Transcript for:
Proper Diet for Cats and Dogs

I'm a doctor but is the food that you're buying your cat or your dog spending good money on it isn't actually making your cat or dog sick giving your cat or dog diabetes fatty liver making them obese is the food that your veterinarian is recommending that you buy for your dog or cat or maybe even selling to you at a nice tasty markup is that what your cat and dog should be eating these are very important questions for those of us who love our pets and I've got a special guest on today uh who's a veterinarian and who practiced for years and years he's retired now but he still keeps up with the literature and he has discovered a way to reverse type 2 diabetes in dogs and cats and also to prevent that from ever happening to your pet and so I'm going to bring him on I think people have been asking me for this for months what's a proper pet diet so if you if you have a friend or a family member who loves their pet please send them a link to join this uh if you have people on your social media that love their dogs and cats please share this on your social media because so many people just thoughtlessly blindly trust their veterinarian or their vet tech and feed their beloved family members their dogs and cats they feed them stuff that is actually contributing to their disease and then that requires multiple veterinarian visits a lot of medication that you're going to have to pay for there's not very much in the way of pet health insurance uh maybe there is maybe I just don't know about it but so please share this around I'm going to bring Dr einertson on doctor welcome hey Ken nice to see you it is a pleasure to have you I have this has been one of my most requested videos and uh I do have a degree in animal biology I went to medical school not veterinary school so I am not an expert when it comes to the care and feeding of dogs and cats but I know that you are and for months people have been bugging me wanting me to get a veterinarian on here and let's talk about a proper pet diet and I think the vast majority of pets are cats and dogs right so let's let's stick to them unless somebody has a question specifically about another species if that's okay with you doc yeah sure Ken just to be clear you know I'm uh I'm a veterinarian but I'm not like board certified in anything like nutrition or otherwise uh sure micro clinical experience and my uh understanding of the literature that we do have yes absolutely so uh what we're gonna I'm uh first want you to introduce yourself and give us a brief little intro as to who you are and why all these cat and dog lovers in the world why they should care about what you say and what you've discovered okay well you know I uh this you might be experiencing the ramblings of a lunatic you know but uh I'm from Colorado I graduated from Colorado State in 1994 I practiced in Alaska for a couple years where I did large and small animal um and then moved to Rochester Minnesota where I've been for the last uh 26 years um and about 20 years ago uh I was reading an article about a different way to manage type 2 to manage diabetes in cats and in general cats are type two dogs or type one and uh I was trained we were all trained uh in all textbooks were written that you um foreign use a low-fat diet high in carbs high in fiber and you give them what I what I now consider to be industrial doses of insulin and the problem was it just never worked very well I mean you could never get normal glycemia they're always Sky High or they're glucose is so low they're in a coma or dead it was just impossible to achieve normal glycemia and then this is a back in 2001 a ridiculous article came out easily have dismissed it but I knew the lead author and she's brilliant her name's Dr Deborah Greco and in this study she did kind of the exact opposite she put him on like a canned kitten food that's high in protein very low in carbs moderate fat and just minuscule doses of insulin and her results were amazing like nothing I'd ever experienced and uh I tried it on the very first cat and uh within a couple months we ended up taking the cat off insulin normal glycemia no glucose hero that was before we were doing fructose immune testing um which is kind of like an A1C if you like right and um uh the next character remission the next cat remission and now realizing the hindsiders may be lucky but three in a row after going for you know all my career up to that point never reversed one to have three in a row so I just really uh dug on into that and um sent one of my technicians off and she got trained and together I think at one point we pulled our records and we had like 70 remission and then over time as we make refined our techniques we got up to one point at the very top point was that 83 percent of our cats in remission yeah and so any of you guys watching if if you think your veterinarian might need to hear what Dr einertson just said please you're welcome to email a link to your veterinarian uh or tag them in this because I think the average veterinarian has no idea about this I want to and I want to dig into that doctor what the hell was wrong with you before you made this discovery why did you mistreat so many cats and dogs for so many years were you not trained about dog and cat nutrition in vet school did you not read any literature how because you're obviously very intelligent how did you miss that well I think because I followed the conventional wisdom the amount of nutrition that we get is similar to Physicians you know it's not very many hours and I could kind of summarize it by saying you know it's uh We've identified the essential vitamins and minerals make sure you have those the essential amino acids um and uh and this is kind of calories in calories out from there you know um and it was uh that's as simple as you know reverse and obesity was just I put amount of calorie restricted diet we're never taught anything about like protein leverage we were never taught about anything like the insulin and glue gun responses it was just uh that simple so I think a lot of us miss it and you know after um reversing diabetes or getting them into remission um then I was listening to uh some other research saying that yeah you could use that same diet to reverse obesity it was more opinion than research and I was like well that's ridiculous because as a hypocrite my own cat was obese you know I mean she was overweight I put her on the most expensive prescription weight last night on that you could get a real Famous Brand and um what was the brand uh Hills um reducing diet yeah um I put her on that and she was hungry all the time and she's waking us up at night and you kind of give in just feed her some more food so we can sleep and she slowly over period of yours went from overweight to mildly obese and so I thought you know it's ridiculous if I could put her on this high protein very low carb moderate fat canned food because she loved canned food you know she loves it too much she's just going to overeat it but I tried it and the weight just melted off her we call it catkins diet you know she could jump she's doing all this stuff and I was like wow this is completely backwards you know um at the time I still didn't understand like protein leverage you know and all that stuff but um then I started using that same diet to reverse obesity and I started noticing some other things like these cats that have these chronic cystitis the bladder the interstitial cystitis like in people um that seemed to go away or not completely but just way lower uh levels um and then the Obesity and then the diabetes and the hair coat changes and they just seem to be more muscular and more athletic and I just kind of started to question all of my training yeah no I totally get it that's and that's a very similar story what happened to me but it's yeah I think I find it fascinating that the average vet just kind of Falls in line with oh a cat and dog diet should basically be a plant-based diet like people uh kind of forgetting maybe that there are different species and I want to I want to um I want to pull up this real quick so if anybody has any doubts about this I've actually seen people on Twitter say that uh their dog was not descended from a gray wolf and let's be very clear uh I was taught in animal biology that every single canine on the planet without exception is a direct descendant of the gray wolf and all the different breeds from