Commercial food better
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Produced by Paul Pfotenhauer, videographed by Ken Zukin
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Dog food choices
Flash video (1 min 45 sec)
Produced by Paul Pfotenhauer, videographed by Ken Zukin
Download Adobe Flash (free)
Vets help choose food to keep dogs flying
If you’ve walked the aisles of your local supermarket or pet food stores recently, you’ve undoubtedly encountered the dizzying array of choices in dog food.
There is food in cans and in kibble, for old dogs and puppies, for shiny coats and healthy joints — it’s enough to leave the average dog owner a bit bewildered.
With one out of every four American households now including at least one dog, the dog food industry has become a big business.
According to the Pet Food Institute, dog owners spend about $8 billon a year on food for the 67 million canines living in the United States.
With that large of a market for their products, pet food manufacturers are able to offer consumers, and their dogs, a broad array of foods, especially designed for the age, size and special health needs of the animal.
Fish-based or beef-based?
“What makes an owner choose one or the other really depends on a lot of things — availability, cost, their personal preferences, if they want certain ingredients — if they want a fish-based diet or a beef-based diet, for example,” said Jennifer Larsen, a UC Davis veterinary clinical nutritionists.
“And, because there are all these different choices, it is really important that pet owners work with their veterinarians to make these decisions.”
Larsen cautions dog owners to focus on keeping their animals trim and, when purchasing dog food, to not assume that the food with the highest price tag is the best.
“Part of it has a lot to do with marketing,” she said. “Pet food companies have to pay for shelf space in certain stores, and depending on where they market their diets, those costs are going to be different. Advertising budgets and ingredient costs for the company all factor into that final product.”
Largest vet med nutrition residency program
UC Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine has the largest veterinary medical residency program in animal nutrition in the United States — providing expertise to pet owners, veterinarians and pet food manufacturers.
The nutritional research conducted at the veterinary school not only contributes to the production of commercially available foods but also to the overall body of knowledge regarding dog and cat nutritional requirements in health and disease.
At the William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at UC Davis, the Nutrition Support Service is able to customize dietary management plans for patients at the teaching hospital and to help clients make sure they are feeding their dogs nutritionally sound foods at home.
Veterinary nutritionist Andrea Fascetti, who heads the teaching hospital’s nutrition program, warns that dog owners should be careful when attempting to prepare homemade food for their animals.
Deficiencies with homemade food
“One of the biggest risks is using a recipe that hasn’t been formulated and balanced by a trained veterinary nutritionist,” Fascetti said. “We certainly can see problems of nutritional deficiencies both in dogs and cats eating diets that do not contain all the nutrients that they need.”
In recent years, there has been a trend among some pet owners to favor raw foods for their animals. Fascetti says that she and colleagues are not encouraging raw-food diets for dogs.
“There is no evidence to support that feeding a raw diet compared to a home-prepared, cooked diet, has any additional benefits,” she said, noting that uncooked foods also carry a higher risk of contamination with harmful bacteria such as Salmonella or E. coli. “So when we do recommend diets that are home-prepared we always recommend cooked products.”
Fascetti and Larsen suggest that dog owners purchase pet food in small bags, so that it is not stored for a long time under less than optimal conditions. Often dog owners store pet food in the garages where high summer temperatures can cause the fragile dog food fats — mostly from fish — to go rancid, they noted.
On the UC Davis home page : Sophie, a lab mix owned by Russ and Kristin Thebaud of Davis, benefits from the nutritional research conducted at the UC Davis veterinary school. The work includes advising commercial dog food companies. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis photo)