What are some other myths about dog nutrition that you hear as a veterinarian?

This is my favorite point. So grain-free diets right now have been going around as the big fad—that's really important in people's opinions. And maybe at one point, it was for certain things, but I think it's getting overused. Unless your dog has been diagnosed with a food allergy by a dermatologist or they're having skin issues or they’ve seen an internist for GI upsets, we should not be giving dogs these grain-free diets. It's actually correlated to a horrible heart condition called DCM, and that's oftentimes fatal. So let's prevent that by not starting a grain-free diet unless it's been prescribed.

Right now? What I hear so much about is grain-free diets. That's the biggest one because they think their dogs have allergies and they're going to put them on grain-free and everybody's going to live happily ever after. And let me just say that if your dog is allergic to grain, then yeah, you might live happily ever after. But that's the only reason. If they're not allergic to that, why do it?

If I'm allergic to strawberries, I'm not going to quit eating steak or anything like that. It just doesn't make sense. Not to mention one of the things I will say about grain-free diets and a lot of the public is still not aware of, and I won't go into great detail, but there has been plenty of studies that show that there is a correlation between dogs who eat grain-free diets that developed premature cardiovascular disease or heart disease if you will. You will find a plethora of information out there about the potential dangers of a grain-free diet. Unless a dog has been proven to be allergic to grains, I don't recommend grain-free diets. And that's one of the big misconceptions that I hear on a weekly basis.

I think the two big ones are that grain-free dog food is healthier for your dog, which is entirely not true. Grains have an excellent place in an average dog's diet. And there are certainly some dogs that may have sensitivities, but the vast majority of dogs can eat grain in their food and be healthy. I think another myth is that raw foods are somehow healthier for your dog, and I disagree with that. I think a lot of dogs don't do well on a raw diet. And studies have shown that dogs on a raw diet have more foodborne illness-causing bacteria like E-coli or salmonella in their stools and on their body, so it puts owners and families at an increased risk.

And then I think another thing to think about is byproducts. Everybody thinks byproducts or corn or certain ingredients like that are a big no-no in dog food, and that's just not true. When processed correctly, corn is an excellent source of several nutrients and is a relatively inexpensive way to add some of those nutrients to food. And so it can make dog food more affordable and still very nutritious. The same goes for byproducts. Byproducts are just the parts of the bird or animal that we don't typically eat, so that would include things like the windpipe or liver or things like that. That are just not as appetizing to a human.

There are many dog food myths. There are a couple that are big for me. One is that many people are very afraid to feed foods that have the word byproduct on the label. I think it's a poor understanding really of what byproducts are. Byproducts are organ meats. They're not the inedible parts of the animal. Byproducts are not horns, hooves, beaks, feet, hair feathers. Those are not allowed to be byproducts. Byproducts are organ meats. There's not a big demand in human nutrition for organ meats. A lot of people don't buy organ meats for themselves.

When animals go into pet feed, there's a lot of waste. What pet food manufacturers have done, they're able to buy those organs and put them into their diets, and they're tremendously healthy. I think honestly; dogs don't get enough organ meats in their diets. We're looking at lungs, spleen, liver, kidneys; all those things are very healthy, digestible, and nutritious for dogs. There's no reason to be afraid of the word byproduct.

There is some marketing in pet foods where they say, "Does not contain byproducts," but then if you look at the labels, they're listed out—heart, liver, etc. They're included in there, but they've gotten away from saying that they're byproducts, so they don't scare people off. Don't be worried about byproducts; they're very nutritious.

The big one is feeding raw food. I don't recommend it. You'll see a lot of stuff on the internet about how it's better and more natural for them. With commercial foods, we see dogs living longer and longer. These commercial pet food companies have worked hard to formulate balanced nutrition, so dogs thrive on it. The raw foods often harbor bacteria like salmonella, and the meats can have parasites and enzymes in them that can be harmful to the dog. So I don't recommend raw food because of diseases and deleterious things that it can transmit. If you're going to insist on feeding non-commercial dog food, I recommend that a nutritionist balance it and that you cook it. You're not hurting the nutritional value by cooking it.

