Feeding your pet is more than filling their bowl and satisfying their appetite. Proper nutrition is essential for fueling the body, maintaining a healthy weight, and supporting overall health. In short, the food in your pet’s dish can literally add or subtract years from their life.

Unfortunately, trend-based diets, clever marketing campaigns, and general misinformation have confused owners about the food that their pets truly need. The Aloha Veterinary Hospital team has assembled the following nutrition information to help you answer the complex and often contentious question of what to feed your dog or cat—and why the right choice can make all the difference.

Nutrition’s role in pet health

High-quality nutrition is the foundation for your pet’s short- and long-term health. Food is critical for your pet’s day to day function, as well as to influence their development, age-related changes, and immunity. Nutrition’s many benefits include:

  • Strengthening the immune system
  • Promoting growth and development 
  • Providing building blocks for cell formation 
  • Supporting healthy digestion
  • Nourishing the skin and coat 
  • Delivering energy for countless internal processes, brain and nervous system function, and physical activity

To meet these critical needs, your pet’s food must be complete and balanced—meaning that the diet includes a specific amount of proteins, fats, carbohydrates, water, vitamins, and minerals, and provides your pet with the correct amount of useable energy for their life stage (e.g., puppy, kitten, adult, or senior). To be labeled and advertised as complete and balanced, pet foods must meet nutrient profiles established by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) or pass an AAFCO-regulated feeding trial. 

Veterinarian-recommended pet foods

Your pet’s Aloha Veterinary Hospital veterinarian is a great resource for personalized diet recommendations. Hundreds of pet food brands are available, but our veterinarians prefer and generally recommend Hill’s Science Diet and Royal Canin, because of their proven and ongoing commitment to pet nutrition—not based on loyalty or endorsement. Both brands include:

  • Research-backed formulas — These companies maintain a dedicated research team that is continually innovating, investigating, and testing pet food ingredients. Each formula is based on proven knowledge of pet health, nutrition, and digestion—not fads or trends.
  • Leading-edge nutrition for every life stage and condition — In addition to healthy pet formulas, these companies have created therapeutic diets (i.e., prescription diets) for serious health conditions, such as urinary tract disease, kidney failure, obesity, arthritis, and diabetes.
  • Carefully sourced ingredients and state-of-the-art facilities — Stringent quality control measures and ongoing safety testing ensures a safe and consistent product that fulfills its label claims.
  • Proven efficacy — Hill’s and Royal Canin foods undergo extensive testing and analysis that small-batch and grocery-brand foods cannot perform. Each facet of your pet’s food—including palatability, digestion, metabolism, and output (i.e., stool production), and your pet’s overall health (e.g., body weight, growth and development, energy, hydration, skin and coat, or disease or condition changes)—is assessed through rigorous independent and AAFCO-regulated feeding trials.

While many modern consumers are skeptical about large companies, these brands are built on science—not popular ingredients or opinions. They therefore deliver consistently trustworthy products that continue to revolutionize pet health.

Diet-associated health risks for pets

On the flip side, many small-batch and boutique pet food brands are designed to satisfy human tastes and interests, rather than pets’ nutritional needs. These pet food trends, which include raw foods, home cooked meals, grain-free diets, and exotic ingredient recipes, have exploded in popularity. But, their design and supposed health benefits are not backed by science, and they’ve led to serious—sometimes tragic—consequences for pets.

Known health risks associated with inappropriate pet diets include:

  • Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) — Diet-associated heart disease is linked to grain-free diets. Although the cause is still unknown, recent updates suggest that grain-replacing ingredients, such as legumes or potatoes, and a taurine (i.e., an amino acid) deficiency may be to blame. Because true grain or gluten sensitivity in pets is rare, grain-free pet food has no medical backing.
  • Pancreatitis — Rich diets that are high-fat or contain unusual ingredients can cause life-threatening pancreatic inflammation in dogs. 
  • Gastroenteritis (i.e., colitis) — Exotic and non-traditional foods can be hard on your pet’s digestion, resulting in persistent vomiting and diarrhea.
  • Acute hemorrhagic diarrhea syndrome (AHDS) — Also known as hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE), this sudden-onset condition causes bloody diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and rapid dehydration.
  • Nutrient deficiencies — Home-prepared diets and raw feeding may result in nutritional imbalances that lead to serious harm. 
  • Impaired growth and development — Foods formulated for “all life stages” may not provide adequate nutrition for growing puppies and kittens, resulting in poor development or altered bone growth—an especially dangerous condition in large-breed puppies. We recommend feeding a food formulated for your pet’s specific life stage.

Nutritional counseling—discovering your pet’s ideal diet

Navigating the modern pet food industry can be overwhelming or misleading. And, sadly, countless pets have experienced illness and death after well-intentioned pet owners fed them an inappropriate or imbalanced diet. Aloha Veterinary Hospital provides nutritional counseling during each routine wellness visit, and by request, so you can ensure your pet receives an individualized diet. 

Our veterinarians will review your pet’s current diet, including ingredients, calorie content, and how much and how often you feed them. This information, along with your pet’s current age, health, and body condition, will help determine if their diet needs changing. We will recommend a specific brand or formulation, and the amount to feed your pet to ensure they maintain a healthy weight.

With proper nutrition, your pet’s food bowl could be their fountain of youth. Contact your Aloha Veterinary Hospital veterinarian about your pet’s diet and how you can fuel your pet for a long and healthy life.