the humongous uh you know Wolfhound to the tiny tiny Chihuahua they are all directly descended from the gray wolf that's number one then number two cats this is the ancestral lineage of cats they literally descended from the same common ancestor as lions tigers cheetahs Pumas mountain lions they all have a common ancestor cats are not some special magical breed our dogs are not some special magical breed they are direct descendants from uh animals that ate predominantly meat now uh next thing I want to say is I want everybody to tell me in the comments where you're watching this from where are you at in the world what city what state what country and then docu you alluded to changing from kind of dry kibble over to just canned dog food what are the differences between them and and why do you think that started to make a difference immediately in the the diabetes yeah just to be clear like in cats that's why I have the most confidence um because they are true obligate carnivores like your graph showed and I love that graph on your dogs you know just just so you know that some of the pushback I get from my peers and the academics is uh there is some been some genetic changes uh in that they have more copies of pancreatic amylase um in some of the dogs although it's interesting I've written another article that like it's not so much like the northern dogs like the Huskies that's right yeah dogs that evolved out of like the Fertile Crescent the Middle East you know absolutely and it's actually breeds of dogs that have been domesticated with humans the longest they have the most genetic defects allowing them having a higher amylase in their in their saliva and in their their stomach so that they can uh break down sugars as starches because they've been eating human scraps for the longest amount of time and so the longer a breed has been in captivity and been domesticated they're going to have more copies of the amylase Gene that's absolutely true but that's not a positive Evolution that's them basically uh eating our scraps for so long that it it actually had an Adaptive effect on their genetics but it doesn't mean that that's their ideal diet agreed you know and um and just so you know like that's more copies of the pancreatic amylase I still don't think any of the dogs have salivary no you're you're exactly correct about that yes thank you for that and then again the cats you said you're you're more of an expert in in feline Health uh so what's the difference when we change from dry kibble two canned cat food what's what is the difference in that because it's there's nothing magic about the can obviously uh wise canned foods seem to help cats better than dry kibble yeah um and you know the reason I think the canned is is important is a couple reasons one is if you look at that African cat you know that we think all of our modern domestic cats um evolve from you know they evolved in the desert and there's not much water in the desert you know I've read an article that said as much as 90 of their daily moisture needs for those wild cats comes from the prey that they catch because little mammals that they Prey Upon are like big mammals we're all close to about 70 water you know and so when you feed canned food it's about 70 water when you feed dry food it's only about 10 water now yeah if you put them on dry food they will drink more water but they never drink enough to be fully hydrated you look at the amount of urine they produce the cats just have a low thirst drive and so I don't know what's going to be as critical in dogs as and cats it has to be canned but the other thing about the can is like you can put whatever you want you can but if you're going to make crunchy crispy little brown balls that you can pour out of a bag you have to add a lot of carbohydrate to that and so that's why I I think it's really important for cats I think probably less so for dogs on the can versus um dry gotcha so I've had a couple of questions already uh what about because there's a lot of people that uh hang out with Nisha and I and we feed our dogs and cats meat that's what that's what they get they get ground beef they get fish out of a can I buy the super cheap tuna and I'll give them a can of that I'll give the cats and the dogs one can of cod liver once a week and the next question is always well that's expensive and I and so then my reply because you know how I am doc I'm I say something to the effect of well do you actually love your cat or dog as a family member or do you not because I you know I can hear a parent saying well that's too expensive to feed good food to my kids well if they if they're truly part of your family then you might want to you know buy them food that actually improves their health instead of degrades their health but the question is what about cats who already have existing kidney disease can they eat a a diet that's going to be higher in protein if you put Meat and Fish and and uh canned dog food can can their kidneys handle that or should you put a dog with a cat with existing kidney functions should they be on dry kibble I think it's really critical if they have kidney disease that they are on can because we've mentioned that chronic dehydration right we need to keep them as well hydrated as we can um you know the the high protein and kidney comes up all the time and I just did a webinar the other day with another specialist but uh when you look at the prescription kidney diets they tend to be lower in protein um they tend to be lower in phosphorus which I think is kind of the magic sauce um and they have some extra potassium the stuff added um but I really think it's a phosphorus so I in my experience I've had a lot of cats with chronic kidney disease that we could not get on we could not get them to eat the prescription kidney diet we tried every single way to coerce them into it and uh it just was a no-go and if ever you have a cat with chronic kidney disease always the primary importance is that we find something they will eat because they become socaxic they lose so much muscle mass if you don't um find a way to to nourish them so I've had a lot of cancer refill the kidney diet so then I end up here's a website I use it's called like Binkies page um and uh I just try to find a canned food that's low in phosphor so the lowest phosphorus I can get and I've had a lot of cats do shockingly well like we'll come back here later and we check the kidney values or six months later and I'm just shocked I'm like wow this is just as good a response as I ever got from the kidney diets you know in those kidney diets although they're low in protein it's interesting the manufacturers are uh making them higher and higher protein nowadays right now as protein restricted as it used to be and I I think there's something to be learned there yeah and I've known for years uh that the higher proteins bad for your kidneys myth for humans it was absolute but I'm not a veterinarian so I wanted to hear it from your mouth uh and so there's no credible Veterinary research showing that that cats it's harmful to their kidneys to eat a high protein diet even though they're obligate carnivores you've never seen any research showing proving that uh that a diet full of meat and fish for for cats is going to harm their kidneys right for dogs or cats I have just never found I think it's the same as a human literature I just think there's a lot of myth you know I've never found anything that suggests that a high protein diet can induce renal dysfunction I just I don't think it exists I don't know where that myth came from I didn't realize it was in the in the veterinary uh Community as well but in the medical community this has been a myth since 2003. when I first did the internet search and it's like where did this come from but it but also it will not die I've been pounding this for years and every day I get a comment well won't that that protein's too hard for my kidneys right you know I just want to just give up and retire and go chop down trees all day so now the next question somebody said in the comments my vet said not to give my cat any food except for the kibble because the kibble contains taurine and my cat has to have taurine or will get very sick maybe go blind what would what's your answer to that you know um thorium is hugely essential for cats it's got to have it but I think every single commercial cat food in this country it has a aafco American Association