Episode 23: Everything You Need to Know about Veterinary Nutrition w/ Emily Michael
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
All right. Hi, guys. Welcome back to The Upbeat Dietitians Podcast. Hello, everyone. Today we're joined with another very fun guest and a good friend of mine, Emily Michael. And this kind of episode is going to be a bit different from our previous ones because it's all about actually animal nutrition. So we're taking a step away from human nutrition and going to really learn about the animal size. If you have any pets, if you like animals or nature, this is for you, I guess. I guess not really nature don't feed the wild animals. But if you like animals and want to learn more, this is for you. So I'm going to kind of turn the floor over to Emily so she can introduce herself, kind of provide background about what you do for work, your educational background. I didn't mention she is studying to become a vet, which is very exciting. And you can also go over kind of what you do day in the life as a vet student right now. And if you want to touch on any types of hobbies, yeah, absolutely. So like you mentioned, I'm a fourth year veterinary student. I'm at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine, and I'll be graduating next May. So with that, at the moment, it's a lot of school, and the last couple of years it has been a combination of working in small animal private practice and attending school. And at the moment, I'm on my clinical year, which I imagine it's probably somewhat similar to your clinical rotations that you guys did just in a different genre. But essentially, we have a fully operational veterinary hospital at our school and the students, we go through each various departments within our hospital and spend two weeks on each for a full year, 26 rotations. And on each rotation, need we kind of get to act as baby veterinarians? We don't have our licenses yet and we don't have our diplomas yet until May. But we do get to work with licensed specialists, residents, faculty at our school to diagnose the patients that come through. And yeah, as far as full time or longterm goals, I'm intending to work in small animal private practice. So at the moment it's a very holistic education. We work with lots of animals, large and small, all the exotics, everything in between. And we work in very specialty settings as well because typically the type of animals that come to our hospital are ones that their primary care veterinarian was stumped. So they sent it to us for further work up. Once I finish, though, I'm intending to work probably a bit more of a bit more calm place, a bit more regular, standard general practice, and I'm intending at least to stay with dogs and cats for now. I've had a bit too many cows in my life.
Participant #1:
Yeah. So school actually takes up a lot of my time. And until this year, I was working at the same time as well. So not too much free time. When I do have free time, I have two cats that also take up the rest of my time. I also really love hiking. I love going rock climbing. And I play the ukulele. And those are kind of the three things that keep me sane when it's really busy and I don't get enough sleep. Classic grad school things. Yeah, there's a lot.
Participant #1:
Cool. Awesome. So you mention kind of that you're in your clinical year, but can you talk to us kind of what the educational background experience, stuff like that looks like in terms of actually becoming a vet, in case anyone listening would like to have a change in career path in case they are pre veterinary medicine or even if they're in high school and they're debating become a vet, what does that look like from, I guess out of high school or that type of area where you need to go for new education somewhere? Absolutely. It's definitely a very rigorous process. I think it's a very rewarding process, but it's very long. So essentially to get your veterinary degree, you need to go to a veterinary school. And to get into that school, you have to for most of them, you have to have your bachelors. There are a few exceptions. And even for those in the United States, you still need to go to some undergraduate school. You can't just go directly from high school because it is a professional program that gives you a doctorate. So you need to have something under your belt. But the typical student, they'll go for four years to just a standard undergraduate College. They say you can get any degree you want and go into veterinary school the reality of it is you need a lot of requirements, required classes and types of classes so you could do anything you wanted. But if you had, like, a Spanish major, it'd be a lot harder to also meet all of those prerequisites versus if you major in animal science like I did, or even like, biology, something like that, automatically those classes are sort of included in your curriculum at most schools, so you don't have to worry about getting them in on the side. And then also you just have a better basis for the learning that you'll be doing in veterinary school. Vet school itself is four years, like I mentioned, since I'm finishing up with my fourth year right now. After that, though, there is the opportunity to do more because some people never want to stop going to school. So at the end of the four years, which is eight years post high school, for most people, you essentially have your doctorate. We have, like, a special degree, just like how medical doctors, like human medical doctors and lawyers have their own thing. We have a doctorate in veterinary medicine, and that basically qualifies you to work on any animal. But there are some stipulations because just like in human medicine, you can get sued for negligence and malpractice, so you're qualified to work on those animals. But if you're in over your head, you're going to get sued for malpractice. So in reality, when I graduate, technically, I could work on your wombat, but I don't know anything about wombat, and I probably wouldn't do very good job. So veterinary medicine has some I don't want to say it's lacking regulation, but there's a lot of Gray area there anyway. But that aside, some people want to work on Wampas or they want to do very complicated neurosurgery or Cardiology like echocardiograms, that sort of thing, the sort of information that you don't have time to learn in your four years of at school, and they go on to what's called a residency, pretty similar to in human Med. Basically, the way our hierarchy goes is there's normal vet school. You can get off the train there if you want. But if you want to continue, you do one to two years of an internship, which then qualifies you to apply to a three year residency program in whatever specialty you'd like. And there are very few of them for most specialties. So a lot of people do those internships and then not even get the residency they wanted and have to either wait a year or change their plans or whatnot. So it can get quite complicated and can get very long, too, because if you want to become a Cardiology specialist or dentistry specialist, that sort of thing, it's 13 years of schooling post high school, assuming everything lines up perfectly and there are no gaps in between years. That's wild. Yeah. That's so insane to me. I cannot imagine, like, if we were still in school, like not even close to being done yet. