Are Dogs Carnivores?

Video Transcription:

It is one of the biggest nutritional myths that dogs are carnivores. Dogs, especially domestic dogs, are omnivores. Domestic dogs, when we have looked at their evolution over time, really have changes: one in behavior, which makes them great companions, but they also have changes in how they digest carbohydrates. Like people, they tend to be very efficient at digesting carbohydrates.

They do not necessarily need carbohydrates within the diet, but NomNomNow and other groups find, including the scientific studies, that there are benefits to carbohydrates in the diet. If you think about human diets, a lot of the functional foods are the more interesting foods that have unique nutrients, the things that give vegetables color, the things that give fruits color and flavor.

Those particular compounds are not found in proteins and fats, and they are from which a lot of medicines and dietary supplements are derived. They do some of the unique jobs of whole food nutrition and promoting the health and wellness of the pet. As the result of that, these diets have been carefully formulated with a lot of these unique fruits or vegetables to try to determine what is the best nutrient blend for your animal, not just what is required, but what can assign even better benefits to really optimize health, so these careful inclusions are something that are digested.

They are not fillers in the diet; They are there to provide nutrients and substance. If you were to feed a diet that is just protein and fat, dogs have to have sugar in the bloodstream, as do humans, so we can measure that in the blood. It is something your veterinarian is doing all the time. If you do not provide dietary carbohydrates, the body can make those, but they come from proteins, so excess protein in the diet is not used for the normal functions of the protein; it is converted into sugar to help feed the bloodstream and contribute to normal health.

This actually takes a fair amount of energy, so it costs more energy for the animals to digest that protein and convert it into carbohydrates than it does to give dogs carbohydrates that are minimally processed that also have these benefits. Therefore, unlike cats and other carnivores, dogs should be regarded as omnivores, and our take, and the take of most of the researchers in this area, is that carbohydrates are important. They contribute to health and they can really be used to maximize the overall wellness plan of your particular dog.