While corn is often vilified as a pet food ingredient, it is nutritious and easily digested by both dogs and cats and rarely causes allergies. As such, it is not an ingredient that most pets need to avoid in their diet.
There’s been a lot of media attention recently on “AI” or artificial intelligence. Several large tech companies have recently made available to the general public AI “chat bots” that can carry on relatively human-like conversations and even draft documents such as letters, poems, and blog posts. These tools can provide fast answers to questions of all types as well as entertaining interactions for those who might engage them. But, this powerful new technology is not without some considerable issues – there are concerns that AI chatbots may pull information from unreputable sources, plagiarize copyrighted material, or even completely make stuff up! An attorney found out the latter the hard way – he was put in a very uncomfortable situation when it became clear that he used ChatGPT to write a legal brief and the software completely made up a number of legal cases and judicial opinions. These issues were, of course, not caught by the attorney before the document was submitted to the court! With all of the discussion of the promise of these new chatbots, I found myself curious how they would handle common pet food questions. So, I undertook a little experiment! I made the same request of the three best known AI chat bots – Bing Chat, by Microsoft, Bard by Google, and ChatGPT by OpenAI : “help me find the best dog food”. Here’s what they told me: Bing Bing provided me with the briefest of answers. It provided the name of one specific food as “the best overall dog food” “according to a veterinarian”. It then suggested that a good dog food should have “meats, grains, vegetables, and fruits to meet the nutritional standards of dog food regulations”. Then it recommended going to a popular but unscientific pet food ratings website for help finding diets…
We know that many pet owners are desperate for accurate, trustworthy information about how to feed their pets, whether they’re healthy or if they have a medical condition. However, even knowing who to talk to about your pet’s nutrition can be confusing! Learn more about Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionists and an easier way to find one.
A common task of a Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist® is to design custom homemade diet recipes for pets that have health issues or for pet owners who prefer not to use commercial foods. We’ve covered some general mistakes that pet owners often make with homecooked diets when they don’t work with a veterinary nutritionist, as well as some situations where cooking for your pet may not be optimal. In this post, I’d like to focus on misconceptions and mistakes about homecooked diets that my colleagues and I frequently run into with our clients – pet owners who get their recipes from a veterinary nutritionist. These issues tend to come up after the consultation, when our clients receive the completed recipe and start cooking. These misconceptions often cause frustration for nutritionist and pet owner alike. Equating volume of food with calories – after a homemade recipe is created for a pet, it is common to have the pet owner question the volume amount of the food because it looks like less or more than they expected it to be, often based on the pet’s previous diet. There may be the perception that there isn’t enough food, but more frequently, the concern is about too much food. Homemade diets are formulated to provide the amount of calories that the nutritionist feels is appropriate for the pet, either based on the pet’s diet history, or on published equations. Nutritionists are trained to think in terms of calories, not volume, and so the volume of the food rarely comes into consideration during the formulation process unless it seems particularly high. Pet owners, on the other hand, tend to think about food in terms of volume, not calories. Especially for pets that were previously fed dry diets, many owners are surprised by the amount of…
Chronic diarrhea is one of the most frustrating medical conditions for both dog owners and veterinarians (and especially for us veterinary nutritionists!) However, while it can be challenging to find the optimal diet for a dog with chronic diarrhea, it’s worth the extra effort!
A new FDA update provides more information on diet-associated dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). While the specific cause is not yet known, the problem hasn’t gone away
Anyone who has lived with a cat or dog with medical issues knows that maintaining a good appetite can be challenging and that weight and muscle loss can occur as a result. Reduced food intake is not only distressing to owners but also has negative effects for the pet. When healthy pets lose weight, they mostly lose fat. However, elderly pets or pets with medical issues that lose weight mostly lose muscle. Muscle loss is bad for pets (as it is for people) because it can reduce strength, immune function, and wound healing, and can even shorten a pet’s lifespan. Many things affect pets’ appetite and food intake, such as sense of smell and taste, food properties (nutrient levels, aroma, flavor, texture), medical issues, dental disease, pain, competition between animals, and medications. Many chronic diseases, such as heart or kidney disease, can affect appetite. But even healthy older animals can have reduced appetite. Older people’s less sensitive taste and smell perception can reduce appetite; while we suspect this also occurs in dogs and cats as they age, this has not been well studied. One approach to helping animals’ appetite is to adjust the temperature of the food. An interesting study was published recently in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior.1 Researchers studied older cats’ preferences for wet foods at different temperatures. Thirty-two healthy older cats took part in the study. All cats were over 8 years of age (up to 14 years, with an average age of 11 years). This was a carefully-designed study using a single “chunks in gravy” style commercial canned food. The temperatures tested were 43°F (the temperature of food coming out of the refrigerator), 70°F (room temperature), and 99°F (warmed). Cats were tested in a two-bowl test where they could select the food they preferred in two…
The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) recently released the latest version of some dramatic proposed changes to pet food labels and held a short period of public comment. We review some of the biggest proposed changes and provide our commentary.
Preservatives are essential ingredients in some forms of pet foods but they are surrounded by a great deal of misinformation.
How confident are you in your knowledge of how to best feed cats with chronic kidney disease? Take our quiz to find out whether your confidence is well-placed!