What about using a "grain free" diet for my dog?

Dr. Paige Garnett's Food Corner

This month I'm going to talk about the new focus on "Grain Free" diets for pets and whether or not these diets truly help animals with suspected food allergies.  This article will focus on grain-free diets for dogs. 

 

Here are some nutritional facts to consider when listening to the new hype about these diets.

 

1.  Corn, wheat, rice  and soy are usually innocent when accused of causing food allergies in dogs.

 

2.  The recent negative thoughts about food grains as pet food ingredients may be myths started by small pet food companies as a way to compete with larger, established companies. 

 

3.  The idea that grains are negative comes from no current data.  There are excellent diets that contain one or more grains.

 

4.  Saying that these ingredients are "common causes of food allergies" is not accurate.

 

5.  If someone in marketing puts on a bag of dog food "Contains no soy" that immediately suggests something is WRONG with soy.  Then a consumer goes home, sees that soy is in the product they are feeding, and assumes they should stop feeding that food.  It is a marketing strategy with no facts or data to back up their implied  "warning".

 

6.  Food allergy is an abnormal immune response only to a protein, not to a fat or carbohydrate.  Corn is 8 % protein and 80% carbohydrate, and rice has less than 10% protein.  These grains are very rarely incriminated in a food allergy problem.

 

In summary, if a pet food says a grain-free diet will help a dog with allergies, that would be a company I would be suspicious of - as only a dog that has an allergy to a specific grain would improve on a grain-free diet, and grain allergies are quite rare. 

 

Next month - "How about grain free diets for cats?"