environment controls their numbers.

If there were no carnivores on Earth, we wouldn't be here. The vegetarian animals would have stripped all the digestible food off the planet billions of years before man every came to be.

So, in a way, the vegans are doing absolutely the wrong thing, while they are thinking that they are doing the right thing. We have one of the smartest and dumbest brains in the animal kingdom - both at the same time.

Earth needs a balance of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. If it doesn't get that balance, the system will break down, and that isn't good for any of them.

I have teeth of an omnivore, digestive enzymes of an omnivore, and an alimentary canal of an omnivore, so to do my part of both my body requirements and the balance, I need to eat both plants and animals.

Mother nature (or whoever you choose) designed me to have that role in the balance.

Thank you Bob - well worth quoting.

If only vegans could bring themselves to understand that.

Yes, thank you, Bob.



They don't want to operate in reality. The Tao says misfortune always follows.

You have my permission to quote and spread the word (not that you need my permission).

It's too late for the marine iguana, but that's only one island. We don't want island earth to be the same way.