Choosing the right diet for your dog

By Anna Nicola, BU Admin support and ex-pet food industry advisor

Please note that the following advice is provided for general support. Balkan Underdogs does not endorse any brand or food choices. Please consult your vet for specific feeding or nutritional advice.

What constitutes a 'suitable' diet?

A suitable diet should provide the right balance of energy, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals for your dog’s age, size, activity level and health. The most important starting point is to choose a food labelled “complete”, which means it is formulated to meet all the dog’s nutritional needs when fed as directed. Watch out for labels that state "complementary" as these will not be suitable for a balanced meal, and constitute treat meals.

It isn't possible to judge reliably by reading an ingredient list whether a food is digestible and has good nutrient availability (sometimes referred to a 'bioavailability'). And there is an enormous amount of misinformation across platforms such as social media, articles with an agenda, and pseudo pet nutrition. Large commercial pet companies usually have in-house laboratories that can measure the nutritional quality of their products, and they may also send samples to external (independent) laboratories too. Smaller companies may send samples to external laboratories for testing, or they may use more affordable computer modelling software that calculates this. A food that is advertised as “natural” also doesn't guarantee high bioavailability of nutrients. In fact, some natural "exotic ingredients" such as lentils, peas, fava beans etc, in pet food have been identified as a potential cause of diet induced cardiomyopathy in dogs. Click the preceding link to learn more, but further studies are needed to confirm this.

Commercial diets

Commercial diets come in a range of products including wet foods, kibble, freshly cooked, air-dried or freeze-dried, or raw. No single format is automatically healthier than another. A complete dry food can meet a dog’s full nutritional requirements, provided it is appropriate for your dog and fresh water is always available.

'Processed' has become an unecessarily scary word - but even freezing or cooking food is a form of processing - it doesn't necessarily make a food poor quality. Cooking improves the safety and digestibility of many ingredients, although it can alter some nutrients. Manufacturers account for this during formulation, including by adding vitamins and minerals where needed. Animal by-products may also provide useful and nutritious organ tissues; their presence alone does not indicate poor quality. When this author worked for a large, 'holistic' pet food brand, we would receive a high number of complaints about the inclusion of unslightly cartilage - but this was added as a natural source of glucosamine and chondroitin.

Marketing terms such as “holistic”, “premium”, “natural” or “human-grade” do not, by themselves, demonstrate nutritional quality. Also bear in mind, unlike the USA all meat used in pet food created in the UK is human grade. But that doesn't mean the resulting product is human grade. Diets that claim to be 'hypoallergenic' should especially be treated with caution - as one dogs allergy is another's non-allergen .

Raw diets have a huge fan base and this can be overwhelming, especially when social media users can be passionate about what the community thinks is best. However, facts are based on clinical observation and research made by pet health professionals and vets - not anecdotal evidence - and these show that raw feeding provdes no consistent health benefits over complete cooked diets. The British Veteinary Assocation (BVA) isn't taking a formal stance against raw feeding, but it does identify a number of issues with it from bacterial and parasitical contamination, risks associated with feeding bones such as broken teeth, choking, constipation, obstruction or internal injury, incomplete nutritional profiles and poor sustanability, and Lewis Grant, Past President of the Veterinary Public Health Association, chooses not to feed raw for these reasons.

Home-prepared diets

You may be tempted to feed your dog a home preapred diet - either raw or cooked. These are the least favorable option as dogs do not synthesise vitamins in the same way that humans do, and they have a critical need for certain vitamins and amino acids that can't be provided through a consistently fed 'human' prepared diet. If you are considering this as an option, you will need to speak to your vet about appropriate supplements, however, this is a bit of a balancing act - i.e, certain foods will affect the balance of vitamin intake. Feeding calculators like BalanceIT will work out exactly whow much of their leading supplement should be added depending on the choice of protein, carbohydrate and vegetables (fibre etc). This is because certain ingredients will affect the synthsis. Note, this product used to be available through the Royal Vet College but is currently hard to obtain - there is no supplement as good - but your vet may be able to order this for you.

Note: Never feed human supplements such as vitamins or omega fatty acids (such as fish oils designed for humans) to your dog without consulting your vet. As human vitamins are not designed for dogs - you may be feeding an excess or too little of a vitamin that can cause serious health implications and even death. Please only take advice from a vet.

Finally, it goes without saying that you should always consult your vet with any anxiety you have with feeding - especially where medical conditions are present. Our blog is designed to inform, not to tell you what you should feed. If in doubt, consult your vet - and feel free to reach out to us at Balkan Underdogs if you need any general support.

You can also check out these other blogs:

• Feeding for a healthy weight

• How to navigate allergies