Episode 25: Fad Diets in Vet Med with Emily Michael
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Episode Transcription
Participant #1:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to The Upbeat Dietitians Podcast. We are once again joined by a previous guest you hopefully heard from on an earlier episode, Ms. Emily Michael. And we will be jumping into kind of all things fad diets in animal nutrition because we always love talking about fad diets here with human nutrition, obviously. But since we've learned that there's also so much information and nutrition misinformation in the veterinary world, we want to get a professional on here and hear their thoughts. So, Emily, if you kind of want to go over, I guess, what fad diets you would like to cover, and then we can really go into all those fun details behind each of them and what the research shows. Yeah, absolutely. So the big three bad diets, at least that I'm aware of, would be grain free diets. That's probably the most common raw diet. And then homemade diets and homemade diets is sort of its own category, to be honest, because you can have a homemade grain free diet, you can have a homemade raw diet, you can have homemade whatever diet, but you kind of get the idea. And yeah, kind of like with our last episode, we were talking about sort of corporate pet food versus boutique diets. It's another thing where probably two years ago I would have said, like, I probably would have said, like, fat diets are entirely wrong and never do them ever. And at this point, it's a bit more nuanced than that. So, yeah, I guess let's get into it. Yeah. We can start off with grain free. I feel like I've heard that one. That sounds like a very fun one. Yeah, absolutely. Green free. It's an interesting thing because at least to my knowledge and this isn't me, like quoting a study or anything. This is just me living for the last 24 years. But grain free is the first fad diet that I was really aware of in pets. And at the very least, it's the first one that really took off that I'm aware of. And it kind of set the stage for other opportunities and sort of changed how marketing works in pet food, for better or for worse. So to my knowledge, again, just anecdotally grain free really took off around the same time that grain free human diets took off, because I don't have an exact year. But I mean, you remember sometime in the last decade or so when we started having more research into celiac, and at that point grain free kind of became a fad. And I'm not saying that obviously a person with celiac needs to have a grain free diet, of course, but all the people who would go grain free because they thought it would make them feel better or be less like lose weight, all the things you talked about them in another podcast, I know. But all of that was happening on the human side, and it also started happening on the animal side. And to be perfectly honest, there was no reason. It was purely just like people jumping on the Hype train and people assuming that if this is a good thing for humans, which is questionable, but if this is a good thing for humans, then it must also be a good thing for dogs, which is interesting because you've taken two steps there. You've made the assumption that a celiac diet is good for a non celiac human. And now you're also assuming that dogs respond to diets in the same way that humans do, and not true. So, yeah, I'm not exactly sure when, but sometime in the last decade, we definitely saw this rise in grain free diets for dogs and for cats. And the biggest marketing tactics behind them was people saying that grains are bad, carbohydrates are bad, and they were saying that your animal is a carnivore, so therefore it shouldn't be eating grain. Which is interesting because technically cats are carnivores. So we can get into that a little bit more in a moment. But they weren't entirely wrong. Like some of the things were Truthful. A lot of them either weren't Truthful or just too vague to really interpret accurately. So when these grain free diets first started getting popular, a lot of these companies just took out the grain sources, which was a lot of corn, to be honest, and they replaced it with potatoes. Some studies showed that maybe that wasn't the most nutritionally balanced option to replace. So like these days, for a variety of reasons, probably cost is part of it too, to be honest. Now it's less of potatoes and more of like legumes, like chickpeas, beans, peas, that sort of thing. It's still a carbohydrate, which is interesting because one of the biggest claims is that you need to go on grain free because carbs are bad and they're literally just taking out the corn and putting in a different carb. But I mean, they are taking out the corn. So they're doing one of the things that they're saying they're doing. So some big names. We mentioned last podcast, Rachel Ray, who is apparently a human nutritionist. I didn't know that she is, I think the biggest name in grain free. At least she was like the initial big one. Like Rachel Ray nutrition. Grain free was just everywhere for a while and it still exists. It's still popular. But she was like in my perspective, she was like the biggest name in grainfree pet food when it really boomed. Then there's also Taste of the Wild is another big one, Blue Buffalo. But also, I think all of the big pet food brands, they also have grain free lines, which is really interesting. And we can talk about the implications of that. But it's not just the small scale companies. It's also Hills has a