# Vegan vs Raw



## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I didn't look at the linked article yet, and may not, since it sounds preposterous to me. But I will note that unlike cats, dogs are not obligate carnivores.


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## Countryboy (May 16, 2011)

lily cd re said:


> I didn't look at the linked article yet, and may not, since it sounds preposterous to me. But I will note that unlike cats, dogs are not obligate carnivores.


Ja... me too found the premise a bit odd. But then 'healthiness' is difficult to quantify, eh?


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## Apricot mini momma (Dec 22, 2020)

I haven’t done any additional research on the subject for dogs, and my own bias was that dogs are “designed” to eat meat and therefore meat must be healthier for dogs.

However, nutrients in meat are 2nd hand, so maybe I need to think about it differently. Humans survived until today by eating meat, but we now know that a plant based diet is healthier, reducing blood pressure, cholesterol and risk of heart disease etc. Maybe the same is true for dogs. Is there a specific ingredient in meat that dogs need?


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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

I have not read the full report, but "health" is based upon a self-selected owner questionnaire and uses the number of non-routine vet visits per dog per annum as part of the assessment of healthiness- not an ideal measure, perhaps. There is a suggestion that the dogs fed the vegan diet may have generally stayed a better weight than those on traditional foods. My own preference is for feeding 'real food' rather than adding supplements to a diet to fill the gaps, and it is hard to see how this could be achieved with a vegan diet for dogs. At the same time it is clear that we are going to have to rethink our methods of agriculture if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change and loss of biodiversity - I would still want to see much more solid, less potentially biased research than this study before making any changes:

"Prof Andrew Knight, at the University of Winchester, UK, and who led the study...
Knight follows a vegan diet himself but does not own a dog, devised and led the peer-reviewed study, which was funded by the charity ProVeg."








Like a dog with a bean ... vegan diets found to aid canine health


Peer-reviewed analysis of 2,500 pets finds vegan dogs visit the vet less often and require fewer medications




www.theguardian.com


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## cowpony (Dec 30, 2009)

I'm a bit dubious. First, I think there is a bit of selection bias in the owners and the use of vet visits as a metric. Are the dogs getting fewer ear infections, for example, or is the kind of owner who feeds a vegan diet also the kind of owner who would treat the ears with something like witch hazel instead of picking up a script for antibiotics?

Second, just look at the teeth of a dog compared to other animals. Herbivorous animals, including humans, tend to have flat teeth adapted to grinding and mashing our food. Digestion starts in the mouth when we grind the food into small pieces and mix it with saliva to start reducing starches. We sit there chewing and chewing to get the most nutrition out of our food. Carnivores, in contrast, have pointed teeth adapted to shredding meat and breaking bone. They gulp instead of chew, and their teeth merely need to break the food into small enough pieces to fit down the gullet. 

Dogs, like bears, are not obligate carnivores. However, if you look at a grizzly bear skull vs a dog skull vs a lion skull, you'll note that the bear molars are a bit flatter than either the dog or the lion molars. The grizzly has evolved multi purpose teeth capable of both shredding meat and mashing plant material. They are a well adapted omnivore. Dog teeth, in contrast, are still very pointy and carnivore like. They are incapable of grinding food like a human or even a bear. That suggests to me that dogs, despite their ability to digest starches, would not normally subsist on a wholly plant based diet. They can do it if we cook and otherwise process the food to allow them to digest it more easily, but it's not what they were evolved for.


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## I_love_dogs (May 30, 2021)

Protein and iron are the two main things that meat would provide. Some of the main sources of protein like wheat and legumes are things that a lot of dogs have issues with. In humans, the plant sources of iron are not absorbed all that well. When my child had low iron, we had to use supplements made from animals to get the kind that would be properly absorbed per the doctor. Based on some research about the different kinds, it seems doubtful that most people could get enough iron on a vegan diet. I would think that dogs would have the same issue.


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## Apricot mini momma (Dec 22, 2020)

I_love_dogs said:


> Protein and iron are the two main things that meat would provide. Some of the main sources of protein like wheat and legumes are things that a lot of dogs have issues with. In humans, the plant sources of iron are not absorbed all that well. When my child had low iron, we had to use supplements made from animals to get the kind that would be properly absorbed per the doctor. Based on some research about the different kinds, it seems doubtful that most people could get enough iron on a vegan diet. I would think that dogs would have the same issue.


Good points. I have read the info on legumes and issues with dogs, which is very real and I changed kibble due to that information. 

I guess humans have some issues with wheat and iron too. I was low iron all my life until I went vegan!


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