The market for dog food is now unmanageable. Owners who want to reduce the ecological footprint of their pets can now even use vegan products. And these even seem to benefit the health of Labradors, dachshunds, poodles and the like, as a study by Andrew Knight from the University of Winchester and his team in »PLOS ONE« suggests: Appropriately cared for pets had to go to the vet less often than those fed with conventional food conspecifics. However, dogs that received raw meat performed best.
For their study, the working group compared more than 2,500 dogs, which they were able to divide into three groups: 13 percent were given vegan food, a third ate mainly raw meat, and the remaining 54 percent were fed commercial, processed canned or dry food meat base in the bowl. Knight and co then related this to various health data about the animals, such as the number of visits to the vet, whether they received medication or had certain medical conditions.
The worst performers were those dogs that were allowed to consume prepackaged, meat-based industrial food. The proportion of animals that suffered from health problems was highest in this group at almost 50 percent, compared to just over a third of the vegan animals. The raw meat consumers were in between and also had to visit the vet the least often. However, in fact, they were more likely to suffer from malnutrition and were the most likely to carry pathogens associated with raw meat. In addition, these animals were the youngest cohort on average, which the authors write could have skewed the result in terms of doctor visits somewhat in their favour: In general, younger animals have to go to the practice less often.