Can Dogs Be Vegan? Vegan Dog Food Healthy? Raw Dog Food Diet Beats It!

Can dogs be vegan? Is vegan dog food healthy? According to a recent study, comparing it with a raw dog food diet, and conventional feeding, vegan diets are healthier for dogs.

But that seemed counterintuitive to me, so I decided to examine the data and see how they came to that conclusion.

What I discovered surprised me!

You’ll see this University study being cited all over the media as “proof” that vegan is best for dogs.  And you know what, when you hear “follow the science”, you should be suspicious every time and check it out for yourself! Because this is a very clear case of misrepresenting the facts. So let me share those facts with you now.

The study was based on about 2,500 dogs who lived with their owners. Some were on a vegan diet at the start of the study, some were on a conventionally meat-based diet, and some were on raw food meat-based diet.  And they followed them for one year and measured how many times they went to the vet and for what reasons.

So what did they find to make them conclude that vegan diets were healthier? You’re going to be interested to hear what they actually found.  And it may surprise you that the findings of the study tell quite a different story!

In fact I’d hazard to state that the only way the researchers could show vegan dog food as “healthy” was to ignore how much better it is to feed raw.

The only way to make vegan dog food look superior is to disregard the superior performance of raw feeding.

Group On A Raw Dog Food Diet Were Less Than Half As Likely To Need A Vet

The first thing was that the dogs fed a raw dog food diet were only half as likely to need a vet over that year as dogs in the other groups.

That’s pretty remarkable.

Vegan dogs needed the vet almost as often as conventionally fed dogs, but raw fed dogs were only half as likely to need to see a veterinarian.

Raw Fed Dogs 4 x Less Likely To Progress To A Therapeutic Diet

Dogs fed raw were four times less likely to need to switch to a therapeutic prescription diet because of some sort of health issue over that year than the dogs in the vegan group, and seven times less likely to need to switch to a prescription diet than dogs in the conventionally fed group.

That is a huge result.

So, they were most unlikely to need to have a special diet due to things like bladder stones, liver problems or allergies for example. That’s a huge difference between the groups.

Dogs With Existing Illnesses Were Healthier On A Raw diet

For dogs that were unwell at the beginning of the study, those fed raw did remarkably better than dogs in the other categories.  The raw diet helped them stay healthier over the year if they weren’t well at the beginning of the study.  According to the study’s own words:

Unwell dog fed a raw meat diet suffered from fewer disorders than unwell dog fed a conventional meat diet, but differences between the other dietary groups were not statistically significant.

So in other words raw fed dogs suffering from health issues at the beginning of the study did markedly better than either the vegan fed or conventionally fed groups.

Raw Fed Dogs Had Half The Risk Of Ill-Health

Raw fed dogs were only half as likely to suffer from a range of health issues compared to conventional meat-based diets.  This was true for health issues such as gastrointestinal disorders such as diarrhea and vomiting, body weight problems, hormonal problems such as Cushing’s Disease, Addison’s Disease, Diabetes or Hyperthyroidism, urinary tract problems, intestinal parasites, or liver issues. That’s a huge difference!

And the results in the table above also show vegan fed dogs were at higher risk of heart and liver issues than even the conventionally fed group. The dogs in the study also showed a substantially lower risk of behavioral problems if they were fed raw, which is interesting.

Can Dogs Be Vegan?  Yes, But Raw Is Healthier!

The study admitted all the healthy benefits of raw fed evident in their results. But in order to prove that vegan dog food is healthy, they had to discount them.

Despite all these findings in favor of raw feeding, the study itself concluded:

The healthiest and least hazardous dietary choices for dogs were nutritionally sound vegan diets.

One way they discounted them was by ascribing the better health of the raw fed group to the fact that they were on average marginally younger than the other two groups.

Yes they were younger, but not by much.  The average age of dogs across all the groups was 6.2 years old.  And for the raw meat diet group, the average age was 5.5 years.  So the raw fed dogs were about 7 to 8 months younger on average.  Such as small difference in age might have some influence, but it’s only going to be slight.  It can’t explain away all of those benefits of the raw fed diet!

Another thing the study said was bad about raw feeding is we can’t guarantee they are balanced.  The funny thing is their own study showed they were still the healthiest option despite that risk.  So if you’re feeding a raw diet and making sure it is balanced, your dogs would enjoy even better health than those in this study.

Why Did The Study Misrepresent Their Findings???

Why did the study conclude that vegan diets are healthier? I’m scratching my head here.  I can only conclude it was deliberate misinformation and a clear corruption of the scientific method.

I looked for who had funded the study and surprise, surprise it was an organization called ProVeg International, which is a UN-endorsed vegan group!

Their stated mission is: Reducing the global consumption of animals by 50% by 2040.

It seems suspiciously likely to me Proveg set out to get the conclusion that they were looking for and the researchers obliged by giving them what they wanted.

Proveg are part of a global push to destroy animal based agriculture and are doing their best to shut down our farms and push us and our pets into a meat free future.

For example In July 2020, ProVeg published the Food & Pandemics Report.  It’s findings were that intensive animal farming is the single most risky cause of pandemics and epidemics.  They called for fundamental changes in the current global food system to prevent future pandemics. Given the support by the UN for this group I expect to see a gradual banning of intensive animal farming across the globe over the next few years.  Are you ready for the country?  It seems a great time to go.  And grow your own meat!

And use your common sense.  If an idea sounds ridiculous it probably is even if major agencies like the United Nations and prominent university scientists appear to support it!

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