The market for dog food is now unmanageable. Owners who want to reduce the ecological footprint of their favorites can now even use vegan products. And these seem to even use the health of Labrador, Dachshund, Pudel and Co, as a study by Andrew Knight from the University of Winchester and his team in »Plos One« suggests: Correspondingly supplied pets had to be fed to the vet as fed with conventional feed Consistency. However, dogs that received raw meat best cut off.
For her study, the working group compared more than 2500 dogs that it was able to divide into three groups: 13 percent received vegan food, a third of all raw meat, and the remaining 54 percent poured out the mandatory, processed can or dry food Meat base in the bowl. Knight and Co then relate to various health data of the animals, such as the number of visits to the veterinarian, whether they received medication or suffered from certain diseases.
The worst performers were those who were allowed to eat prefabricated industrial food based on meat. The proportion of animals suffering from health problems was highest in this group and amounted to just under 50 percent, while slightly more than a third of vegan animals did. The raw meat consumers were in between and also had to go to the veterinarian the least. However, they were actually more likely to suffer from malnutrition and were most likely to have pathogens associated with raw meat. In addition, these animals were the average youngest cohort, which could have distorted the result regarding the doctor's visits somewhat in their favor, the authors write: In general, younger animals have to go to the practice less often.
Conversely, owners who feed their dogs vegan could in principle handle their favorites more carefully and carefully. Better health would then not be or not just a result of the nutrition, but also the general living conditions of the animals. Knight and his team also emphasize that it is only a correlation study for the time being. Because of their ecological footprint, the keeping of cats and dogs is repeatedly criticized, especially because of their high meat needs. But a balanced vegan diet now also seems possible for dogs.