grain free bank. Royal Canaan is now I should have looked into this and Purina does they have these options? And they're not like hiding them. They're advertising them. They're selling them in stores. So the first thing about this topic is, well, I guess there's two questions. Is this safe nutritionally for dogs and cats? And then there's is it better than having a grain diet? Because I think back when I was younger, I would have said it's not safe and it's not better. But these days I'm a bit more hesitant to be so like black and white on it. Have you guys heard of the big scare with grain free diets and heart disease in dogs? I've heard of it, but I really don't know much about it, so I'd love to hear more about it for sure. Absolutely. Like, no, yeah, nothing about it. The biggest thing that happened, the timeline of grain free events, was like this massive boom when all of a sudden they just sort of hit the market. To me, it felt like overnight. But also I was, I don't know, like a teenager at this point. So maybe I wasn't as aware of what was going on. And then also seemingly overnight, there's this big thing about grain free diets are killing dogs and they are making their hearts fail. There was at least one study that was more definitive. And then I think a few like supplemental studies as well that were done by the FDA because veterinarians just across the United States noticed a trend that there seems to be an increase in a heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy heart. It dilates, it gets bigger. And then because it's bigger, it can't really pump as it's supposed to because it kind of slums around because there's now too much like stretched out surface area. And the myocardiocyte can't pump properly. So that, of course, isn't good. That can lead to death. And there was this increased veterinarian. We're noticing that it seems like they are seeing more cases of DCM. And most of those cases were coming from dogs that were on a grain free diet. We haven't really seen as much in cats. So we'll stick with dogs for right now. And so in 2018, the FDA investigated into this because they've had enough reports from veterinarians and veterinary councils. They did a full investigation on it was something like 30 different pet foods that all had a grain free diet. And they didn't do a study of like, when we think about studies were like, okay, you give a dog a food and you see if it gets heart disease. But that's not very ethical because we can't give a dog food that we think will kill it and publish it. So instead, what they did was they basically just look at here are these breeds. They gathered a lot of data on animals that are eating, sorry, these brands of food. They gather a lot of data on the animals that are eating those brands of food. And then they gathered a percentage of the animals that died due to DCM on those foods as compared to non grain free foods. So basically, they were looking for an association, and they did find an association that dogs who ate grain free food had a higher incidence of DCM that typically led to death. It's difficult, though, because basically everybody just jumped on that. The green three people didn't jump on it because that's bad. But everybody else jumped on it and said, look, grain free is killing your dog. But it's really difficult because there's a lot of variables there. It wasn't a controlled study because there's no way to do that controlled study ethically. And there was a question of, okay, are these dogs dying because they need grain and now they're not getting the grain, so they're dying, or are they dying because these diets are just bad diets because they took out the grain and they replaced it with other things. Are the peas causing them to die, or are peas fine, but they just need more peas or corn or whatever? There's so many questions of what specifically causes that increased rate. And also, like I said, there's the one study and there's a few other smaller ones. But frankly, I believe that the association is there, but there isn't actually that much research in general. So some people are even calling for like, we need more studies, which to my knowledge, I haven't heard of any more since then because people kind of just looked at that data and then just stopped. So all these questions of, is it because you need those grains? Is it because the diet itself was bad? Could you have a diet that is grain free and is perfectly safe for your dog? And I think yes. I don't have the study to back me up because the study doesn't exist. The study has never been attempted. But it is true that from what we can see, nutritionally, dogs should, in theory, be able to get the nutrition they need. Without corn. It's not like corn is magical. At the same time, there doesn't seem to be anything causing corn to be bad. Corn is a great protein source. It's a great non meat protein source. So at the end of the day, it's a really difficult decision because I think there's the potential that a grain free diet could harm your animal, whether that be because there's something in that diet inherently that's wrong or also because traditionally the brands that make grain free diets have less research supporting them and less research showing that they're safe. But also it's very possible that your dog can eat a grain free diet all its life and be perfectly fine. And we have lots of anecdotal evidence of animal food grandfree diets and be perfectly fine. So at the end of the day, it's sort of like my conclusion about big pet food versus the small