of field Control Officers every single commercial cat food is supplement with taurine so I don't think you're going to have a difference between the taurine level between uh canned and dry but this woman this woman was feeding her cat meat I'm not joking okay and her her vet said don't do that you've got to feed them the cat food or they won't get enough taurine you know that meat is one of the richest so yeah I mean how did that get that wrong yeah the meat is one of the richest sources of taurine in the diet you know I was just throw a word of caution like if we're just start adding a lot of meat this meat alone is not a well-balanced diet and the biggest thing is the calcium phosphorus meat tends to be high in phosphorus and low in calcium so they do need a calcium source which you know um basically bone meal um but to get that all balanced out is really tricky and I always recommend you use a you know a nutritionist for that if you're going to do like a homemade diet um yeah yeah I think that's great advice and that's where our cats and dogs I get their calcium from eating eggshells which they all love and then also a can of sardines once a week with the bones in and the skin on and I think that probably makes it a fairly rounded out diet now a lot of people in the comments are saying I only feed my dog or cat grain free it says it right there on the front of the of the dog or cat food package what are some caveats about that and some warnings is if it says grain free on the front is that is that a perfect food for cat and dogs I've seen it happen back and forth on this green for you there was a time where I thought it was going to create World Peace but I've kind of backed away from that and then over the last number of years we've had in this uh an issue with cardiomyopathy in dogs this is specifically to dogs and it's a dilated cardiomyopathy which we typically only see um in certain genetics of dogs or in cats that are on a touring deficient diet so it's interesting because like we you learn it like right away in vet school cats have the specific taurine requirement they have to get the Tarina so they'll get cardiomyopathy and blindness but dogs they don't have to have the taurine because they can convert other amino acids like cysteine methionine tutoring um so this it's our field has been working very hard for a number of years trying to figure out what's causing this habilitative cardiomyopathy in dogs and it's been associated with green free diets the thing I never made sense to me on that is grains are not a good sense they're not a good source of like like toning you know um there's not actually in right or in any pee and so I think I think what they're starting to find though I think it truly is a taurine deficiency in dogs and this is just my crazy going off but I haven't been falling as closely lately but um I still think it's a touring deficiency and it's hard to measure taurine accurately in the body you can do serum levels plasma levels but it's not really sure if that's going to correlate with what's in the tissue yeah and if you're feeding the dog that's already kind of like on a marginally low protein diet you know grain free you you soon find out if you're formulating diets meat is the most expensive ingredient right so then you start doing all these legume proteins um and other uh you know plant-based proteins well they don't have as much methionine cysteine to convert to the taurine so I really think it's all going to boil down to be a taurine deficiency even still yeah it wouldn't surprise box it wouldn't surprise me at all and from The Limited research I've looked at it looks like dogs May there may be a spectrum of conversion of the other amino acids to taurine much like in humans some of us can convert beta carotenoids from plants into Vitamin a fairly well others of us can barely convert any of the vitamin A in plants into real actual retinol vitamin A and I suspect that's there's a spectrum in in dogs that just like that when it comes to taurine and I would not be shocked if you're exactly right about the many many dogs have a taurine deficiency because they're not fed meat and so everybody watching when it says grain free on the package I promise you they did not replace the grains with meat they replaced the grains with with pea protein which is also very cheap and the protein at least in humans is very poorly poorly absorbed and used and I would suspect the same is true for dogs and cats so just because it says grain free does not mean it's made of meat okay and that's what both cats and dogs are carnivores to at least a large degree cats completely so dogs I think are classified as facultative carnivores which means they they need mostly meat and but they can tolerate some starches and some other stuff and I've actually seen game cam video of wild coyotes grabbing ears of corn off corn plants well if there's a if there's a lean year they'll add they will absolutely eat corn off the cob off the off the plant but that's not their primary food their primary food let's just talk about that what is the primary food for cats and dogs that they should that the majority of their diet should be made up of well you know if you look at like wolves we were talking about them earlier and you look at the analysis they do on Wolf diets you know a lot of excellent research out of Yellowstone um you know it's it's like like 45 protein or 45 to 55 protein 45 to 55 fat depending on if it's a bowl or a cow in the time of year what the animal is it's just like almost zero carbohydrate you know close to zero um and so I guess you know I get in these arguments with my colleagues but I think until proven otherwise we should try to mimic a species appropriate diet and I push back you know I was at a conference here a few years ago and this woman she's uh just double boarded and has a PHD and she teaches nutrition to the students and you know she started off this lecture saying like cats are obligate carnivores and and nature only three percent of their calories from come come from carbs and I was just like oh finally someone gets it but then she turns around and spends the rest of the hour you know defending carbohydrates up to 35 percent of their diet you're like oh my God a tenfold increase in carbohydrate and you know she looks at these studies or they can they can metabolize and that some of the earlier studies the carbohydrates weren't heavily processed enough but if you heavily processed or she says properly processed which means heavily processed the carbs yeah they can digest it you know but like I just don't think they were meant to have that Sugar Bowl us all the time you know and this I'm a lunatic so but if so what what would happen is if everybody out there if they just stopped feeding their cats kibble and either switch to a canned uh cat food that's full of meat or just started making their cats their own food at home like they do every other family member who they purportedly love big companies like Hills Science Diet like Purina Alpo all these guys their profits would take now is it is it true in veterinary school like it is in medical school do a lot of these big pet food corporations do are they very friendly with veterinarians do they bring you samples do they buy you lunch I don't know how it works so walk us through that if any of that exists oh yes yes and yes I mean they that's you know we get all kinds of free stuff from them and you own free meals and yeah I mean I think we're biased right from the start you know um it just kind of like dentists and toothpaste company you know it's like it's yeah it's I think it's really unfortunate oh I totally agree Pam has a question the vet said her dog has pancreatitis caused by high-fat and salty food is this true what should I feed her she's 13 and no teeth now that none of this is medical advice it's also not Veterinary advice this is just two two doctors talking but if Pam or your next door neighbor what might you say out loud to her well you know uh I will tell you I think that is pretty well evidence-based dogs of pancreatitis they do need a low-fat diet and I usually use a prescription diet from one of the big food companies on those I've had the most consistent luck with that and I think the literature would support that gotcha and what about house cat Sophia uh she's her cat's got very dry skin any any uh quick tips on dry skin in cats yeah so I once again I have the same