Vegan Dog Food =/

[~Jessie~]

Dogs are not omnivores, though... they are carnivorous scavengers.

There is a big difference between vegetarian and vegan as well... vegans can not eat any animal products (no dairy, eggs, etc), while vegetarians can. A vegan dogfood will only contain cereal grains, soy, etc, while a vegetarian dogfood can still use cheese, eggs, yogurt, etc.

[RD]

I know dogs that have thrived on vegetarian diets, but they consumed a lot of cheese/egg/dairy products. I think cottage cheese and eggs made up the base of their diet. Not soy and veggies.

[shadowfacedanes]

Originally Posted by Herschel

Whoa! I think you misread my post.

The line, "However, there is no scientific evidence..." was essentially the hypothesis statement. She was staging the question that she wanted to answer with her study! As there is no previous scientific evidence, she wanted to address that topic.

I thought vegetarian/vegan diets had been linked to DCM in cats, but not necessarily in dogs? And I thought supplementing carnitine and taurine helped with that?

By the way, I feed Canidae All Life Stages--with 4 different animal protein sources.

Sorry - I did misread your post - I've debated this topic many times over I tend to go "on guard" when it comes up.

Vegetarian diets have been link to DCM in dogs - the supplementing did not always prove adequate. I have an excellent study link saved somewhere - I'll have to post the link when I find it.

My first dane died of DCM, so it's something I've become very familiar with.

[DryCreek]

I don't understand, I guess, how the diets of the dogs studied really differed.

Both diets were dry extruded products based on rice and corn.The meat–based diet included chicken, whereas the meat–free diet contained soybean.

The only difference really was one group ate rice, corn and soya and the other group ate rice, corn and chicken. Not enough of a variance to judge really. It sort of proves that soya may be a good replacement for chicken.

Now if one group was fed a meat heavy diet and the other a full veggie diet the results might have been different.

All that study would really prove to me is that commercial grade diets are the same nutritionally whether it's meat supplemented rice and corn or soya supplemented rice and corn.

Are there any studies available that show the difference between dogs fed a raw meat and bone diet and a totally raw vegan diet?

[Herschel]

Originally Posted by DryCreek

Are there any studies available that show the difference between dogs fed a raw meat and bone diet and a totally raw vegan diet?

Absolutely not. That would be murder. Why would anyone want to cause that kind of harm to a dog? It's fairly obvious that dogs can't process large amounts of vegetable matter without some sort of processing. How could you even balance the protein in that type of comparison to get the diets to be reasonably equal?

I think the point of the study that I cited was to show that performance dogs can live (at least for 4 months) on a diet that doesn't contain animal derived protein.

[showpug]

While not the best option in most cases, a dog can survive on a vegetarian diet. Cats however will die as they absolutley NEED meat in their diets.

I personally would never feed a vegetarian diet to my dogs.