brand. It might be perfectly fine, but there is a risk of harm there. So at the end of the day, for my personal pets, I would never put them on a grain free diet because I don't want to assume that potential risk. But if a dog comes into my clinic and he's like a happy, healthy dog who showed no clinical signs of nutritional deficiencies or heart issues, I'm okay with that. I will say that if an animal comes in coughing and I hear that they're eating grain free, I'm going to be right on that part right away. I'm going to look and see if they have DCM. And it's definitely going to be something that I keep in mind when I'm diagnosing a patient, just as this could potentially cause heart disease, let's monitor that. But it's not something that we know one to one. And the same thing goes for cats. Like I said, there really haven't been as many reported incidents in cats, and I think none, actually. There was a while ago some incidences where cats were having tarine deficiencies on grain free diets. But then the companies added tarine and they seem fine now. So same thing. Cats is probably even less of a risk, but I really don't see a reason to start it. Corn is a perfectly fine nutrient. It's a source of protein. It's a carbohydrate that provides energy. It has fiber in it, which is also important for regulating a diet in the GI system. So it's like I feel like we're taking out a food because somebody said that it was good, but nobody actually has a reasoning behind it at the end of the day. So, yeah, I guess that's my grain free and now 15 minutes. Oh, cool. That was very informative. And I feel like you covered a lot of really good points. I did not know corn was a good source of protein for animals. I guess. I guess we're animals. I honestly couldn't tell you. I do not pretend to know human nutrition, so I'd imagine it's the same or similar, but I don't know definitively. But it is absolutely like it's a major protein source in our diet, which is crazy because people say people refer to corn as seller and it's not. There's so many people saying it that at this point the misinformation is so rampant that everybody just sort of assumes they're like, oh, yeah, corn and filler, right? Yeah. But it's very intentionally in those diets for a nutritional purpose, and it's very necessary for balancing those diets. That's cool. I'd heard that about corn. I'm glad I know now why it is there. I meant to say the other thing is one of the arguments for grain free diets is that people think their dogs are allergic to grain because celiac disease exists in humans and people kind of assume that there is a counterpart in animals. I just want to throw out there that grain allergies and animals are incredibly rare and they do happen. That's the reason why some of the big companies have grain free diets. They say it's for pets who are actually allergic to grain. In reality, I definitely think it's a marketing ploy. I think that they do want money at the end of the day, and that's why they're doing it. But that's a whole different discussion. But yeah, obviously, if your animal is truly allergic to grain and has undergone a food trial showing that it actually is allergic to grain and isn't just like an environmental allergy, which is 99% of allergies, then yes, please put your dog in a grain free diet. It's just incredibly rare. And because it's more and more common in people, it seems as we learn more about it, people tend to assume that their dogs and cats are the same when in reality it's a very different process. So many common themes with human nutrition, too. It's so crazy. I didn't realize there was this much like, what's the word? Like beef in animal science too. It's so crazy to me. Absolutely. Okay, well, let's break down those other diets as well. So that was a really good background on the grain free. I think you're right. That's kind of the one I hear the most. So I think that's most popular. I'll leave it up to you. Do you want to go into the homemade or into the raw diet? Next, let's talk homemade just because it'll probably be pretty short and sweet, to be honest, and then rock and look and ended up with raw. Yes. Homemade diet is a very broad category, and it's all difficult to tackle, but I think we can just because it can mean literally anything. I've had people who tell me that their diet is a homemade diet. And that means that whatever they eat, they just give it to their dog as well. Not even like scraps. I've met people who will literally make themselves like a roasted chicken with asparagus and carrots, and then they will also make a small plate of that for their dog and give it to them, which is not good because a if you aren't aware of every single food that isn't isn't safe for your animal, like toxicity issues, B you're probably not giving them a nutritionally balanced diet and C just like this is harsh, but why would you waste your time doing that? But I've also like some people for homemade diets. They are like they make them homemade because they want them to be grain for you. They make them homemade because they want them to be raw, which we'll talk about next. So it can mean a million things, whether it means I feed my dog McDonald's every day or I make my dog a five star meal every day, or I buy fresh meat from a Butcher shop and grind it for my dog every day. There's so many options. And there's definitely pros and cons from a nutritional standpoint, but also just from a feasibility standpoint, because I guess we'll start with pros. Homemade diets, in theory, are the only way that you