Vegan Dog Food:

Vegetarian dog food has been something of a contentious topic among pet nutritionists worldwide. The nutritionists have a killer argument in the fact that vegetarianism is not something that dogs are naturally disposed towards and their digestive systems have evolved in a completely different way compared to humans. This basically means that a vegetarian diet is actually bad for a naturally carnivorous animal. In addition, the entire concept of vegetarianism is one of human concoction and something that is actually quite wrong to impose upon one’s pets. The fact of the matter is that a vegetarian diet is something that is actually quite bad for a dog.

The fundamental problem lies in the biology of the digestive tracts of carnivores. Herbivores are built with elaborate digestive systems and many stomachs in some cases to break down really tough plant material. They also have specialized bacteria in their intestines to break down polysaccharides like cellulose. When it comes to omnivores like humans, the digestive system is shorter and looks quite a bit like a carnivores but the stomach bacteria still exist to ensure that complex plant material can be broken down. Humans can live off a completely meat diet but we do need vegetable matter for some essential nutrients and too much meat in our diets can have some adverse effects on the intestines and other organ systems. Dogs, on the other end of the spectrum, are completely specialized to eating pure meat always.

The final verdict is that if a vegetarian diet is something that you do insist on for your dog, go for dog food instead of trying to feed your dog a salad, which really won’t go down well with your dog. Most vegetarian dog food brands are specially designed and supplemented with some of the nutrients that a dog cannot get from a plant diet. Note that most of the time, this is the same case with humans as well, as high concentrations of some types of nutrients like creatine, vitamin B, and choline are not very highly available in plant material and to make up for this, vegetarians would have to indulge in dairy and eggs. In dogs, this strategy can be used but some breeds of dogs can only tolerate milk products for a certain period of time in their lives and after that lose the ability to digest dairy products – a problem in some races of humans as well.