Balanced Home-Cooked Diets for Pets
I am generally not a fan of home-cooked diets for pets because, too often, I have seen pet owners fail to provide a balanced diet. Now, I’m not talking about the folks who do their research, provide a variety of nutrients, and add supplements. I am talking about the owners who report their precious Fluffy just won’t eat anything but roast chicken and green beans. Merely adding a veterinary or human multivitamin to a diet does not make it balanced as those products are labeled for use in addition to an already balanced diet.
The dangers of an unbalanced diet are multiple. Nutrient deficiencies can result in anemia, skin issues, gastrointestinal issues, nerve conduction problems, and immunosuppression among many other medical conditions. It is crucial that pet owners who want to make food for Fluffy do it well. Many of the home-cooked diet recipes that came out from companies like Hill’s Pet Nutrition about 10 years ago have since been deemed unbalanced and are no longer recommended although you can still find recipes circulating the web. A Google search yields pages and pages of scientific, non-scientific, and opinionated recommendations on what to feed pets. With all this information, it can be difficult for pet owners to know which recommendations to follow.
As a general practitioner, formulating a diet is something I could do with the guide of a nutrition book and many calculations but is beyond my comfort zone. When faced with folks who have questions on how to provide a diet for their pets, I state the easiest way to achieve a balanced diet is to feed a balanced commercial food. If the owner finds this undesirable, I talk about the other two options: Consult a veterinary nutritionist or use a veterinary nutritional website to find a diet that fits the pet’s needs.
Owners can search the American College of Veterinary Nutrition to find a veterinary nutritionist. If that seems like too much work then they should check out these two websites below. I like both of these sites because they personalize diets on an individual pet basis.
PetDIETS.com was developed by a veterinary nutritionist and can provide specific diets for healthy and sick pets. These nutritionists can recommend a home-made diet, a commercial diet, or both depending on the pet’s nutritional needs.
BalanceIT.com allows pet owners to choose the protein and carbohydrate sources they wish to feed their pets and creates a supplement based on a recipes the owner purchases. This is great for folks with pets with GI sensitivities or skin issues who have already been feeding an unbalanced diet. It allows them to continue feeding their current diet while adding supplements to make it balanced. I really love this one.
Thanks! We dog lovers argue about commercial dog food, a home made diet and raw diets all the time. I will enjoy looking at and learning from these websites.
Now tell me truthfully, please. What brand of food do you carry in your office and why?
1My practice actually carries three major brands of prescription food: Hill’s Prescription Diet, Royal Canin, and Purina Veterinary Diets. None of the food we carry is OTC. I recommend specific prescription diets based on disease, experience accrued in using diet to control/slow down disease, and palatability (I challenge you to find a white fluffy dog who thoroughly enjoys Hill’s z/d). Of course, I try to keep up with the varying diets available and new research on which perform best for certain diseases. The majority of food we prescribe are novel protein/hypoallergenic diets as part of a food trial for allergies or GI sensitivity. Renal and liver failure diets are great in theory, until Mr. Pippers won’t eat it at all and I find myself recommending the owner feed anything the cat will eat in what typically ends up being his final days.
One of my cats (the same one who has inappropriate elimination problems among many others) has Inflammatory Bowel Disease and a chicken allergy. I began feeding him Hill’s d/d Rabbit and Green Pea about 3or 4 years ago and had good success and control of his vomiting. However, Hill’s discontinued that product about a year or so ago and I switched to Royal Canin Rabbit. Prior to that my cats ate Hill’s adult indoor light. I suppose I use these diets based on perceived quality as well as their usefulness for my particular pets’ conditions.
As far as non-prescription foods I recommend for owners, I typically agree to any food that is AAFCO approved but advise against bottom shelf brands as the protein sources tend to be of poorer quality. Dogs that eat low quality diets stick out like sore thumbs in practice. I can guess quality diet based on luster of hair coat, digestibility, and the animal’s activity. With so many boutique brands of food cropping up (Rachael Ray, really?) it is really hard to stay on top of the diet industry.
2Excellent advice. Home-cooked diets are very challenging to make nutritionally appropriate, and despite all the sinister press out there, commercial diets are generally the better choice. But for those owners who prefer to feed a home-cooked diet, or those dogs that have unusual dietary needs, a home-cooked diet is a reasonable option so long as a reliable source of information is available for ensuring it is nutritionally appropriate.