can 100% know exactly what your pet is eating. And some people just want that. And that's fair. And some people really need that. If their animal has multiple concurrent diseases, if they have food allergies, which again, are really rare, but they can happen. They absolutely can. Or just any personal reason that you want that this is the only way you can really know exactly what your animals getting. And you can micromanage for specific health problems if they have specific deficiencies, something like that. Also, some people will do it because certain animals, especially older ones who might have a chronic disease process, they just don't want to eat. And sometimes homemade meals that involve more like traditionally human foods are really the only way to get them to eat if that's what you have to do. I understand that a lot of people like them for more superficial reasons as well. They just feel like they look better, they feel like it's more natural and they want their animals to be their child, which I understand because my cats are my children. But like we were saying in the previous podcast, they just don't feel good about giving their animals something that doesn't look appetizing to a human, which again, to each their own. I think that is a valid reason to do it. If you just want your pet to have food that looks like your food, I think you're projecting a little bit, but I think it's valid. Some people honestly just want bragging rights. I put that in my notes here because you definitely get people who do it for Instagram. But that's I think a bit less common nowadays, which is good. And then some people will do it because they want their pet to have a diet that isn't commercially available. They want their cat to be a vegan or something like that, which those ones I'm very staunchly opposed to. Typically, if a diet doesn't exist on the market, it's because it's not safe and it's not healthy for your animal to eat that way. So if you're making your cat a vegan, don't, it is a carnivore. Thank you. Even if you're making your dog a vegan, they're an omnivore. So they also need meat. So please stop that. There are sensible reasons to do homemade. There are people who do it just because that is what they want, and that's valid. There's a lot of cons, though, and a lot of them are more of just feasibility, more so than nutritionality. So that's part of it as well. I think I just made up a word nutritionality. But anyways, we make up words on here all the time. From a nutrition standpoint, it is incredibly difficult to accurately balance a homemade diet because even like commercially made diet will get recalls because they aren't balanced properly and they're causing deficiencies in animals. They're causing side effects. Like, no offense to however good you are with Googling. But if a large scale company that's working with a team of nutritionists can make mistakes, you absolutely can make mistakes as well, even if you have the best intentions. So that's the first issue. It's very difficult. Some people assume that it's as easy as like, okay, here is a piece of chicken and here's some vegetables, and here is like some sort of like supplemental light bean powder or something I found at the store. And it is so easy to accidentally cause it deficiency or supplement, like overprovide nutrients to your pets. And both can be equally bad. The bright side is your veterinarian may be able to help you with this. It really depends because it's a massive undertaking to do this. But also a veterinary nutritionist is this. And they are the ones who if you want to do a homemade diet and you want to do it properly, absolutely do whatever you can to consult with a veterinary nutritionist, because they are really the best and maybe the only people qualified to help you do that. General practitioners, like I said, we get education in nutrition, but it's not nearly as complex and as well fleshed out as veterinary nutritionists who spend an extra like four years of their lives studying this. So they are the ones to go to, not us. And after that, it's really just feasibility, which for some people, they do not care. Some people are retired or they stay at home and like, more power to them. They have the time for this. Fantastic. But your average person, it's just sort of an unfortunate reality. They get this idea. They want to make a homemade diet. And then they do it for like two weeks and then they just don't have the time to constantly be making small batch meals. Constantly be like grinding together ingredients and they start cutting corners. They start making batches that are too large and keeping them for too long to save time. But then they end up providing food that isn't fresh. They end up supplementing high quality meats with lower grade meats because it was too expensive, things like that. And all of these are things that you can like if you are dedicated, you absolutely can do these things. At the end of the day, though, I think in 99.9% of animals, a homemade diet isn't a requirement. And so you can save yourself so much time, so much labor, so much costs. Minimize the risk of food poisoning yourself or your other animals if you're using raw materials just by purchasing an over the counter diet. So it's interesting because again, I don't fault people for doing it. But anytime I do see a client who has a homemade diet, I definitely pay closer attention to their pet. If they appear malnourished in any way, I am more likely to recommend blood work just spontaneously, just to make sure that everything