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of it is further compounded. Like, I sort of mentioned, they're just veterinary medicine is definitely a field. I don't know if I want to even call the large field, but it's growing. So because of that, there are only actually 33 veterinary schools in the entire United States. And there's a distinction between it's called AVMA schools, American Veterinary Medical Association certified schools, and some of them aren't actually in the US. And you can study at these other schools that are AVMA certified and then still be eligible to practice in the US. But basically, if you want to be a veterinarian in the US, you can either go to one of 33 schools stateside or there's, like doing some quick math, 21 other schools in various European countries and whatever that you can go to. So, yeah, it's a lot of work, compounded by the fact that there are very few places to do that schooling and do that work, which results in very competitive acceptance rates, very competitive, like cutthroat residency programs and the whole shebang
Participant #1:
exciting. Yeah, that's the right word. I really love what you're doing. That's just to get through. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So kind of going into more so what this episode is about is since we are not talking about human nutrition, we're going to talk about animal nutrition. We would like to hear from you. What exactly does nutrition even look like in veterinary medicine? Yeah. So nutrition is definitely one of the, in my opinion, like more emergent subsections of veterinary medicine because there's definitely been a shift in society just in general in the last decade or two about how we consider our animals because it really went from animals as laborers or animals as pests to now, like pests with an S in there. Now animals as pets with no S and animals are being treated as our family members. So that has definitely been reflected in the state of animal nutrition as well. It's definitely gone from a point where a lot of our grandparents, they fed their animals just whatever food scraps they had. They had cats that didn't come in the house and just fed in for themselves outside. But somehow they were considered their cat, that sort of thing versus now today, if you go to a pet store, like 90% of the pet store is just food because there's so many brands out there. There's so many treats, there's so many supplements. It's a major market at this point, which can be really tricky because we as people really like to answer for modifies everything, and we really like to reflect our own emotions on everything and treat it like it's also a person. And that's really reflective as well in pet nutrition because a lot of people will look at pet food and they'll be like, this is just round circles of Kibble and that's not appealing. And that's boring. And my pet deserves better than that. And they want their pet food to look as exciting and as fun and as tasty as their human food does. And a lot of marketing companies have really picked up on that as well, because we're starting to see a lot of these major pet food brands are more marketing now is like, this is a home cooked. Like, you can see the individual pieces of chicken and you can see the individual vegetables and all of that. And there's definitely this big push of we don't want it to look gross, we don't want it to look boring. We want it to look like something you might eat. And that in itself can be a little bit dangerous if it means the quality of the food is decreasing as a result of it. So when it comes down. So the first thing just in general, I like to talk about with pet nutrition and how it's different than human nutrition is. With pet nutrition, we very much focus on getting the calories that they need, getting the nutrients that they need, and just ensuring that everything they get is part of a properly balanced diet that is consistent with a healthy life, like non disease, all of that stuff, versus with humans. I feel like it's a lot more of you want to eat healthy, but also it's an experience. It's like a connection over a table. You talk about the atmosphere of a restaurant when you go there, how does it look? How does it taste? How does it look when you put it on Instagram and like a lot of other things that dogs don't really care about? Yeah, I'm imagine, like, a dog running like an Instagram account, like, check out my Kibble today. But it's true. Sometimes people, they care more about what their food looks like than how it tastes. But that's not how dogs. Yeah. So there was a study this was actually in birds. I think it was in cockatoos. But there was a study, like 510 years ago or something that they were looking at how birds were eating different brands of food and how it would affect their nutritional health if they had a food that every single pellet in there was the same shape, size, color, everything, versus if they had a more natural, quote, unquote food, where it was literally like, here's a sunflower seed here is like an Orange pellet that has some nutritional component to it, like various things so that you could actually distinguish the shapes and the sizes of them. And what they found was that the birds who ate just every single piece of bird food looks exactly the same, and it kind of looks like boring green bird food. They ate that food, and they ate it just fine. And they were very nutritionally healthy because it