3Have you looked at the ingredients in prescription diets for cats with kidney failure? I almost killed my three cats with this stuff. Two of my 13 year old cats were diagnosed with kidney failure based on chemistries. They had no symptoms and seemed healthy to me. My vet said all 3 of my cats would do well on kidney diets. I started out with Hills. When they were doing poorly I went back and they gave me Purina. And as the cats got worse I went back and they gave me Royal Canin. All of these foods were kibbles. By now it is about 8 months later and all three cats are lethargic, extremely thin, and it looked to me like they were near death. I trimmed their nails and saw no pinkness in the nail beds. Looked at gums and they were white. Held ears up to a light bulb and could not see the vein that outlines the ears. I could imagine my cats dying of kidney failure even at this young age, but why the one without kidney failure? Finally I looked at the ingredients and noticed the ingredients were almost all corn. The only animal product was the third ingredient, chicken fat. Then I remembered that the cat I had with kidney failure 13 years before was on Hills KD and it was canned because it was meat. Cats are carnivores. And the cats in “Pottenger’s Cats” who thrived, thrived on raw meats and milk. So I went to the Natural Pet Market and talked to the owner who recommended Innova EVO canned cat food. In one week they were producing red blood cells in their nails, gums, and ears. In four months they regained their weight, energy, and health. I took them back to my vet for another chemistry. According to the new bloodwork they were out of kidney failure. I think they were suffering malnutrition due to a diet that was almost all corn. I told my vet this and he said he didn’t have much background in diets but that many cats had been helped. I think that cats usually die from kidney failure and when they do no one is surprised. The fact that my third cat was just as bad off was the clue that the food was the problem.
It took me some time to get my cats too eat a raw diet as they were finicky. Today they eat a mixture of raw rabbit with ground organs and bones, raw chicken with ground organs and bones, raw milk, and canned salmon. Although one cat has since died at age 17 1/2 his brother is still alive at 18 1/2. He does have kidney failure but is doing well. The younger one is 16 and is doing well. Their teeth and gums are better than they have ever been.
I checked the diets on one of the sites you recommended and I can’t imagine why their cat diets have grains in them. I can’t imagine why anyone thinks grains are necessary for a carnivore. And they don’t need supplements especially if the food is raw as the raw food has not destroyed vitamins, minerals, and other micronutrients. I do put a pinch of taurine in the food but that is the only supplement and I do that just to be on the safe side. I think there is probably enough real taurine from muscle meat and organ meat to be a good diet.
I think you have bought the story of the commercial producers and in the case of my cats. it almost killed them. Feeding grains to a cat to me is malpractice.
4One more point. My friend’s cat was near to being put to death as her owner could no longer afford to replace floors, curtains, bedding and many of the other items destroyed around the house by cat urine. For about 3 years the cat was treated for FUS with Hills CD and some other treatments by the vet. None of it worked and the beloved cat was wrecking her house to the extent she was embarrassed to have anyone over because of the smell.
I asked if the Hills CD was a kibble and she said it was. She also said the cat had gotten into some glue traps and had eaten the mice. So I explained that I thought kibbles were bad for cats as they didn’t get enough moisture in their food. I told her about my experience with prescription diets for kidney failure. And here she was having no luck with the Hills CD and a ton of vet care. I suggested she could try feeding raw meat as her cat ate the mouse and might not be as finicky as mine. (It had taken me about 5 months to get my cats to switch to raw entirely.) So she smashed a chicken neck and the cat ate it. And he ate my mix of raw rabbit with organs and bones. In a about 3 weeks he had stopped peeing everywhere and had no more blockages. It has been about 3 years now and he has much the same food mine get and he is fine and health. The raw diet was truly a lifesaver for this cat as she felt she could not ethically pass her cat on to someone else but at the same time she didn’t want to live with the smell of urine and constantly replacing important parts of her home.
Again, this cat gets no grains. Just meat, organs, and bones.
5Patricia, what would you make of my cat who developed a chronic urinary condition while on a raw diet (with no grain whatsoever)?
In fact, prior to his developing the urinary issue he had only ever been on a food with grain in it for about 6 months of his life. Prescription urinary food greatly improved things for him and he relapsed quickly when taken off. Most of his time on an Rx diet was spent on kibble because he liked it better than the wet version.
My other cat absolutely cannot tolerate a raw diet, no matter how slowly I attempted to transition her. She’s perfectly willing to eat it, it just all comes back up. She does fine on a variety of canned and kibble diets, including those made from protein sources she puked up when given raw.
Raw diets can be fine. They can also be very dangerous. A standard commercial diet is much less likely to be dangerous. For the average person and the average pet they are almost certainly not worth the risks.
6Thank you for the wonderful article. I will follow you via RSS.
7Thanks for the explanation. This was a good post, enjoyed reading it!
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