Companion animal nutrition has become increasingly complex, with a proliferation of dietary options including raw, grain-free, and novel protein diets. Understanding the evidence helps owners make welfare-informed nutritional choices.
Companion animal nutrition has become a field where marketing innovation has consistently outpaced evidence, with owners motivated by genuine welfare concern making dietary choices that may compromise the welfare they intend to support. The grain-free diet trend, driven by the anthropomorphic projection of human low-carbohydrate diet benefits onto dogs, was associated with cardiac disease in investigations that, while not conclusively causal, created sufficient concern to warrant return to evidence-based recommendations. Raw diets present documented food safety risks to both pets and the humans who prepare and handle them, particularly in households with immunocompromised individuals or young children. Home-prepared diets, while well-intentioned, are nutritionally inadequate in the majority of cases when not developed by a board-certified veterinary nutritionist. The clearest nutritional welfare problem — obesity — receives less attention than novel diet trends despite affecting a larger proportion of animals and causing more measurable welfare harm through its contribution to arthritis, diabetes, and reduced lifespan. Evidence-based nutrition prioritizes complete and balanced commercial diets meeting established nutrient profiles, appropriate caloric restriction to maintain healthy body weight, and veterinary nutritionist consultation for special diets.