was a very nutritionally balanced meal versus the birds who had food that if it was eaten entirely, like if it was eaten in its entirety, it still had the proper nutritional balance. But each piece looked different. They were like Orange pieces and blue pieces, and some of them were circles and things like that. The birds would preferentially choose whichever pieces they thought probably looked better. To the best of our knowledge. Obviously, we can't ask them and they would end up with nutritional deficiencies because one bird would only eat the green ones and one bird would only eat the individual seeds, but not the pellets and things like that. So it's a difficult topic because you don't want to tell people that we're going to give your dog boring food and take away their option, their choice. But at the same time, if you give them choice, they might not have the mental capabilities we do to make the right choice. Because if you give a dog a hamburger and also like a perfectly balanced Hill science diet diet, they're going to eat the hamburger every single time and they don't care, but their vet will care. That's so interesting. As a dog owner, I'm always seeing all kinds of different things on Facebook, for example, which I know not a good source, but a lot of dog parents on there will do for like catahula, specifically the dog that I have. I'm sure it's the same for other breeds, too. But they do often like a raw food diet where they do like the eggs and I don't really know what else they do, like pumpkin, usually some kind of like meats or sometimes like liver and things like that. So is that kind of like what you're saying? Like those diets can sometimes not be optimal just because the dogs may only choose to eat certain parts of that? Or is that like a totally different thing? Yeah, I think that could be applicable to that case. Certainly. It sounds so harsh and it sounds so awful, but the more choices you offer your animal, the more opportunities you're giving them to choose the wrong choice, which sounds terrible. We hate to think that way about them, but it's kind of tough love. You're definitely opening up to the possibility that they will not get the nutrition you think you're giving them because they might only selectively eat the parts that taste the best, which are frequently the parts that are highest in fat. And like other not I mean, necessary things, but not at that high of a quantity. I know that we're going to talk about raw foods, I think, in the next follow up episode. So we can talk more because there's a whole lot of controversy about raw foods for a number of reasons, and we can get into that. Okay. Yeah, I actually thought we were doing that. That would be a really good time because I have a million questions about that one. So that'll be good. Yeah, absolutely. With all the talk about the nutritionally balanced diet. I was doing some research prior to the podcast. Just because nutrition is like I said, it's a growing thing in veterinary medicine. It's terrible as it sounds. People just genuinely did not think about it for a very long time. You had a dog and you just give it whatever you have. And recently, in the last decade or so, people care a lot more about what is in their dog's food, and rightfully so. I'm not entirely sure when this organization was founded, but there is an organization called the association of American Feed Control Officials, and that is basically the closest thing in the veterinary community we have to like a governing regulatory body over pet food. Because to my knowledge, there is no actual single organization that actually can impose rules on what goes in pet food. Certainly if it's harmful to animals, there are veterinary boards that can impose legal issues. They can sue these companies, things like that. But there isn't like any sort of organization that sees every pet food that ever gets made and says this is an okay pet food or it's not. However, this organization, it's the AAFCO. They do release guidelines every year that say if you were to follow these guidelines, given the current nutritional research, then your food would be properly balanced for a dog or for a cat. I think they might also do horses. So it's more of an opt in for every pet food brand. If they want to, they can contact the organization and say, hey, we think that we meet your guidelines. Would you like to audit our food? And if it passes, they can then put on their bag like we are, as co certified. But other than that, there really isn't any rules. If they don't want to do that, it doesn't mean that they aren't balanced. They just haven't gone through this extra step to show that they are. And you really just have no idea at that point. There also just isn't a lot of rules, as far as you know, if I want to say that my food is premium, what does that mean? No one knows, but it looks good, so people will spend more money on it. Technically, gourmet also doesn't mean anything, and neither does holistic. They're all just terms that sound really appealing and they really appeal to that emotional thing that pet owners feel. And it's not wrong to feel that way, but they want their pets to have the best possible food. So you're like, oh, well, this is holistic. That must be natural or something. And therefore and it might not mean anything at all. So it's kind of a wild world out there because there are so many pet foods. None of it's regulated. Some of it's regulated, a lot of it isn't. And it doesn't mean it's bad, but it also means that there isn't an easy way for a consumer to look at something and say, is this actually good for my animal? Will it meet their nutritional needs? So then would you recommend that consumers consult their vet for recommendations? Or how would you say that the best way to get the most accurate advice or beneficial advice for them to be is because a lot of things you talked about are very common. Also in nutrition, we deal with all the time. What advice do you have for people who don't know what food to buy their animal? Yeah, absolutely. And there's a couple of things you can do, depending on how involved you want to be. You certainly can do research on your own pet food and make a decision that way. At the baseline, I would say don't just buy a bag because it looks pretty. At the very least, do a quick search, do some Google reviews if you can find a paper on it. That is obviously a very good sign. But