looks okay in there and that they don't have a calcium deficiency or I don't know, increased sodium because you put too much salt in there, that sort of thing. Because it's just so easy to get wrong and it can be very dangerous when you do. And I think also, just as the last point, it really harkens back. I think I said last episode that most animals will eat the same diet over and over for all their life. Homemade diets. A lot of people, when they do them, they'll do the same diet or the same rotation of like meats or something the whole time, which makes sense. That's the easiest way to do it and be consistent. But if you formulated it wrong, that is how you get deficiencies and how you get malnourished animals. You appreciate that great rundown of the pros and cons of homemade animal diets. I'm blown away by all the controversy. This is so interesting to me. I just didn't realize there was so much to this. I mean, obviously, I know it's not as simple as just like give your pet food, but there's just so much to it. It's crazy. My mind is like so blown right now. It's a big world and people get very heated. Certain owners will get very heated. If you say you can imagine. Sorry. Cool. I think this is the diet I'm most excited to hear about, the raw diet. Last one is the raw diet. And I am very excited to hear about this because as being not a pet owner, this is the guy I have heard the most about. I've always heard your pets a wild animal, so it should eat a raw diet. So I am very excited. Yeah, me too. That's good to know, too, though, that maybe the raw diet is more popular now than the green free diet.
Participant #1:
Raw diet another big source of controversy and another one that I can skip to the end just quickly. I think they can be done right. I think they frequently are not done right and they frequently pose more risks than gain. So, yeah, a raw diet, depending on who you ask, can come in just countless different forms because you have all the way from your person who goes to the Butcher shop and buys a T bone steak and just give it to his dog. Versus there are many commercial companies where you can purchase actual fresh raw meats or also you can purchase freeze dried meats. You can purchase these little pucks. I've seen one of my clients that I worked with, they see their dogs, they look like hockey pucks and it's just compressed, freeze dried meat. And it doesn't spoil because it's freeze dried. That's the main thing. And there's like a couple of supplements mixed in there as well. So it's really all over the spectrum of what does it even mean? And whenever you have a client who says they feed raw, you always have to kind of ask them because you have to know, like, okay, does that mean only meat? Does that mean raw meat but also vegetables? Are there bones in there? Is it like organ versus is it just like a T bone steak? And it's all entirely different and they affect the animal differently as well. I feel like the general vibe of raw meat is like your dog is a Wolf and he needs to get back to his ancestors and he feeds this raw meat and he's super cool and like metal. And you're super cool because you're feeding your dog this like crazy. You're feeding your Wolf food. Yes. Which I don't know if you've ever seen a pug, but your dog is not a Wolf. I don't know why people say that. Even like big, scary German shepherds, that you're like, okay, it physically looks like a Wolf. We have had so many generations of domestication that at this point you can't argue your dog is not a Wolf. And even if he somewhat was one generations ago, his GI tract no longer reflects that and his nutritional needs no longer reflects that. And also, even if he was a Wolf, Wolves live like they live like three years or something, and then they die and they get like parasites. Wolves aren't even really I wouldn't want my animal to have the life of a Wolf because they get and they starve. And yeah, it's not a standard I want to aspire to maybe a Wolf in a Zoo, I guess. I don't know. So the pros that people will claim for raw diets, there are claims that it will increase your dog's lifespan, that they will just generally be healthier, less likely to develop any sort of disease, depending on who you ask, and that their GI system will digest the raw meats better because it hasn't been processed. So therefore they will have less GI distress over the course of their lifetime. The biggest claims that they make to support this is that cooking can alter and destroy natural enzymes and it changes the digestibility of what they're eating. The big issue on that is that there really aren't any studies to support any of these claims. I'm not aware of any studies that deny these claims either, but the fact of the matter is they just aren't peer reviewed studies at this time. It's mostly just testimonials and people saying like, Hi, my dog lived to be 17 and he eats raw, and it must be because of the food, but he might have lived that long anyways. Maybe not. Like I said, I'm not aware of any studies that are against it either, but there really is no actual conclusive evidence. There have been a few studies that focused only on the digestibility aspect. So not about the health aspect, not about improved lifespan or anything like that. But it specifically looked at raw meat versus Kibble diet, and it showed that raw meat was slightly more digestible than cooked meat in the form of Kibble, but it didn't look at other uncooked foods. And most raw diets also include other uncooked foods like grains and starches and whatnot. So it