We could probably talk about this a lot. I'll try to pick some of the highlights, but I think some specific things should be touched on because they're super common. The biggest thing nowadays is the grain-free movement that has gained a ton of traction in the last several years. It's been slowed a little bit with the concerns of heart disease linked to it, but it's still a big thing. It's not that grain-free is necessarily inherently bad, but some of the deficiencies they've identified that could potentially be linked to underlying heart conditions in some dogs are certainly a concern. The idea that grain-free diets are inherently better for pets does not have any sort of research behind it to support it. It's more based on assumptions about how nutrition works. The problem with that is that, apart from there being no research to support it, is that dogs that are on grain-free diets tend to be overweight. This is largely caused by what has to be done when you move to a grain-free diet. For example, one of the big concerns is corn. Many people become very heated when you talk about corn in dog nutrition because they believe that corn is a filler that is harmful to pets and that many companies use it to fill the food without it having any benefit.

Corn is, therefore, one of the grains that get removed. But corn, when processed properly, is very dense in nutrition. Pet companies use it because it provides a lot of nutrients for the pet. When a company removes it in making a grain-free diet, they have to replace it with something else or their food will be nutrient deficient. They'll often replace it with a more starchy carbohydrate like potatoes just to be able to label it as grain-free. As a result of that, it tends to be a more carbohydrate-dense diet, and, generally speaking, dogs tend to be more prone to gaining weight. I see that as one of the problems, along with the concerns about the links to heart disease.

The struggle is that many people are moving their pets to grain-free diets because they have an underlying issue, whether it is skin allergies or GI issues, and they think that the grain-free diet will fix the problem. It doesn't because grain is not a common allergen in dogs most of the time. There isn't good research that proves this is a common allergy, and therefore we should move in another direction. It's giving a lot of pet owners false hope. If I have a pet owner that has their dog on a grain-free diet, and the dog's doing much better than before, I certainly won't argue that, and I've had that happen on a few occasions.

The other concept that I see more of, maybe even more so than the grain-free nowadays, is high protein diets. High-protein diets in dogs are extremely common, and it's become the norm that it is good for the dog. Again, the problem is that the research does not support it. Clinically, I see a lot of problems with dogs that are on high-protein diets, especially older dogs. The older your pet is, the harder it is for them to process that protein. A good, well-balanced diet in an adult dog is a diet that's cognizant of the nutrition that's being provided and created based on the current research that's out there. Proteins usually make up a percentage of low to mid-twenties of daily food intake on a dry matter basis. That should be the percentages if you're looking at dry food. These other diets that I'm talking about, and there are so many of them that it's actually the norm now, contain upwards of 30%, even as high as 40% protein.

The liver has to process that extra protein, and the kidneys have to excrete the breakdown products. We often see dogs with abnormalities in their blood work because they're getting all of this excess protein that they don't need but that their body has to deal with. The older your pet is, the more harmful that can be. So the myth would be that high-protein diets are good for dogs. That is just, unfortunately, not true. It's not based on research, and the older your dog gets, the less protein they need. Good senior diets will typically have even lower protein, closer to 20%. If there are significant kidney problems, dogs with kidney disease need an even lower percentage of potentially down to 15 or 16% protein. I could go on about additional myths, but I think those are the two most impactful ones for where we are with pet nutrition.

I will say this is the biggest hot-button issue question we get at some point from every owner. Should I feed my pet a grain-free diet? Nine times out of 10, the answer is no, you shouldn't. Most pets we find are not allergic specifically to grain. What we're most looking for is ensuring their diet is balanced and nutritionally sound. I have very few pets that are indeed showing signs of an adverse reaction to grains, and those have been monitored by a veterinarian, and then the appropriate grain-free or restricted diet of some sort is added on. There are some cases, but not as many as we want to think that that's the easy fix to solving your pet's problems. This question has many avenues to go down and is tailored to every pet's needs. So please bring it up on your next visit. We can talk about options and if that is the right choice for your pet without going into a tangent but also bringing it up. You might have seen in the news that there have been cases of cardiomyopathy in dogs fed primarily grain-free and legume-rich diets for a long period of time. This is a heart condition that they've noticed specifically with these dogs, and that, in particular, is alarming and something we want to watch out for. So that is why we push, and we just keep trying to ram it home. Ensuring you find an AAFCO-approved diet that is nutritionally sound and balanced and has all of the nutrients your pet needs is very important.