About Dr. Schmitt:
Dr. Stephanie Schmitt is a veterinarian specializing in nutrition. With her "Feed me right" program, she advises pet owners and veterinary professionals. Click here to visit Dr. Schmitt: → Fit-Mit-Futter [Fit-with-food].
A mineral vitamin powder with Dr. Schmitt
17 March 2023 — by VetLounge
Nutritional advice for cats & dogs
What should I look out for in a pet's diet? Which nutrients are really essential? How do we get nutrients into the feed and ultimately into the animal? Questions about nutrition are complex. In our podcast, we put them to Dr. Stephanie Schmitt, veterinary specialist in dietetics and animal nutrition. You can hear what she told us about animal nutrition in the Inuvet podcast "VetLounge". If you don't want to listen, you can always read it instead. Here, you can find an excerpt from our conversation on dog nutrition, practical approaches and vegetarianism.
Hundeernährung: Ein komplexes Fachgebiet der Tiermedizin, das großes Potential zur Erhaltung der Gesundheit birgt.
As a veterinary specialist, what do you attach particular importance to when providing nutritional advice?
Very important: It must be appropriate and practicable for the animal and the owner. This means that, on the one hand, the food should contain all the nutrients the animal needs. On the other hand, it must also be practicable for owners in terms of time and money. In principle, the different types of feed can all be designed in such a way that each animal receives optimal nutrition.
What role does variety play in dog nutrition?
If you look at dogs from an evolutionary perspective, they are initially waste eaters whose diet has always been closely linked to that of humans. Most of the time, the dog's diet was based on offal such as bones and offal, as well as grain leftovers, for example from bread. So the dog's diet was always very varied. However, to conclude from this that this was the healthiest diet is too short-sighted. In fact, dogs had more health problems before the introduction of complete diets. The many illnesses caused by nutrient deficiencies indicate that the conventional diet often did not provide dogs with everything they needed to meet their basic and maintenance requirements.
Das Fressen für den Hund soll nahrhaft sein, und vor allem natürlich lecker.
In terms of variety, it also depends on the type of diet. With natural BARF, you try to imitate a prey animal and feed what wild dogs would otherwise find. In order to feed this without additional vitamins or minerals, you have to make the diet as varied as possible so that the dog receives all the important nutrients. However, this is difficult in practice and should be calculated for each dog and its individual maintenance requirements.
If our dogs have evolved in parallel to the human diet, what makes them different?
Dogs are much more specialized. This can be shown by the example of calcium. Humans naturally have a relatively low calcium diet. Accordingly, our intestines have developed in such a way that we can increase our absorption capacity when calcium becomes scarce. This makes us more efficient at covering our calcium requirements, which are already low. In contrast, dogs have been fed a steady diet of bones throughout their evolution. These are very rich in calcium. Therefore, the body has had no need to develop mechanisms to improve the digestibility of calcium. This difference in digestive capacity is particularly important when preparing food for your four-legged friends yourself, which is becoming increasingly popular among pet owners.
In your opinion, is it possible to feed dogs a vegetarian or even vegan diet?
We always have to consider: What nutrients does the dog need? Firstly, energy, which comes from carbohydrates, fats and proteins. The organism also needs amino acids and nitrogen. These are supplied by proteins. The macronutrients that every living organism needs are therefore energy in the form of glucose, fats with essential fatty acids, amino acids and nitrogen. If you look at these macronutrients for dogs, meat provides the perfect composition. It has exactly the amino acids that the dog needs. If you achieve 80 percent meat in your dog's diet, then the amino acids and proteins needed by the dog are included.
However, these amino acids cannot be covered by meat alone. You can of course also use eggs, dairy products or vegetable protein sources. However, their composition is not as optimal as that of meat. It is therefore important to ensure that they contain the necessary nutrients, especially amino acids. For this reason, a meat-free diet should always and only be practised together with a veterinarian specializing in nutrition.
What do you think of a strictly vegan dog diet?
I generally advise against it. I would rather recommend a vegetarian diet, which is absolutely possible without any problems. For those who want to avoid eggs and dairy products in particular, a partially vegan diet is recommended. We can then cover some amino acids with meat and still reduce its proportion. Because 80-90% meat, which seems so important to many, is completely illogical - with the exception of classic BARF. It is absolutely possible to reduce meat consumption in a dog's diet if the meat is reduced to what is necessary and the energy requirements are met with fats and carbohydrates. If a mineral and vitamin powder is then added, the result is a balanced diet that meets the dog's needs.