answer for everything but canned food you know um and I think the other thing about this canned food and I could be wrong about this but I think most of them if you look at the labels which Veterinary labeling so I mean it's terrible sorry it is absolutely terrible um but I I really think that if you get the canned food so they're hydrated and then you get the animal-based fats you know not vegetable oils and you tend to have more vegetable oils in the dry Foods than the canned food that's my understanding but the labels are so bad I can't say it with confidence and then I also think you know like when you look at like the the poultry and the pork in this country you know they're all fed corn and soybeans so they tend to be higher than the omega-6s so I tend to prefer you know like a beef based um one because ruminants can convert those other crappy polyunsaturated fatty acids to more appropriate fatty acid profile in the food yes yeah I know I have the same answer for everything right uh Zoe says what are everybody's names everybody type your pet's names into the comments I are Doga that's our Guardian dog for the Sheep uh Lily Toto our rescue dog and then we have two cats Loki and Olive what are your pets names doc I have a cat named Apple and then we have a dog named Ida and another dog named Alton nice nice I love it my daughters when they were growing up they would always give cats and dogs human names like they would name their cat Frank I'm like that name what are you doing Apple that's a brilliant cat name but Frank come on or Bartholomew or so it's like no that is not that's a human name you name your children those names not your dogs and cats but I guess they thought that that was their children uh one thing do you uh just to kind of keep it simple but like uh you know people explain to them cats are obligate carnivores they meant to eat you know animal-based proteins and fats and all that and then they're like you know like I I can't afford these real expensive premium foods and my point is like I just think conventional like Friskies classic Pate you know Fancy Feast you know Shiva I I don't know that you have to have an expensive premium brand most of diabetics would be reverse was on was on the cheap stuff so is it true that the canned cat food kind of by definition is able to have a higher percentage of meat in it because it is canned and sealed exactly oh interesting so that just by switching to dry kibble to canned food for cats not only are they going to get more meat because that that's just in there and it may very well be ground up horse legs and and goats but I promise you and you uh speak up doctor if you disagree your cat won't care what animal it came from okay it could be donkey buttholes they do not care they want meat uh and uh everybody's telling me the names of their pets Sammy and Katie this is hilarious I love it Lynn's got 11 dogs I don't know if she named them all or not that'd be that'd be a hard sell wouldn't it so I'm glad you brought that up because I have had an argument with another veterinarian who's real famous in this field and we agree on almost everything but she disagrees with my advice that even at the Chan the cheap canned cat food is good because it has byproducts I'm like oh my gosh I mean that's still animal-based tissue like I don't I'm not afraid of byproduct I'm a fan of pry product yeah like so byproducts would be organs would be ground up bone meal would be sinew tendon fascia and guess what all the cats in the wild who are direct relatives of your cat they eat that stuff what was the the word they used byproducts yeah that you know another word for byproducts meat right right yeah that's what they want you know what so I don't know this thing about bad product is this really drives me crazy I mean there's some marketing out there you know food does not contain byproducts I'm like oh he just missed the healthiest part of the carcass because the heart the liver the kidney the spleen the thymus the lungs are true all that crap that we don't eat is so nutrient dense you know like and now the your advice would apply to a house cat or to if we've got a Mouser out in the barn they're going to be eating mice but yeah they still they don't need to be eating dry kibble it's not it's not it's really basically junk food for cats is that it is that's a you know kibble for cats is just like uh yeah junk food that you're still on my line you know it's like I tell my clients all the time and if you if you take this seriously and you just do nothing but eliminate kibble from home from your cats and feed a cheap canned cat food you're really going to hurt my bottom line because all these things that are keeping me busy every day they just tend to not show up or they show up at a much lower incidence and yo I totally agree so and and now for my uh for My guardian sheepdog he gets he gets ground beef I do buy him canned dog food because he he weighs 140 pounds and he would literally break my bank if I had to feed him you know uh rib eye every day but he gets a three cans of of canned dog food so that's hind meat and it also has the liquid that he needs uh but also I'll throw some sardines in there I'll throw some ground beef in there and you're saying that dogs on average need a lower fat diet than humans is that right well I think you know if you just look at their ancestral diet you know it depends on what they're eating like if they're living off rabbits it's going to be really low fat meat you know if they're living off elk in the prime is going to be a lot higher fat but I just think the dogs I think dogs eat the high protein moderate fat very low carb same as cats gotcha so for cats or dogs it needs to be very low in carbohydrates are there any I'm not a veterinarian are there any essential nutrients in plants or in carbohydrates that dogs or cats must have or need to have yeah I I don't think so I mean I understand there could be some maybe some medicinal benefits of some herbal stuff you know but like it's just like the carbohydrate requirement for dogs and cats is the same with people you know it's zero as long as you have adequate protein and fat um yeah and I get pushed back from some of my clients and and there's this one they're not clients but colleagues uh but there's this famous veterinarian and she's assured me that they're going to get some kind of phytonutrient deficiency and I like how would I recognize that if I saw it she has only been able to explain that to me but yeah so which phytonutrients are essential for dogs and cats what's the list I say zero you know that's me you know I mean I love it so very often as you probably know doctor I'm I'm having uh heated or uh discussions with vegans on Twitter and uh there are many vegans who feed their dog or cat a plant-based diet or even a vegan diet because they're they think they believe that that's the healthiest for their their pet but also it's it's good for the Planet Too is there any research that shows that a plant-based or a vegan diet is is optimal for cats and dogs or or even beneficial for cats and dogs or is that a red flag that maybe they love their ideology more than they love their cat or dog that's what I think I'm not aware of any research looking at outcomes okay you can take a plant-based diet and you can you know throw all kinds of supplements and nutrients in there to make it meet that AFCO that aafco compliance it'll have the you know the vitamins in the middle I'm sure you can make it you can make it uh plant-based like but I'm just not aware of any outcome data that's showing that it's better for health and my hypothesis would be that it's going to be less beneficial than a true species appropriate diet yeah I think that I totally agree and it you know I've got a confession to make Doc and this is embarrassing but I want to can because everybody we all make mistakes so I used to have a house dog years ago in a previous life who we tried to potty train but he wound up chewing up all the you know the Chuck pads that we put on the floor so that actually made a bigger mess so we finally just gave up let him poop on the tile we cleaned it up and we went to the vet and the vet said oh there's a dog food that will make your dog poop these little dry turds that you can just it's super easy to pick up and the vet actually prescribed us a dog food to make him poop little dry turds now it obviously looking back now I'm ashamed of that because