Cats and Dogs are Carnivores!

Vegetarian diets for cats and dogs are certainly possible for them to ‘survive.’ Unfortunately in the long term, surviving is just about all they would be doing.  Cats and Dogs on a vegetarian diet would certainly not have the same health, vitality or longevity as a pet on an animal produce based diet.

If we compare the digestive systems of a herbivore to a carnivore, the carnivore has a very short digestive tract with an extremely low pH, made specifically to digest meat and bones effectively.  In comparison, the herbivores digestive tract is very long to meet the needs of the lengthy process required of digesting tough vegetable matter. 

The jaws and teeth structure of our cats and dogs are certainly made for meat and bones with sharp canines and scissor like cutting carnassial teeth, whilst the herbivores have flat teeth for grinding hard, unprocessed vegetable matter.  

The nutrients in plant matter exist inside the plant cells themselves.  As each and every plant cell has a strong surrounding cell wall, there must be some method of breaking down these walls to release the nutrients into the gut.  As a herbivore ages in the wild, their teeth may become less able to break down these tough cellulose cell walls of plants.  As a result the animal suffers from a lack of absorbed nutrients.  Without these flat, grinding teeth the herbivore cannot crush the vegetable matter efficiently.  If we compare this information to our cats and dogs, they certainly do not have the ability to break open plant cell walls to reach the nutrients inside at any stage in their life.  They do not have the flat grinding molar teeth of herbivores.  Unless plant material is grinded or juiced for our pets, most of the nutrients pass through the body as fibre, the nutrients lost in the faeces.

There are certain nutritional needs that our cats and dogs require which can only be obtained from animal produce.  An example of which is ‘taurine.’  Taurine is an essential amino acid for cats only found in meat; which prevents blindness and cardiomyopathy (a disease of the heart muscle).  Whilst there is a synthetically available form of taurine, nothing can fully replace obtaining the essential nutrient from its natural source.  As the only source of taurine is from an animal, it makes sense that nature has created this relationship between the cat and the herbivore.  Vitamin A, required for vision, the immune system and for foetal development can only be obtained from meat.  Niacin found in meat cannot be synthesised by cats.  Why would we change the very things nature itself created?

Whilst vegetables are extremely nutritious, loaded with vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and enzymes, animal produce is required for high quality, abundant protein, essential fatty acids, and other nutrients not found plentiful in vegetables such as vitamin B12, thiamine and choline (Billinghurst 1993).

Author of ‘Your Cat’ recommends a diet for dogs and cats to be exclusively from animal sources, even for the elderly cat.  In the author’s words, “cats do not need fruit or vegetable matter in their diet; they consume little or no plant material in the wild, and get no benefit from having plant ingredients added to their diets at home.” (Hodgkins 2007)  In my own experience with two 18 year old cats, including pureed vegetables in their diet has been a life saver especially in times of much needed natural vitamins and minerals, times of constipation, respiratory infections and as a palatable addition for times of loss of appetite.  Both of my very fussy geriatric cats enjoy pureed pumpkin as much as they enjoy the animal produce.  Whilst animal produce does appear to be  the most natural staple diet for our cats and dogs, I have to disagree with Hodgkin’s extreme views that they do not require plant material in their diet.

From the research I have carried out, I do believe our cats and dogs are purposefully built to thrive on a meat-based diet and are certainly not suited to an all-vegetarian diet.  However, there is also a very worthy argument that the meat given to pets, in particular dogs, could indeed be alternated with other forms of protein such as tofu, polenta, cottage cheese and quinoa.  As raw meaty bones can be classed as a by-product of human consumption, these do not have to be reduced or eliminated at all.  However, pet owners themselves should take a lesson in awareness to help save this planet by buying and eating less meat. Unlike cats and dogs, there is no reasonable argument that humans need to eat meat for excellent health.  By reducing the amount of meat we consume by 10%, one hundred million people could be adequately nourished using the same amount of land, water, and energy, no longer devoted to animal feed. (Pitcairn 2005)

It is food for thought what humans were intended to be, herbivore or omnivore.  We have a long digestive tract, blunt canines, relatively flat molar teeth for crushing plant material and a gut that is certainly not built for eating raw acidic animal matter without us getting extremely ill or dying in the process.  (Martin 2008)

Whilst there is an abundance of evidence in support of a meat based protein diet for cats and dogs, I must include the fact that the high consumption of meat is one of the major causes of people dying of starvation in third world countries.  The price to raise farm animals for human consumption is destroying and eliminating the resources on planet earth at an alarming rate.  When a field of corn that has the potential to feed a small village of malnourished people is being used instead as animal feed to meet the desires of the carnivorous people in this world, something has gone very wrong.

Unless the meat we buy for our pets is organic there is also another good reason to reduce the amount of meat in our dogs diet.  Meat, which is not organic, is the most polluted food source on the market today.  By the time the meat has reached the supermarket, the animal it came from has been eating non organic feed its whole life most of which contained pesticides, herbicides, perhaps synthetic hormones, antibiotics and other food contaminants (Pitcairn 2005).  The meat from such an animal must therefore also be heavily composed of these dangerous chemicals.  When meat includes such toxicity there is no wonder we have such a high rate of degenerative diseases in both humans and their pets.

I personally try to always buy organic meat for my dog and cats, and for my dog I like to include and alternate meals with non-meat protein.  This way, I feel I am doing what nature intended for my pets whilst also respecting our own earth’s diminishing resources.

In my opinion, following nature as much as possible is the answer to most of life’s nutritional problems;-)