archive.today • How Owners Are Putting Their Pets on Human Diets - The New York Times
Karl Malone starts his day with a breakfast that includes ashwagandha root and psyllium husk powder. His dinner is always seasoned with ground turmeric, and then he takes his joint supplements. He goes on two brisk walks daily and avoids restaurant food, as his doctor recommended he lose weight.
Karl Malone is a dog — an 11-year-old sandy-brown Australian shepherd mix.
[...]
The market for what the pet-food industry calls "nutritious pet food" — higher-priced products that claim to contain premium or nutritionally enhanced ingredients — is expected to reach $17.9 billion by 2026, according to a report last year by Pet Insight, an independent analytics company. Pet wellness in general has become an even bigger industry, and has spawned a subset of social media influencers and Facebook groups devoted to refining the diets of all kinds of domesticated animals.
This sentence annoyed me: "Vegetarian diets, he said, are not suitable for most cats because they need animal protein, but can be acceptable for dogs." For NYT pet articles are the words obligate carnivore now taboo?
Well said. While I am vegan, my cat is not. However I have known vegan cats that were extremely healthy (long term too). But it does require paying careful attention to how much of the essential nutrients they are getting as well as making sure they're not getting garbage ingredients that are just there as filler or that just sound good.
And as others have said, a lot if not most regular old meat product animal food can actually be pretty unhealthy.
Edit: See CheGueBeara's comment that went into detail on all of that and said it far far better than I could.
deleted by creator
True.