I obviously didn't love that dog very much or I wouldn't have cared the consistency of his poop I would have cared about the nutrition in his diet but it is there is that healthy to feed dogs or cats a diet that would make them have very easy to pick up poop yeah I I don't know to be clear uh I'm not I'm not exactly there's all kinds of different diets and you can add fibers and different fibers I I will tell you there's um you know Ultra highly processed um diet by Hill Science Diet uh I've had excellent luck with these dogs with Chronicles stools and uh I'm shocked it works I just kind of cringe and I read the ingredient label but honestly goodness you have these dogs that are having breakthrough diarrhea and Accents in the house and people that work in school I've been shockingly surprised at how effective it is so yeah and this is a very common question as well doc uh blue Dove says why do dogs eat grass and leaves on their own if meat is all they need yeah that's an interesting question I've actually spent a heck of a lot of time looking into this and the biggest the best answer I can get after all this time of waste looking at this answer is they like it you know you look at wolves in nature they chew on some graphs yep you know and when they look at that research out of Yellowstone occasionally they find some plant plant matter like that in there I just think they like it and you know the the kind of the old wives tale that my grandmother granny Berry taught me was that dogs do that when they're feeling sick they eat the grass to kind of do something to their gut uh but I would say blue Dove yes occasionally your dog will go out and eat a few Blades of grass but the majority of the time if you gave your dog a bowl of grass or a bowl of meat I don't think I have to tell you which one your dog would Smash and which one they would ignore uh so perhaps dogs do like and I'll tell you Lily our standard poodle I've got some hybrid Willows actually growing in the house I'm going to plant in the pasture for fodder and uh she's been nibbling the the tips of the leaves off the hybrid Willow which is a very high protein very tasty forage for for sheeps and goats and cows and and I I had to put them up out of a reach because she's been nibbling the leaves now I said nibbling right what she does when we put her meat down is she smashes the meat and eggs but she nibbles on the the hybrid Willow occasionally right right yeah you know it's interesting too like with dogs and eating grass like I think it's just normal for them to be walking along the edge of the yard and you see some long Blades of grass and they chew them off and everybody yeah they're just kind of munch on a little bit but it is interesting like if you see a dog just like really going to town and Mound down a bunch of grass it is often associated with uh gastric distress or GI distress and it's always a question of the chicken or the egg where they having some some GI distress and that's why they tried to eat a bunch of grass to you know push the parasites through or whatever um or was it they over ate the grass and now they have the GI distress it's always hard to know and the chicken or the egg so it's possible that Granny berries was right all those years ago that the dog is trying to use the grass or the plants as a medicinal herb to treat a gastrointestinal condition that's possible a lot of questions in the comments about if I'm gonna feed my dog meat should it be raw meat or should it be cooked meat or some combination for dogs and cats both what do you say doctor yeah you know this is a really contentious thing and just so you know our the veterinary field is just militant against raw diets I mean violently opposed and so I always have to be careful what I say because my cat lives in the barn and she eats a lot of raw mice I'm sure I don't know how they feel the Academia I bet they're completely opposed to that right and I do feed my dogs a riot diet um but uh our field is fiercely opposed to it um so I but I haven't said that I mean well this is some of the really strong raw food proponents they're always talking about it has to be raw because if you heat it you can destroy these enzymes and I've never found that very convincing and I could be wrong um but for me when you know I got we have plus my daughters I've got three dogs we're feeding I just don't have time to cook all the stuff that I'm making gotcha now what about eggs is it okay to give our dogs uh raw eggs or should the eggs be cooked should they be over easy or sunny side up or is it okay to give them raw and I'll I'll just tell you before your answers I might be embarrassed again at least once or twice a week I'll give our dogs either raw chicken eggs that came right out of the hen Nest or raw quail eggs that came right out of the quail Hutch yeah I I feed uh raw eggs my dogs all the time especially when I used to have chickens um I don't cook them but uh but you know people worry about you know the risk of salmonella but last I heard like the chance of getting salmon off from a raw egg is like one in ten thousand eggs or something ridiculous um I think dogs and cats could probably handle that but uh I I don't know like uh if it's cooking I know that changes some of the B vitamin that can people right if it's raw so I just don't know is the honest answer I don't think it's been closely looked at but I was telling my clients you know meat eggs and fish those are the most nutrient dense foods you're gonna get the only thing that's going to beat it is the organ Meats yeah um right I'm a huge fan of incorporating those into the diet yeah and anytime somebody asked me about the raw meat thing uh you may have to if your dog's been on kibble their whole life or your cat you may have to give them cooked meat for a while and then we've had hundreds of our followers who say yeah I did that now they just eat raw meat so let's look at the evolution again just for everybody to be very clear all of all of these animals The Lion The Tiger the cheetah the panther they all eat raw meat every day of their lives okay and your cats are a direct descendant from the last common ancestor of those those animals uh the gray wolf eats almost 100 percent raw meat and raw eggs and every single dog on the planet is descended from a gray wolf now they've been in captivity with us for about 8 000 years 9 000 years doc uh being a veterinarian is eight or nine thousand years is that enough time for evolution to make dogs and cats crippled to the point where they have to have kibble or they have to have cooked food yeah I mean I'm just I know I'm so biased and I irritate some of my colleagues in the veterinary Community but I just think a species appropriate diet is rarely going to be kibble oh and now Purina I've gotten a call from them while we're live they said they do not appreciate this video whatsoever uh that we're not kidding about that but yeah so yeah hopefully because I've actually they owe me money because I put you know like Friskies and fancy that's all Purina products I just had excellent luck with it but you know I don't like their Kibbles yeah yeah I totally understand so let's see if we can get a I'm gonna take some questions from the audience if that's okay doc uh if any of you guys have a question about your cat or dog that you need to get answers you can include it in a super chat it bumps it up uh to the top of the list Mario says his dog gloves are all meat let's see what I can find here uh beef liver for the wind there you go come on guys now's your chance uh okay do you have an opinion on the Dr Marty freeze dried high protein dog food I don't I don't know enough about it to have an opinion okay do dogs uh mental health might will it possibly improve if you take the carbs out like it does in some humans see I think so and you know the dogs are the same called cognitive dysfunction syndrome is basically doggy Alzheimer's and you know I could be fooling myself here just going off someone's clinical observations is not as good as looking at rcts but they don't exist but uh but yeah I I really think so and I just think that hyperinsulinemia and those glucose spikes and advanced glycation iron products and I have I'm for I have a before I retired I had quite a few raw feeders coming to me so I was not that I recommend it but I was one of the few vets and maybe the only vet in our area that just didn't beat them up and you know give them a hard