Vegan and sustainable ‘pet’ food/diets

[MichaelHauer]

A place for discussion, ideas, and sharing knowledge and experience on the challenges of feeding one’s companion animals a vegan diet.

I’ll be adding more to this thread, but to initiate it I’m posting an essay on how we feed our dog. He doesn’t tolerate kibble well, so we had to come up with an easy way of preparing his food, that contained all the essential nutrients and balance.. and we have! It became an easy part of our routine almost immediately and we are not coming up with ‘gourmet sensations’ that take hours to prepare.

There are some useful and interesting links at the end of the piece to. One where Dr Andrew Knight debunks the myth that modern domestic cats are ‘obligate carnivores’.

Anyway, hope it might be of some use.

https://medium.com/@MichaelHauer/our-vegan-dog-36b5b663a7df

 

[Tom L.]

Interesting. Two questions though: 1) Aren't potatoes too high in carbs for dogs to be a major food? (I didn't check to see how much potato is in your formulation). 2) Early in the article, in your "Note on PROTEIN:", you mention that "lentils or chickpeas are incomplete proteins, but when combined with rice, or pasta, or potato the meal becomes a complete protein." I still have the book, "Diet For A Small Planet", by Frances Moore Lappe. As I recall, potato has a significantly different amino acid profile than grains such as rice and pasta, and I don't know if legume proteins would improve the protein quality of potato in a meal. Also, although rice is a widely-used grain for humans, it isn't as high in protein as oats, wheat, or rye. But then, rice differs in other ways from those 3 grains- and maybe the 3 I mention are bad for dogs. I can't remember if wheat was an ingredient in my cats' kibble (which wasn't vegan); I'm quite sure my cats' kibble included corn (which, like rice, also isn't high in protein compared to other grains).

And I think the supplements you add, such as methionine, taurine and ground flaxseed, help with the protein quality, as well as the other benefits you mention.

You've put a lot of thought and research into making your dog's food. I hope my questions weren't stupid, but please let me know if they are. I'm glad it's working out!

 

[MichaelHauer]

Thanks for the response! I’ll check out potato again, but he gets rotating mixes of both ‘bases’ - and he does seem to be thriving. He also tends toward being skinny, so we don’t hold back too much on the fats and oils etc.

Having looked at all this for a little while now it does seem that the ‘protein’ element in all our diets might be slightly over the top.

I do think oats are one of the best ‘protein’ complements - and he really does well with chickpeas.

I’ll have a look again at the essay - which was written a while ago - and update it in terms of what we use most now, and add further thoughts here.

 

[MichaelHauer]

Also, it’s probably worth saying that the diet outlined in the essay got the nod from this person:

Home | My Canine Nutritionist

www.mycaninenutritionist.com

 

[Tom L.]

@MichaelHauer I've been coming across quite a few pieces that warn against diets that promote inflammation, and your link just above appears to be one of them. I'm starting to gather information about this, but haven't formed an opinion of my own yet.