to be honest, that's hard to do with a lot of pet food brands that are out there just because a lot of them don't necessarily have published research about them. Would that be the baseline? That's really tricky because there's a lot of misinformation out there, there's a lot of Facebook posts out there, there's a lot of PR marketing stuff out there, and it can be difficult to Wade through. So the next best option and honestly, my preferred option I'm biased is talk to your veterinarian, which comes with a caveat because your standard veterinarian, which is what I will be just a general practice veterinarian. We have training and nutrition. We take classes in nutrition, animal nutrition, and also it's something that we interact with pretty much every single day with our patients. But there are veterinarians who specialize in nutrition who are more knowledgeable than us. So at the very least, your general practitioner veterinarian, they should have some idea, hopefully more than just some idea of these are the foods that I am aware of that are safe, that seem to be nutritionally balanced. If your vet goes above and beyond, hopefully they've done some independent research as well to let you know not all of them do, which is really unfortunate. People get jaded and that's very unfortunate. But at the very least they can tell you like this is a food that I have seen my patients do well on. Patients like your animals do well on. This is one that they tend to not do well on. And I've seen issues with this and my patients, that sort of thing. But then if you really want to get a gold star best in show, just like how we have an equivalent to register dietitians and what ours is called is a veterinary nutritionist, which I know is awkward because I know you spoke previous podcast about how nutritionists in human food are not certified in any way, but for us they are. And to my knowledge. I don't think we even have a category for veterinary dietitian. I think it's just they chose and they chose nutritionist because I've never heard of a veterinary dietitian. That would be awesome. Yeah. They just chose and they chose the other one. But yeah, veterinary nutritionists are the people who, as I mentioned, they go through and they do a residency, which as a reminder, it means it's like 13 ish years, technically, when I was looking at up the website for the American College of Veterinary Nutrition, their website is under construction right now. So some of the links were broken. But from what I could tell from what was functioning on their website, they actually might only have a two year residency. So you're looking at I mean, that's nice. If everyone wants to become a nutritionist, you might save a year compared to the other specialists. But these are people, though, who in addition to their vet school, they do a year or two of intensive, like, nutrition specific internships, and then they do two years of a nutrition specific residency under a board certified nutritionist. Veterinary nutritionist. They also take a two day written exam at the end of it all to prove that they retain this information. Two days. Yeah. I'm always 100% sure how many hours of each day, but it's two days. Two is already, like, scary enough. These are the people who are like absolute experts in the field of veterinary nutrition. Their requirements to become veterinary nutritionists include writing papers and performing studies on various diets, things like that. And these people, typically, they will be working either four major pet food brands. They'll be working independently in private practice and working with patients who have unique nutritional needs. But also it's possible to go and just have a nutritional consult as well. Just even if your pet isn't having, like a unique nutritional need, I say possible because there's very few of them. There are only 79 board certified veterinary nutritionists in the United States, because, again, it's a very growing field and we're getting there. But even so, my understanding is a lot of them are open to doing nutritional consult, even if it's just I want to make sure my dog is getting the best food. It's just that you might have to book out a few weeks in advance if their schedule is busy because they can be in very high demand, as you can imagine. So few of them, but especially if your pet is like, they have diabetes and they have cancer and hyperthyroidism, when it's multiple, very intense nutritionally impactful diseases happening at once, your normal general practice that isn't going to be able to handle that as far as food recommendations, because at that point, it is literally we need to figure out exactly how much of each macronutrient they need, exactly how many calories per day, exactly how much water, all of that. So they take the really crazy case that's kind of sad about the nutritionist thing, but we'll move on, I guess. It's a different creature, different beast. Is that what you meant? Another feast? I could say, though, kind of similarly to your field, to my understanding that's, like, the official way to actually be a board certified nutritionist. When I did a quick Google search, though, just to see if I was missing anything else to see what would come up, there was an article that was like, do you want to be a veterinary nutritionist? You should major in animal science and then call yourself a nutritionist. But there are definitely a lot of resources that were like, if you want to do this, just, like, just start calling yourself it essentially, little did we know there was an entire other area of people coming in, like, encountered somebody who's, like, falsely posing as a nutritionist. But I honestly have to imagine it happens. So if your pet is genuinely in that area where you specifically want and need a fully certified knowledgeable veterinary nutritionist, maybe ask to see their certification as well, just to make sure that they're not some random person who got a degree in biology and likes dogs. Oh, my gosh. I'm not surprised. I feel like every career field, honestly. Yeah. There's always someone being opposer. All right, well, let's get into our next topic here. So I think another really, I guess common question that listeners may have if they do have pets of their own is the foods that our pets cannot have in terms of human food. So would you do us the honor of kind of walking through certain foods that maybe humans