{"id":6708,"date":"2019-11-22T12:00:57","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qa.vet.purdue.edu\/news\/?p=6708"},"modified":"2019-11-22T12:00:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T17:00:57","slug":"small-animal-clinician-answers-questions-about-alternative-diets-for-pets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/small-animal-clinician-answers-questions-about-alternative-diets-for-pets.php","title":{"rendered":"Small Animal Clinician Answers Questions about Alternative Diets for Pets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A recent story that aired on WTHR TV in Indianapolis featured comments from Dr. Nolie Parnell, clinical associate professor of small animal internal medicine and chief of staff of the Small Animal Hospital, who shared advice about alternative diets for pets.  The story by reporter Dustin Grove asked whether alternative diets can work for pets like they do for people.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story referenced a report published by The Ohio State University that said diet trends can put animals\u2019 health at risk.  \u201cNutrition is truly not all in a can or all in a bag and not all cans and bags are created equally,\u201d said Dr. Parnell.  \u201cGrain-free right now is probably the hottest dietary trend in the pet food industry,\u201d Dr. Parnell explained, but she added that pets rarely actually have allergies to grains.  A grain-free diet also can potentially leave pets lacking enough fiber and carbs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Parnell advised that the important thing to look for are\nthe words, \u201ccomplete and balanced.\u201d  She said,\n\u201cThose two words are probably the most important, regardless of whether it\u2019s\ngrain-free or with grain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There also are issues with vegan or vegetarian diets, as plant-based\nsources don\u2019t always have all the amino acids that dogs and cats need.  “There are complete and balanced diets\nthat are available that you can use, but it is a lot harder to meet those\nneeds,\u201d said Dr. Parnell.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost owners look at the front of the can or the front of\nthe bag of food.  But actually, all the\ninformation that\u2019s important is on the back,\u201d Dr. Parnell said.  She encouraged pet owners to look for the\nstatement by the \u201cAAFCO,\u201d which stands for the Association of American Feed\nControl Officials.  \u201cIf the label states\nthat it\u2019s complete and balanced for a certain life stage, then the client\nshould have confidence that the food can be fed to their pet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for homemade pet food, Dr. Parnell said, \u201cThe ingredients are important because it has to be complete and balanced. If you go off the recipe, you’re no longer confident it\u2019s complete and balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here to view\nthe WTHR story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent story that aired on WTHR TV in Indianapolis featured comments from Dr. Nolie Parnell, clinical associate professor of small animal internal medicine and chief of staff of the Small Animal Hospital, who shared advice about alternative diets for pets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":6710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,31,29,27],"tags":[1410,1409,26,56,1407,1408,983,67,62,51],"class_list":["post-6708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-staff","category-hospitals","category-our-people","category-services","tag-alternative-diets","tag-diet-trends","tag-featured-story","tag-homepage","tag-nolie-parnell","tag-pet-food","tag-pets-for-people-club","tag-small-animal-hospital","tag-vcs","tag-vth"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6708"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6732,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6708\/revisions\/6732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}