time over feeding raw food yep see me these dogs for many many years and I just cannot believe how well they age and I might be fooling myself but uh I I think there's something to it yeah and I've actually gotten from a couple of Guardian dog breeders who have because you know Guardian dogs are on average very enlarged dogs which is going to limit their their age limit you know they're not going to live as long as the smaller dog but every single trans breeder says if you'll feed them a raw food diet they will live longer than the you know the suggested with like the average and they said they've seen that many many times uh making smile says her five-year-old chihuahua has cushions and as she's been giving the cat boiled chicken and veggies on 30 milligrams of venereal any recommendations on that situation no it sounds like that veterans that's the best drug I've ever used in my career for cushions okay so so boiled chicken and veggies that's a good that's good for the cat now is it a cat or a dog it's a Chihuahua I'm sorry okay okay yeah um you know uh I I think for a brief time that die would be okay but in the long run I always recommend working with nutritionist you got to get that calcium phosphorus and some of those other micronutrients right I mean that would be fine for a short feeding but in the long run you really need to work with somebody it needs to be balanced gotcha okay Now's the Time to ask questions if you have them folks I'm trying to find uh Rita says I add salt and potassium to my dog food is that okay see once again it's kind of hard to know if you don't know what the Baseline diet is right but do you think I've seen some evidence that if you're doing like home feeding it's actually important to add the salt you know and and everyone's using like you see you got some Redmonds behind you that's what I have at my house yeah I'd put that on my dog's food but about at least once or twice a week I'll put some Redmond's real salt on the cats and the dog's food uh I'm sure from other sources but I just want to make sure they're getting plenty yeah and then I also like to use regular table salt so they're getting iodine too you know um iodine table salt like regular salt like we buy at the grocery store yep I think I think it seems prudent I don't know if there's anything yeah gotcha kbox says fasting a dog for a day or so is that a bad idea so what about fasting for dogs and cats do you need recommendations or cautions you know that's interesting that's why I like being on Twitter I got contacted from this researcher in South Africa because people ask me all the time like oh we don't really have any studies and she sent me a study from some European um Veterinary deal which I never would have found but it was a really limited study it was small but it kind of showed a lot of the same benefits of showing people so I have my dogs uh I do a lot of fasting myself and I have my dogs maybe one supporter who do like a 48-hour fast or they don't eat for 48 hours I don't know it was the honest answer but there are some limited support but it needs to be researched better yeah I totally agree it seems to me like when you look at wolves you know like they make a kill you know an algar a deer and they just Gorge themselves for a day or two and then they just lay around for a day or two and then they're back on the hunt so like it just seems to me like that Feast famine kind of cycle like we don't mimic that at all when we're doing you know two meals a day 24 365. intuitively it makes sense but I just don't think we have much research on it yep I totally get it uh so if somebody had a very obese dog or obese cat uh that they're feeding two or three three times a day would you recommend let's let them eat until they're full at one meal a day or maybe do alternate day fasting or would you recommend any kind of fasting for a severely overweight dog or cattle you know so for the uh dogs um I have been playing around just going to omad you know one meal a day and I really felt like it was kind of moving the needle I still think that's probably less important than the quality of the diet and with cats um you know there's there's different things some people say like you know cats nature they eat like six times a day because they catch a mouse or two and then they happen but then I came across another article I showed actually uh and I wish I would say the article I got it off Twitter of course but it was um it was feeding cats once a day and for weight loss in it was a the diets were similar but they're they showed better results having one meal a day which is interesting because in veterinary medicine there's always a lot of worry about cats getting fatty liver disease a little bit different than like what the fatty liver disease you're working with people but they get it when they get anorexic and so it's always this concerned if you don't feed cats constantly they're going to get fatty liver but they didn't sweat in that study once again it was a small study but I I think in cats I usually like to feed them uh two to three times a day if we're having trouble with last I go down to twice a day if the dogs I've had personal luck with once a day but I'm just telling you my clinical experience I can't back all this up with randomized control trials gotcha uh okay now here's a great question I I have a this is one of my pet peeves should adult dogs and cats be given milk yeah see this is kind of controversial too they they they don't have that enzyme right to break down the lactose and so I haven't said that you know in my younger days I used to do some large animal work and I'd see these if you go to a Dairy to go treat some cows in these cow cats are drinking milk all the time and uh I I don't honestly know I I kind of suspect that it would might be better if it's fermented you know reduce the lactose but I don't I just don't know gotcha uh so I mean the I think that by definition every adult cat and every adult dog is lactose intolerant yeah they don't have lactase persistence like humans do right so they they have lactose when they're in that new natal period but it drops off pretty quickly in life gotcha oh here's a rabbit question what are the safest treats for rabbits I don't know anything about rabbits I would just say follow a species appropriate diet mimic something they would get in nature what would rabbits eat in the wild uh Celiac Revelation uh also keep in mind rabbits are herbivores obligate herbivores I think now rabbits actually faculty because I've seen video of rabbits eating meat they will do it but they want they want predominantly plants right and so some plant-based treat for your diet uh some plant-based thing that you bought for yourself that tastes like crap you can maybe give it to your rabbit I think rabbits and horses these hang up for a minute I just consider that Bible got you know uh herbivores but yeah yeah Brian says uh they feed their English Bulldog Instinct raw is that okay probably you know I I've had excellent results with my clients that are feeding up um but that's just my clinical experience I wish I could point to good trials um Nisha says that's very expensive dog food and she has some experience with it and uh I I would say kind of a blanket statement for everybody watching buy food that's that has at least a lot of meat if not predominantly meat for both your dog and your cat would you agree with that doctor yeah I would you know I said I signed a Twitter debate with this guy a veterinarian over in the UK really respectful I I admire his work this huge fan is but then in the thread he was going to bat to say carbohydrates are fine and and I just propose like a thought experiment you know like okay let's just say there's this crazy change in the markets and now all of a sudden refined carbohydrates are super you know plant-based food management are really expensive but like meat whole meat carcass is is dirt cheap you know with the with these commercial producers change their formulas I think you and I both know they would yeah oh absolutely and then the question is as I said do you think there would be any change in health outcomes and he refused to uh consider that you guys I'm not a fan of thought experiments especially that one Einstein was a big fan of thought experiments but I think it's an interesting thought experience and my my hypothesis is that you would have better health um and I know because it's interesting