should not get to their pets and kind of the reasons why as well? Yeah, absolutely. I feel like, especially around holidays, accidental food toxicity is just such a major problem that we see coming into the clinic all the time. It's so much worse than you'd imagine just being aware. So I feel like a lot of people hopefully are aware that things like chocolate and coffee, they have a component called methylvante, but specifically, it's something that's found in caffeine and hence coffee. And also, like I said, chocolate specifically, like the cacao in there, those can be really, really bad for dogs. So that's the biggest offender. I think I've done five to six years in private practice, and I don't even know how many chocolate dog cases I saw because they get into a chocolate bar, like, right after Halloween or something like that. And it's not great. And it doesn't help that most of the food are toxic to dogs. And the cat tastes really good, so they taste it and then they just keep going. The other really big ones that we see, one would be Xylitol, which is it's an artificial sweetener, and it's in gum. And I feel like this is another one that people are pretty aware of. It's in sugar free gum because it's what gives it the sweetness despite the lack of sugar. But also recently, companies have started putting it in peanut butter. I'm really not sure why, but it's becoming a lot more common in peanut butter, which is one of the biggest, most common treats we've give to dogs, even like at the vet. So that's one that I like to really mention when owners ask about possible things they should be looking out for because they're taking our favorite dog Bribery toy and making it toxic to them. It's not in all of them, but in some of them, I guess. I didn't actually go into why these things are bad, but the methyls and themes they can cause. It's a lot of GI symptoms. But then if they get enough of it, it can absolutely cause some CNS depression and seizures, which can be fatal. And then the Xylitl, it also can cause seizures. But that one's actually because since it's like a sugar replacement, the body is like, look at how much sugar I have because it's sensing the glucose levels in the artificial sweetener. So it stops producing glucose. But then as soon as that diet will passes through the body. Now you should have no glucose that's just not compatible with life using as well. Another big one. I wrote a couple down here, but I just really want to hit the big ones. Honestly, there's two things that can be pretty bad for caps and that would be grapes or raisins and also alliums, which is like garlic and onions. And I say those just because I feel like those are another thing that most people have in their house. Grapes and raisins can cause kidney failure and in dogs as well. So I've definitely met owners who are like, yeah, my dog loves grapes and I give them to him as treats. And it's like, please stop that. No, we don't actually know why, but over time it causes kidney failure and sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes they're fine and their owners give them to them as treats and we don't understand why that works. And then the alliums the garlic and the onions that can just cause blood issues in cats. And again, those can be pretty fatal to your cats as well. So whenever I'm prepping food, I feel like I go through an entire onion every single day and my cats always want to eat them. So it's always a dangerous time in my kitchen. Mine is too. Finn will always try to really get his nose up when I'm doing onions. I'm like, no, dude, back up. And then the other like, just really big one. I don't know if this counts as food, but drugs because we're going there. So alcohol can definitely be like alcohol is toxic to humans, but we can tolerate it in certain doses. And it is also in the same way toxic to dogs and the cats, but they're way smaller than us. And their metabolism is very different than ours. So I feel like that one is a bit less common that dogs and cats are getting into alcohol, but that is there. But then with the current rise of the legalization of marijuana, we have seen so many dogs and cats stone out of their minds on edibles in the last two years at this point. And that can be a major one as well. Frankly, they usually get through it okay. But there are some that don't. And it's very similar to just if a human were to overdose on marijuana, just overdose with alcohol because they're way smaller than us. And if they eat a dose for a human, then that is considerably more than they need. This is a very Mormon topic, but just some big it's good to know. I feel like so many people ask and talk about what they shouldn't feed their animals. And so many people also like feeding their animals human food. I was actually going to say I was like, I know someone that fed their dog alcohol, but it wasn't a real person. It was a third Harry Potter movie. Like Aunt Petunia feeds the little dog her wine. She's a villain though, isn't she? She is. She's not a good person. But I was like, I have a distinct memory of someone feeding a dog alcohol. I will say the other big thing though, honestly. So there are like, I don't even know. There's massive lists of what you can and can't and should and shouldn't give to animals. Those are like the biggest ones that come up in everyday life. But Google is usually your friend on this. There's some false information out there. But usually if you were to search like can I feed my dog a carrot? I don't know. You'd probably find like 99% of the articles would agree with each other and you could probably trust that answer that. Yeah, it's fine. Additionally, there's a website called Aspca.org
Participant #1:
If the animals something Poison Control of America. I think even though I don't know what they're called, they're the number one resource in the US for any animal that has ingested something that maybe shouldn't. So they have countless articles about like what can you and shouldn't you feed your dog? And also they have a hotline of if you're like, oh my God, my dog just ate a Hershey kiss. And will that do anything? Or is it too small but to matter? You can call them and they'll talk you through it. Cool. That's pretty cool. I will say I Google something like that probably like once a week. Last week I Googled, can my dog have watermelon? Because I had no idea, but I knew he wanted some, so I looked it up.