wasn't looking at what would be even normal raw meat diet in the first place. So again, it kind of depends. Everyone does it differently, so it's possible that they're slightly more digestible. However, cooked meat is digestible, it's taking something that is digestible and making it slightly more digestible. And either way, the average dog won't have GI distress with either of them. So do with that, which you will. Meanwhile, there's a lot of risks that's what it always comes back to, honestly, is people are taking unnecessary risks because something sounds like it's good. It sounds like it's exciting and new and fun. The biggest ones always come back to nutritional imbalances. And this is partially because a lot of the ways that people source raw meat diets are a little bit questionable. If you have a person who's just going to the Butcher shop and purchasing meat and giving it to their dog, they probably haven't looked into actually balancing that diet. And the dog is probably very deficient in a lot of macronutrients that aren't present in a T bone steak. Some owners do their research and they do supplement things well. So it's like you can surpass that. But generally, if you're purely just buying meat, even if you're adding in various organ meats, it's just really common that you'll have nutritional deficiencies because you're not including other things like carbs that dogs do need because they're omnivores. Cats, technically, again, are carnivores, so there's a little bit more leeway there, but it's still very easy to like micronutrients like taurine that are super important. You need to supplement them or else they're not going to get enough of it. And not everyone does the other thing. Again, back to these sort of lesser known companies, these small pet food companies, a lot of the raw diets to my knowledge, all of the raw diets are coming from smaller pet foods. I'm not aware of Purina, Royal Canadian or Hills doing raw diets. I could be wrong on that. But the ones that I am aware of making these raw food diets, they're all smaller places that don't have the resources to do peer reviewed studies on their foods. They don't necessarily have veterinary nutritionist. And because of that, again, it doesn't mean that the food is inherently harmful, but it also means that I don't have I can't point to a study and say this says it's safe. I just don't know. In addition to that, there's just a lot of risks with the fact that you're handling wrong. It all of the risks that would just be inherent, as if you were just picking up chicken in your kitchen. Some of them are mitigated by these, like freeze dried diets, but even those there's still raw meat that's in there freeze dried, so there's still some form of bacteria. So we see a lot of cases where people will feed their dogs these raw meat diets, and they'll get equal poisoning or salmonella poisoning. And typically it doesn't impact their dogs as much. So you can see dogs with GI poisoning because of bacteria on the raw meat, especially if it's not handled properly. But what usually happens is the owners are really good about wearing gloves and they wear gloves and they put down the food and their dog eats the food and then the dog licks them or licks their old grandma who's visiting or licks their child in the mouth because it's a toddler and you look very distressed. But people don't think about it. I get freaked out when dog smells in other people's mouths. That's a personal hygiene. I'm not a big fan either, to be honest. Don't ask for it. But it happens when you have a dog that's a bigger thing is like people, I think in general, are aware that it's raw meat and raw meat usually is bacteria. So I should be careful. But then they sort of just assume that the safety portion is done once they put the food down and they forget the fact that your dog doesn't wash his mouth after eating and he doesn't wash his paws after eating. And essentially they're just a vector now for any sort of bacteria that might have been present on that raw meat, which ideally there isn't any, but there absolutely could be. Another one is raw diets, again, depending on where you're sourcing it from. Some of them include bones and especially people who make their own homemade, they're just purchasing these meats and they'll have like a rib in there or something like that. A lot of them intentionally add bones because they want the bone marrow in there. But the problem is in general, it's not really recommended to give your dog bones, even though like half of the treat companies out there want you to because dogs will choke, they will break their teeth if they swallow little bits of like bone Shard, they can perforate their stomach. And that's another just a big one, that it's not even related to the nutritional contents of the food. But just in general, it's an inherent risk in having these raw sources that haven't been processed that have their accessory portion. So at this point, like I said, there just really isn't documentation that it's better. And there's a lot of reasons why it might not be. And because of that, I kind of take the same approach as a grain free. Even more so because grain free, in some rare cases, you might actually have a leg to stand on because your pet is allergic. In raw diet, there is no, in my opinion, sensible reason to cut out, like the cooking process because we have all these studies showing that they can digest their cooked food. And you're adding in risks for little to no reward other than the sort of concept of being more natural.