like these pet food companies they always assure you that these foods have been created to maximize the nutritional benefits and I'm like if that's the case then if the mute goes cheap and the grains go high you better not reformulate your stuff because you've already assured us but I don't I think they would reformulate it and I think it would be more helpful so let me ask you this doc are there any federal guidelines or regulations about the labeling of dog food like there are there is for human food so if if Purina wanted to put on the front of their bag guaranteed to help your dog live longer is that must that be based on randomized control research in dogs or can they just put that uh on their front of their label or at least imply it with really nothing to back it up there's a lot of regulations on that and I don't I don't know them but you know like you can put like all natural or holistic there's stuff there's terminology you can and can't use and I don't I don't know all the regs because I know in the old days there was a dog food that was actually they advertised to help your dog live help your loved one live longer I think Sally worded it but I don't see that any mud anymore now uh Tiffany has a question in my human patients I say you need to eat until you're comfortably stuffed if you're eating a proper human diet does that apply to dogs and cats as well do they get to eat to satiety if you're giving them a meat-based diet or should you portion control them or calorie restrict yeah so that's I think the beauty with cats is because I think you know when they when they're eating that canned food you know it's like I think the weight of the food has a certain satiety effect to it um uh I think in cats that's why I have better luck with canned and I think I have better luck with dogs too honestly but it's just I understand those of us with big dogs to feed how many cases per week it would take it's just not feasible but I don't think dogs always get that satiety signal some breeds do some breeds don't but notoriously like labradors they just they don't have a full button switch you know it's just they just keep eating and eating um because that people tell me all the time it's like well they should naturally quit eating when they're full like I wish that could be the case and then here's the other thing most of our pets we've neutered them right they're spayed or castrated and um we know that that really affects their um their appetite and it affects their metabolisms because they're kind of like doubly screwed you know right I I think uh yeah I would like to say I usually gonna take some um I wish I could say we could just time restrict their feeding but I think a lot of times you're gonna have to not just time restrict I think you're gonna have to calorie calorically restrict but in that case they in like uh I think you gotta find a way to give the greatest satiety per calorie of food and that means protein that means meat right so I just think it's gonna put it in your favor I love that that I think that's a great way of thinking about this if the food is it stretches the stomach if it's nutrient dense if it's very satiating then that that's probably going to prevent them from overeating and I would I would guess that uh maybe no research done in cats and dogs about kibble but I've been a cat or a dog just out of boredom will just sit and crunch on kibble uh John says that his car loves ice cream I'm pretty sure that he's meant to say his cat loves ice cream that's a weird pet if your car and indeed eats ice cream what about treats I remember used to it at Petco or PetSmart they had a doggie treat dessert bar like a like a salad bar where you could go and get your doggy little treats and put in a bag and buy it by the pound do do cats and dogs do they need treats do they need desserts do they need to lick John's ice cream yeah I don't think they need any of that I'm a big fan of uh not giving treats you know I think that you should have time between meals where there's some Exempted empty their insulin levels are low you know if you have a really healthy dog and cat I'm sure they could tolerate it I tell people if you're going to feed treats I just like it to be meat-based treats you know so but dogs love meat-based treats right yes you use that I'm not a fan of those crispy treats I'm not a fan of those like Milk Bones and stuff like that I'm just I'd rather just have it be a meat based treat here's a great question if do dogs and cats it the dental health right because dogs and cats can absolutely get cavities and dental abscesses that absolutely can happen is it related to diet would you expect more cavities and dental abscesses with a with a Kimble diet or with a canned diet or with a meat diet yeah so that's another one of those myths is that uh Kim you know kibble is good for cleaning the teeth it has a scrubbing action that cleans it I just think that's a bunch of crap and I don't think there's really any good studies to support that um but yeah it's Peridot periodontal disease is huge that's the number one disease in veterinary medicine affected the 70 of the pets over three years of age I mean it is huge but it's interesting I mean when a first started getting into this raw food feeding you know I was against it violently for years like the way I was taught uh but I kept looking at these people's dog's teeth I'm like oh my God I just you know this dog's like eight years old it has a teeth of like a one-year-old it's just unbelievable that is one of the biggest things that people tell me when they're feeding raw now having said that if you're doing like raw Patties on all the meat's already ground I don't think you get the same benefit of those people that are doing like meaty bombs you know like um like chicken wings and um turkey necks and stuff like that those are the dogs I see with the most profound good teeth um I could be wrong but yeah no I think you're totally right uh actually recently Nisha took one of the dogs to the vet in the vet tech not the vet but the vet tech said don't feed your dog any anything that you wouldn't hit yourself in the knee with meaning dogs don't need to eat bones now literally said that out loud in a veterinary office which I I just I had to you know count to 20. not to go back up there and be like what the hell but there is this uh pervasive uh idea that I've heard since I was a child is that you should only feed dogs and cats raw bones never cooked bones because the cooked bones might shatter and perforate their GI tract is that true or is that just another myth well see that's what the conventional wisdom is and the conventional wisdom is just don't give any bones there's too high a chance they're gonna crack a two third but I do think if you're going to do bones although it's really controversial I do bones but I think it's best with the rock I really do okay but you know that's like any veterinarians listening is just cringing hitting their head against the table right now you know Travis said you could feed bone no I'm not recommending it but if you're going to feed bones I think it's better to be wrong you know yeah they do because like I've you look at these like I'll just tell you an experience like I had earlier in my career you know it's the end of the day you're trying to get home I guess phone call Rings like oh my God my dog just ate like a whole case of turkey thighs we set it out you know to defrost so we can cook it I'm like oh my God now I'm gonna have to do an emergency gastroctomy and all this stuff and come on in you know and it's like this dog is jumping up and down eating treats out of my hand you know you X-ray the dog and uh it's like everything's passing through now I haven't said that if that dog would have got into cooked turkey thighs it'd be a whole different deal okay and that's just an example but like yeah but I do think the kind of bone you have to look at these forums online there's a lot more knowledge and I can share here gotcha now Mario's we've already covered this but let's recover it because I think it's such a very important issue for cats for sure but probably for dogs as well the role of taurine uh in in dogs and cats health yeah I see I think it's critical uh obviously in cats we've known this forever but I think this with this cardio uh cardiomyopathy in dogs I think it's coming to light and I I could be wrong maybe there's something else going on but I