Participant #1:
Awesome. So kind of to end this episode with one of our spicier topics in animal nutrition. And as we always love controversies on here about human one, we want to hear one of the big animal nutrition ones, which is you've labeled it. I don't want to say this in a way that people won't understand because I don't have a pet. So I don't really know what the average Joe might call these. So I guess, Hannah, if you want to lay this one out. Well, truthfully, I know something about this kind of stuff, so I'm actually really curious to learn all about it. But the question we're kind of asking, Emily, is to kind of describe the difference between boutique diets, if you will, and like the big, I'm guessing name brand, like pet foods that we're talking about. Okay. So. Yeah, and we all let you kind of better describe that. What's the differences between those and why it's such a hot topic. Yeah, absolutely. The words I put down is no document boutique versus big pet food. Is that's at least how we refer to it in, like, the veterinary community? But definitely people I've heard the words like the big three as the big pet food brands, Hills, Royal, Canaan and Purina. And then boutique diets, honestly kind of means, like everything else. It depends on who you're asking, but it's really asking about the major, really large scale corporations that make pet food versus sort of the more like small scale. Like they're kind of home here and they are less it's like less corporate. They're still a business. They're still making eating pet food and selling it to you. But they're more of like it's kind of like if you go to Macy's for your clothing versus going to an independent boutique like Francesco's or something and you're like, here's one corporate and I'm paying some big CEO versus here is more like it's a single independent store. It's not part of a chain, that sort of thing. Yeah. So there's a lot of concern and there's a lot of information. There's a lot of misinformation out there regarding what should you feed your pet and is it okay to feed from one of these big corporate foods or should you feed from the smaller ones? And to be perfectly honest, like, a few years ago, I think I was a bit more like black and white on my answer, but nowadays it's a bit more Gray than I think it was when I was younger because it's a question of food safety, like nutritional balance. But it's also kind of a question of ethics because for some people, they don't want to buy large scale, like, corporate pet foods because they don't want to support those companies and they want to support small companies from an ethical standpoint, just because I find this is, like, really interesting and really creepy. Like I mentioned, they are these big three pet foods, and they just are they're the largest brands. They make the most food because they sell the most food and they're just the brands in America that you probably heard of. If you have a dog, but maybe not. If you like found one, you stuck with it. You never looked at anything else and it's Hills, Royal Canaan and Purina is. I don't know which one honestly sells the most, but Purina is the one that is most controversial from an ethics standpoint because Korean is actually owned by Nestle. And I'm not sure how familiar you are, but there's been a lot of controversy over Nestle the company recently because of their working conditions, their laborers, a lot of issues and accusations that are probably true of unfair wages, unfair labor, and some pretty terrifying things. So Nestle owns Karina. They also own some other brands you might have heard of. They own Fancy Feast, they own Friskies, Benfil, Alpha. There's one called Chef Michael that I don't know very well, but it has my last name. I thought that was funny. But they own probably they're the company that owns the most pet foods out of all of them because they own like, there's more than just that. Those are just the only ones I recognize. And they own all of those pet foods they're presented as competitors in the store. It's like, oh, you could buy Friskies or fancy beef, but all the money is ultimately going to Nestle. That's so tricky. Yeah. And especially there are a lot of people who are boycotting Nestle at this point. So if you're boycotting Purina because you're boycotting Nestle, I understand that. I personally use Purina because I think it's a good diet, but I have a friend who's just like I would never support Nestle. And if that's your ethical standpoint, I think that's a very valid standpoint to have. Royal Canaan is owned by Mars because weirdly enough, all of the pet food, the pet food market is very dominated by candy companies, apparently. I was about to say I'm hilarious. What's going on. Yeah, it's really weird when you start following all the chains, but it's like the Disney owns everything in media. It's one of those what is up with companies? It's funny because dogs can't have chocolate. This is all messed up. Mars owns Royal Canaan and I'm not aware of anybody who's boycotting Mars for ethical reasons. But again, some people just don't want to support a large scale Corporation. And Mars absolutely is. Mars also owns, I think it's like 4000 veterinary clinics across the United States, because I'm not sure how familiar you are with veterinary clinics like corporations, but there's a Corporation called Banfield. They're like at the chain of veterinary clinics and they're in every pet smart. There's Blue Pearl which is a chain of emergency clinics, and there's VCA which is a chain of just like general practice clinics. And Mars owns all of those. So they own literally thousands. It might have been 3700 clinics. So again, some people are like, they look at that and they're like, I don't like that. I don't want to support this monopolization. So do without you will. And then Hills is owned by Colgate, like the Toothpaste Company. There's like five major companies in this world and they're like owning everything. This is crazy than me. Disney is going to own all these food just right. Disney is going to be our candy and our animal food. Yes. Knowing that. Then when we talk about, like I said, I call them boutique diets. Those are the ones that aren't owned by major corporations. It's usually like there's one the really common ones are. I think Rachel Ray is when I think about FRAMS a lot of them, I don't know, only because they're waiting. Pause. You just say, like, Rachel Ray, like the Food Network. Rachel Ray, she has a dog food. Does she have cat food too? I've only known it for dog food, but it wouldn't surprise me. Is it the same as the Food Network? I didn't know there was a Food Network. I washed her food Network. Her child.