Participant #1:
Yeah. And I think that's my big take on it. I know, Hannah, you mentioned that you have friends maybe, or, you know, people who use raw diets. Is there anything else you've heard about them or any questions you might have? No. That was perfect. That answered all my questions. Yeah. I just feel like you've really said a few times that people who do it, they can do it. Well, there's definitely a right way to do it. But I think a lot of times it is on Facebook groups and that kind of thing more so just to seem like a better dog parent because they are giving them real food, if you will. And so I have been kind of jaded, I guess I truly didn't know, am I doing the wrong thing as a dog mum? It's been nice to hear that I'm not a bad dog mom forgive my dog, like actual Kibble. So it's been good to hear all this. I'm loving it. Yeah. And at the end of the day, I like to tell people, if you put your pet food down, do they eat it and do they seem happy while they eat it? Because my cat's food is literally called a loaf. It is Renault loaf. It's this little can and it looks terrible. But he is like so happy and he gets so excited whenever I pull out of the fridge because they don't care about the same things we do. They, to an extent care about how it tastes. Some of them honestly, I square just care about the fact that they're eating like labs don't even taste me before they swallow it. So it's a really interesting mix of people putting their own emotions onto their dogs and really just projecting and making assumptions. Yeah. Which I totally get. Like, I obviously would do anything for my dog. So I kind of was like having those feelings, am I doing the wrong thing? But you're so right. We give him Hills. We do Hills Science diet, and he loves it. It's food. He wants to just be eating food. So he's totally cool with having that everyday. Yeah. And that actually reminds me the other thing with some of these raw and grain free and homemade, I would say. I think all three of them is some animals we kind of mentioned, like some animals have very specific dietary needs. And my cat has some early kidney disease. So he's on a specific renal diet. I suppose with homemade I could replicate that with a homemade diet if I really wanted to and took the time. It'd be a lot, very intensive. But I could. But to my knowledge, there is no therapeutic renal diet that is also grain free and there is no therapeutic renal diet that is also raw. So that's the other thing is in theory, you can do them right, but really only on a healthy animal. The second that they have a secondary issue going on there, it becomes far more complicated. That's a very good point to mention, especially once you have to be able to do the diet correctly once you have that figured out. I always think with humans when we were in clinicals, every human had at least three chronic conditions. And I was like, if you add that to, like, I don't know how susceptible animals are to all these chronic conditions, but when you start adding those on, it definitely makes it much more challenging to make the already challenging diet you've taken on before and adapting that to best, I guess. Nourish, your animal. Yeah, that was very informative. I learned a lot about fad diets in animals. I'm sure there's a million more. Those are the big ones at least. But yeah, cool. Emily, do you have anything you would like to know, or I guess any final statements about fad diets in veterinary medicine? Yeah, I guess just generally to the pet owners out there, it's always good to be informed about diets, but ultimately trust your veterinarian. And if you don't trust your veterinarian for some reason, find a different one that you do trust, I guess because I think we all like to we all want the best for our pets. So sometimes it feels like you have to do the research yourself, and that's perfectly fine. But most veterinarians have access to more resource and also just a broader background in these sorts of things. So please involve them in the conversation and please be open to a discussion, and hopefully they will also be open to a discussion because at the end of the day, diet isn't the Hill I die on with most patients, but it is really important. And if more people involved their veterinarians in that decision, I think a lot of animals would just be healthier