think it's going to come out as a touring deficiency and I just don't think you're going to get a touring deficiency if you're eating meat right because you're getting the taurine in there you're also getting the methionine that can convert and assisting the you're getting everything you need and I think some breeds might have higher taurine levels than others still like you were saying like that your idea on beta-carotene and vitamin A you know some and some people can convert it pretty well some can't hardly at all I think they're going to find similar differences um in in pets but if you're feeding any commercial canned cat food I don't think you have to worry about a taurine deficiency all of them are supplemented but if you're doing um diets for dogs that are grain free not the there's any magical taurine grains any significant amount but uh you got to watch and see what kind of plant-based proteins they're adding and but in my research doc there is no Tory in any grain or any legume whatsoever you have to eat meat to get taurine or the pet food manufacturer has to add taurine to the kibble to get it in there there's no touring whatsoever correct me if I'm wrong in any grain or any Bean or pee or legume there is no touring whatsoever yeah I guess I don't know the absolute amounts but I just know that like in general plant-based Foods aren't going to have gotcha making Smiles has been told that feeding fish to her cat can cause UTIs is this true I've never heard that it doesn't make any common sense but uh so you haven't seen any pattern of uh fish eating cats getting UTIs no I haven't I have a lot of cats on canned fish you know fish canned foods and I just I've never heard that or seen that that I'm aware of gotcha any concerns about feeding your cat uh tuna out of the can or salmon out of the can Cod Liver out of the can I think it's that all excellent I recommend all of them excellent okay beautiful and then I can't always say with the speaker that's not the exclusive diet because it's not going to be balanced you know but like if you're feeding a good um well-formulated food I think you can safely have like 20 of their calories coming from just stuff like you mentioned gotcha um so Janet had a cat that lived 18 years on 10 sardines you know that's interesting I had a case one time years ago and it was that was a weird case but the the people adopted this cat after her death in the family and that cat had been on nothing but um put a canned tuna you know for all these certain some sardines and I end up calling a nutrition it's like oh my God what do I look for like how bad is this cat going to be screwed up and she assured me it's probably not gonna be that bad and the cat checked out perfectly healthy so nice uh Susan says uh our brassica's okay to feed yeah she doesn't specify but let's just talk about dogs and cats who's eating a mostly meat diet and she had some olive oil for satiety and some Omega-3s yeah brassicas are they okay see I don't know you know I know that they can have like some trips and Inhibitors and other anti-nutrients I don't feel comfortable with them having said that that famous vet online who's um you know she thinks that they need all these phytonutrient and she would disagree with me so I I just kind of avoid Nebraska but I just don't know it's just not a species appropriate diet in my mind um as far as like the olive oil I I don't know again uh I would say if you're having problems with tidy you need to up the protein and probably moderate the fat and if you are going to do a fat Source I think probably the best fat Source would be like something like beef towel Lisa's vet son's vet actually told them that Seafood will cause UTIs in cats okay I could be wrong I mean that makes zero sense but maybe but that definitely reach out to me later doc if you find some research showing that seafood or fish causes cats to have UTIs I'll be blown away but I'll definitely publish that if you find any evidence to supporting that but I I don't um I don't think that's going to happen uh let's see uh what about hard-boiled eggs what about meat jerkies for treats excellent fantastic absolutely excellent okay let's see oh somebody feeds their dog uh raw tripe uh which is stomach intestine that's okay you're okay with that yeah you know like I say all the conventional vets are going to disagree with me but and I've just what I've experienced in my clients feeding that I'm remarkably impressed by the health of their dogs oh here's a good question I don't know I don't think this is true but does cooking destroy the Tory in meat see I don't know how labile the taurine is but in general I think as long as it's not heavily cooked it should be fine is what my guess would be but I'm not 100 sure that would be my guess as well because obviously cooked steak still is a great source of taurine uh I would I would guess uh taurine's an amino acid so I think it probably is gonna as long as you don't cook it at 700 degrees it's probably going to be fine doc uh Michelle wants your opinion it's raw better well that's what I am feeding my dogs so I guess you can read into that but you will but yeah I think that answers it right there um let's see what else anything uh doc that we've covered that we haven't covered that you think we should cover no I think that about does it oh man it's such a pleasure to chat with you thank you so much for doing this you've answered so many questions today uh wrap it wrap this up is there any uh uh hopefully you're working on a book about this because that would be awesome also you talked about a book in another video uh dogs dog food and Dogma yes yeah dogs dog food and Dogma I mean I think uh you know when I went on my low carb journey and got so much health benefits I could not wrap my mind around what was going on and I didn't really understand it until Gary Tobbs um good calories bad calories is really what I think enlightened me but uh I think that's the closest thing to the Gary Tobbs we have in our field is Daniel shuloff book dogs dog dogs dog food and dogma and I've got a link to that down in the show notes if anybody wants to check that out I've actually read it I've got a copy it's yeah it's it's exactly in line with everything I talk about about human nutrition he's talking about in dog nutrition and I think most of what he says applies to cats as well uh so what about taurine doc one last question is taurine in tuna does tuna have taurine I don't know off the top of my head but you know a reason I don't think I am seeing these cardiomyopathies with grain-free diets is because all the my patients are on that are on a high meat diet but I also wonder about other things like maybe tarting is fine being slightly lower as long as you have plenty of carnosine and carnitine and all these other amino acids but if you're if you're having a diet that's really deficient in carnosine and carnitine maybe I'll send it just takes a little bit of blip and you know other amino acids to knock things out of balance I just don't know but I just as hard as we've been looking to find a cardiomyopathy in these dogs we've been unable to find one gotcha and then final question Wendy's got a dog who had pancreatitis I think you've already answered this for someone else uh a couple of times a couple episodes of pancreatitis and the Vets insisting on an extremely low-fat diet is this necessary can he eat raw meat like the others yeah I I in my clinical experience I've had the best luck with these prescription low-fat diets with that but I have often wondered if you did like a really low-fat raw or or canned diet you know canned meat diet if you could have similar benefits I just don't know but right now that it's it's pretty evidence-based and you have pancreatitis you need to be on a low-fat diet got you all right dog thank you so much for taking the time and answering all these questions it's been a pleasure everybody you're welcome to share this video If you have a a pet lover you're acquainted with send them a link to this and uh doc I'm excited uh for your new book that'll be coming out in just a few months about the proper pet diet because if you're not working on that you need to get busy because people are hungry for this kind of information because all the big plant uh pet food manufacturers have misled everybody in including veterinarians so thank you for your time doctor and I'll see you next time all right take care again bye-bye