Participant #1:
Well, there you go. So she's a bit more famous than I knew. I honestly didn't know that. Basically there's just hundreds of small, little tiny corporations that they probably only have. Whereas Purina has 50 to 60 different foods. It makes me even more. It might be 50 dog foods and then the same for cats because they just have so many different diets just within the Purina line. And then you get to fancy beats and there's like 30 different flavors, that sort of thing. Places like Rachel Ray will have more of a much more small scale. They only have a few options because they're smaller. They don't have the infrastructure to make all of that. There's like a Cannon signature. I wrote a few of these down and again, I don't know them personally. Other than Rachel Raymond. I know most just because they're all just very small. And also they don't have as much research behind them, which is something I'll get into from an ethical standpoint. Some people just refuse to refuse to give their money towards large corporations. And they say I want to give it towards signature because it was made by two guys in their basement one day who had this idea. I don't know if that's true, but it's sort of the idea, though. This is going to the workers and to the people versus paying money to Hills is going to the CEO and the workers are underpaid. I couldn't say for sure if that's true, but that's the mindset. But like I said, it's really complicated because I think that having making an ethical decision in your pet food sourcing makes sense. At the same time, you really have to advocate for the nutrition of the dog because you can be more ethical and give them a worse diet. And as a veterinarian, that isn't acceptable to me. It sucks that sometimes you have to make decisions like that. And ideally you can find an option that is ethical and also gives your dog the proper food. So I'll say just bluntly, like if a person were to ask me what should I feed my dog or my cat? And I only had like 3 seconds, I would tell them feed them Hills, Royal Cane and her Purina. But if they have time, we can go a bit more in depth because at the end of the day, I understand why people are scared of big corporations and monopolies, but also because they're a big Corporation. It means they have all of this money and they can put that money towards creating a quality product with quality controls and research behind it. So there are a lot of these smaller named foods that they might be perfectly fine, but they might not be and they haven't had the money, the resources, or the time to do studies to prove that they're okay. So when I went on to a couple of pet food sites, the biggest difference is that most of the big food sites were just very they were like, Hi, this is Hills. Hills is actually the best website I found. They literally had a link to here's research articles about the clinical trials that we performed on our prescription foods prior to releasing to the market. Here are literally just nutrition lectures and courses that you can enroll in for free if you'd like to learn more about pet nutrition. And also here's a hotline to veterinarians who are available for food consult. There might be a fee associated with that I didn't actually say, but they were very transparent of like, here are resources that you can utilize that we have gathered for you. Additionally, Hills, Royal, Canaan and Purina, all three of them have statements on their website that stated, Hills employs more than 220 veterinarians, qualified nutritionist and food scientists. For its product development, Royal Canaan stated that they have a team of board certified veterinary nutritionist, which is impressive because only 79 of them exist. Phd nutritionist and associates with a Master's degree in male animal nutrition. And then Purina says that each diet has been developed and tested by a team of Karina scientists, including nutritionists and veterinarians. Some of the small companies do have nutritionists, but ultimately the large scale companies, all of them have nutritionists. All of them have research going into these foods and to a greater degree than the small scale companies. So at first glance, frankly, I'm more willing to just inherently trust them than I would any small diet. If you wanted me to trust a small diet, I would want to personally look into all of their ingredients. If they have a product guarantee. If they don't, that already is a big red flag for me and to look at it before I let any pet go onto it, which is difficult because people don't have time for that. So it really feels more like a shot in the dark and I'm taking more of a risk, trusting that they've done proper quality control, that the food is what they say it is, and that the food is properly balanced. For my pet nutrition, Additionally, Purina at least all of their foods meet that the Afghan guidelines. They have all of their foods independently certified through that Hills and Royal Canyon actually didn't have a statement either way. So I'm not 100% sure I will say, though both of them have extensive literature. You can just look up their research papers and see, like, why did we formulate this diet this way? How did dogs respond to the dietary trials and like for healthy animals? But also some of their diets are specific for like, this is for a dog with hypothyroidism, or this is for a cat with kidney disease. And you can look at these trials and see how did the cats present, how do they do on the food and how did it help or not help their renal disease? So at the end of the day, there's so much research backing these companies that you see the smaller companies trying to attack them and saying, like, they look gross or they're impersonal and it's not even a personal attack per se. It's usually more of like, they focus on the small diets and they say, oh, this is made in small batches. And I'm like, that's not a positive. That means it's not like each batch might be different because you're doing it a million times and you're more likely to make a mistake in one of those batches. They're not going to be homogenous. Or they'll say, like, oh, we use unique ingredients. And I'm like, you don't want a unique ingredient because your dog's digestive system can't handle unique ingredients because they're very sensitive and temperamental. Or they'll just talk about how this is made with love. And I'm like, that's really sweet, but that doesn't protein value.