overall. At the very least, I think there'd be fewer overweight animals, to be honest. Even animals on bad diets, they can still live pretty okay lives, pretty happy lives, but it can cause a lot of just chronic issues, a lot of overweight issues and things like that, and we don't want that. On that note, we get to go to the fun part of the episode and you get to do another bonus question with us. And as you know, you get to go first because you are our guest. So this isn't really, I guess I don't know how much of a debate question is, but we could make it a debatable question by saying which one we believe is best. But the question is, what is your favorite type of chip? And I guess you can go about this, like sharing your favorite type, or if you would like to place an argument behind why your favorite chip is the best chip, either one works. This is very difficult because I don't think I have a favorite type of chip. It's like the ones that I jump between the most are Doritos and then lay sour cream and onion chips. But they're two very different chips, and I don't know which one I'd prefer. It really depends on my mood, but those are probably my two favorites. So if I want to say two favorites, if I'm looking for a lighter chip, I don't know if that exists, but a lighter chip would be the sour cream and onion. And then I feel like Doritos are heavier. You just did what I do for every episode. I never have a direct answer, so don't feel bad about that. That's how it goes every week for me. I changed my mind. Okay, I do that. Too late. Sorry about that. The chocolate chip. Those are so good. Have you had those, Emily Crowdy. Oh, no, I just mean like, Hershey. Yeah, I thought you mean like the chocolate covered potato chips. You know what? Yeah, you get, like, some ruffles, like wavy ruffles, and you should melt chocolate chips on top. That sounds really good. That might be sell them. Like, you can buy them. It sounds like the perfect combination of, like, sweet and savory. That's my new answer. Okay. I was about to come after you for your chocolate chip things. I'm like, you know, that's not what we're asking.
Participant #1:
Okay. Emily Crowsey, how about you? What's your favorite type? So my favorite type is. I think this is a chip. Okay. I don't even know what a chip is. I think this is a chip. Like, flaming hot Cheetos are those chips? I'd say so. Legally no, but like my favorite illegal chip blending Hot Cheetos because I love hot things very much and I am weird about like if I'm in pain it makes the experience even better. I'm the exact opposite. I love Flaming Hot Cheetos. I will eat them until this is probably TMI so I start like sweating. I feel like that's a pretty common side effect of Flaming Hon Cheetos. But I hate sweating. I hate to be the TMI part of that. Okay. But I hate the red dust that is my biggest Con. I don't like how it stains my fingers for the rest of the day. It's a rough life. I feel bad for you. I'm going to have to go with the ruffles. I just love a good ruffle. I actually have a solid answer on this one. I do love all chips. I don't discriminate, but my favorite probably is ruffles. Especially the sour cream and cheddar ones. Those are so good. Well, that was probably my easiest answer ever. Well, Emily Michael, I want to say thank you so much. As a dog mom appreciated this so much because I love my vet, but I don't ever get just like 2 hours to ask her all my questions and learn everything about everything when it comes to feeding my dog. So this has been so informational for me. At least. I know our listeners are going to really like it too, so I appreciate that so much. Definitely it was a good time. Once again, let us know if there is anything else you would like to know. We can bring Emily on and have her services for another episode and let us know what other topics you'd like to hear about or I guess other professions. I don't know any others for nutrition, but maybe there is something like plant nutrition but
Participant #1:
the possibilities are endless. But nevertheless, thank you for tuning in for another episode and we hope to see you guys next week. I don't know what to ask from you all. You listen again. There is no call to action for this one. You guys will figure it out. Cool. All right, thanks guys. See you next week. Bye everyone. Bye.