Participant #1:
Yes. At the end of the day, I think I have a healthy dose of skepticism towards these small scale diets. Ultimately, it's really the health of the patient that can determine what we do moving forward. So if you come in and you have a 13 year old dog, like a 13 year old lab, and he's been on Rachel Ray grain free all of his life and he's happy, I'm not going to tell you, like, hey, you need to change his diet right now because he's fine. He's clinically fine. There doesn't seem to be any indication that it's not working for him. But if an owner comes in with, like, a three month old kitten and is like, hey, what would you like? What should I feed? Or if they say, like, hey, I found this random brand and it has Kangaroo mates in it, I'm going to tell them how you don't do that because this exists. It's really a question of why would you take that risk if you have this, like, tried, tested and true option over here. I've been like just adding here. I think that was a really good
Participant #1:
everything. Big Corporation foods and then what to take into account? I think you talked about good pros and cons of both. Yeah. And yeah, it's messy because again, if somebody comes out and just tells me I'm not buying Hills, they're not buying Hills. So not every other food is bad. It's just harder to weed through them. Yeah. It reminds me a lot of like human supplements. They probably don't have bad intentions or not trying to cause any harm, kind of like the boutiques, but you just can't be sure because they're not as easily to test. Easy to test is like the big ones where they have more finances to be third party approved and that kind of stuff. So that's kind of what it reminds me of in terms of human nutrition. And that is where Emily and I feel skeptical, too, in terms of, again, human stuff is that same scenario where it's like, yeah, those are the bigger brands. We do like supporting small businesses and that sort of thing. But you can't quite be sure that what is in their products is going to be the safest for you. Yeah. And I feel also, I think partially why I just go very intense on this is also because your average animal will eat one food for probably its whole life, maybe two. If it develops a disease that requires a new food, some owners change it up, but most animals stay on the same one. And that's okay. They do really well on it. And we don't have any evidence to show that it impacts them negatively to be on the same food. But because of that, it means it's so incredibly important that that one food is good because I do not have the best eating habits. But if I have McDonald's one day, I'm not having it every single day for 18 years. And there's a big difference in humans, like indulging and even your dog indulging if you give it a treat, if you go to Starbucks and get the puppuccino or whatever. But since their diet is so regulated and consistent, any sort of issue in that diet will absolutely accumulate over time. That's a good point. And think about it that way. That's very interesting. Cool. I think that's kind of a good way to wrap up this episode. We hope that you guys learned something about animal nutrition. I learned a lot. I learned so much. I don't think I know anything about that except for vet schools long. I knew that beforehand. We hope you guys took something away from this and you can let us know what questions you might have further that we could potentially bring Emily on. Again, we do have a follow up episode planned with her where we talk about all things fad diets, which is always a fun conversation. So be sure to tune back in for that. But I think this is a good time for our bonus question of the episode. And as always, we always let our guests go first and kind of put their argument on the floor. So this week's episode bonus question is, should you eat Mac and cheese with a fork or a spoon? Okay. So I feel very strongly about this until I read the question. So for me, I separate Mac and cheese into two categories. There is like your normal just like elbow macaroni, and then there is shaped Mac and cheese like your Elsa Mac and cheese that I have in my pantry right now. And I think both of them need to be eaten with the fork for two different reasons. For separate reasons. Because if you have the elbow, I like to put the tines of my fork through the elbow macaroni. How many I can get on the fork at one time? I've done twelve before. Oh, my God. That's really impressive, actually. So that's just a given. And with shaped macaroni, apparently I'm just a very sensory person because I like to spirit through the whole mistake. And Additionally, I feel like if you have a spoon, you just pick up too much macaroni at a time and then you just eat too quickly. I like to enjoy and favor my macaroni, kind of like how you use chopsticks to intentionally slow down your eating. That was a good answer. I can get on with that. That was good. Okay. Emily Crowsey, I would love to hear your answer on this. So I am also team fork because I agree that you get way too much in a spoonful. One of the slowest eaters I know, so I don't like eating big bites of things. Also, I like stabbing, but then if you have extra cheese, you can use that fork and noodle to get the extra cheese onto your noodles. Whereas if you have a spoon, you're just going to be like kind of paving around in your bowl trying to get it on. Or you're just going to, like scoop up sauce and then it'll be on your spoon. And I don't like eating the cheese by itself. I like eating the cheese with the noodle. If you end up with sauce on your food, you just have too much sauce to begin with. Yeah, true. Very true. Probably just add more noodles, but I also don't normally have more noodles because I eat like, one box is one serving for me. Yeah, kind of how it goes. Okay, Hannah, I feel like your Team Spoon vibes from you. I wasn't trying to get so many vibes, Dang it. I was trying to be like Poker Face, but I'm getting really bad at that. Okay. As always, my answer is dependent on a million different factors, so I can never just say one way or the other. I have to agree with both of what you guys said. So I definitely think I'm fork like 87% of the time but I often don't get like, box Mac and cheese and I'm definitely not like a bougie fancy kind of person so it's not for that reason that I usually have, like, the homemade stuff. I just like it better and I usually just, like have that more so than boxed and I feel like if you do like a pen, a noodle or anything like that you definitely need a fork for that. So I definitely agree with that. But if I did do the shapes or maybe even the little tiny shells I would probably use a spoon for that, to be honest. But like if I only had a fork I use a fork but I might choose a spoon. Life or death situation. You have to. You can only use one utensil for the rest of your life.
Participant #1:
Which utensil would you choose? Okay, so final answer 87% of the time it's a fork but it could also be a spoon. Well, depends on the noodle for me. I guess that's acceptable. Yeah.
Participant #1:
So that kind of wraps up the end of this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you so much for Emily for joining us and we hope to
Participant #1:
let them do what you guys do week to week. You know the drill by now. Yeah, this episode like what are we in 20s yet? I don't even know. Yeah, I don't probably. You guys know the drill. Cool. All right, everyone. Bye. We'll see you next time. Bye.
