Talking to Your Vet About Homemade Diets
Talking to Your Vet About Homemade Diets
Hello Everyone! This is Krista with Episode #105 on the Wag Out Loud Pawdcast.
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Hello Dog Lovers! Welcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast! You probably already know that we are obsessed with canine health and nutrition and here to geek out about dog food is Nikki Giovanelli who is a Registered Veterinary Technician with over 10 years of experience in the veterinary field. Nikki enjoys sharing information on her blog "The Canine Health Nut" about different aspects of canine nutrition through the review of scientific research, along with sharing dog food recipes for the beginner home cook. As a home cooker of over 5 years from a conventional veterinary background, she aims to educate and inform veterinary professionals and dog owners about the different options that are available when it comes to dog food.
Nikki, I am so thrilled you're here with us today.
I'm so excited to be here to thank you so much for having me, Krista.
Well, this is going to be a great topic because you've been on both sides. And we're going to be talking about how to talk to your vet about homemade diets, which we all need a lesson on. So I know going to the vet is often times really a stressful event for us and our dogs. And I would have to say that talking to a conventional vet about feeding a raw or natural diet could be one of the most intimidating things, maybe even second only to vaccinations. But that's a whole another topic. So as a vet tech, what has your experience been with veterinarians approval of homemade diets?
So, generally speaking, it depends on like you said, is the vet you're talking to. so I worked in conventional a veterinary practice. And I would say that most conventional veterinarians are apprehensive about homemade diets in general, there's a lot of different research that has come out looking at homemade diets themselves. And they found like, I think there was five different studies, and most of them find that over 90% of recipes online aren't complete and balanced. So when a veterinarian just reads that to start off with, like, you're going to be worried, okay, is there a deficiency on the site? What do I need to do to make sure that it isn't deficient, like there's a lot of things that are going to run through your head, there's also been follow up studies where they looked at owners that were given a homemade diet by like board certified veterinary nutritionists and looked at how good they were at following a recipe. And they found that like, 70% of those owners would omit or change out the oil that was recommended, which means they might have essential fatty acid deficiencies, they might not measure ingredients. So you might have potential protein deficiencies. And then also once a month, like 30%, would modify the diet entirely with different ingredients that were not listed. So when a conventional veterinarian or really probably any veterinarian looks at homemade diet, in general, they're gonna go, okay, most of the recipes that I'm going to be presented in clinic will probably not be balanced. And many of these people will not even be following these balanced recipes. So it's an entire conversation of like, having Okay, well, what are you feeding? I need all this information to try to take it in. And some that, you know, the nutrition as the fifth assessment in veterinary medicine was only put in in like 2011. So that's thinking about nutrition and discussing it on a regular basis, that's only 10 years, that's not a huge, long amount of time. that said, vets that have been out of practice or been out of school for a long time. This is a new thing for them, they're going to have to learn so I actually find more new grads, for veterinarians tend to be more apt to talk about nutrition than older vets are just because of that new addition and when it was put in, and maybe what kind of education they got. So I think they're just uncomfortable in general. And they don't, I guess, like discussing it if they don't do it on a regular basis, obviously some that love discussing nutrition, right? Like, you've had several on this podcast, you know that it's their thing. They love talking about it, but obviously, you know that medicine is so big. I feel like you know, your your veterinarian and your practice is a surgeon. They do everything your normal GP does at your you know, like when you go in and they're your dentist. True, but we're doing three different tasks all at once. It's a lot different. Nobody might know. Yeah, we're a whole bunch of different species.
They'd be like, Okay, well, I really like surgery. And that's what I'm going to focus on. But you know, you can't, you only have so much brain space, right? So you might lack in another area. And I think the important thing is to realize where your gaps are. And then to have tools to go to fill in those gaps. And I think that's one of that side of things, where we need to have those tools or those resources to kind of refer to, and I'm sure integrated, that do the same thing in the sense of like, you know, they might I've known, several actually, that don't do surgery. And they refer for surgery to someone else, right, like they've decided, you know, I only do in clinic, health assessments, but I don't do surgery at all. And they'll refer actually to a different hospital for all their surgeries, or have someone come in to do them. So I think on the vet side, we need to realize that and kind of, you know, get there. But that's, I think why those conversations are so hard, is one, there's a whole bunch of research that makes it scary to talk about it, maybe you don't have you know, really good knowledge on like looking at a homemade recipe and to like, we just need to learn as like veterinary professionals, we don't need to know everything, we can refer to someone else when we don't know something. So those would be my own things.
And I would think that people might be uncomfortable, because when you walk in the door, most conventional veterinary practices are selling the kibble processed food in their lobby. So if you feed something different from that, sometimes we feel ashamed or guilty, that we're not buying products from them. Is that right?
I've heard that from people that people will feel like they have to purchase, like the same foods that the vets offer in clinic. I mean, I will say that I did come from veterinary practice that was small that was you know, I hate to say it, but you don't make that much money on food. So like, we hated actually even stocking food. In clinic, it was something we didn't like doing because you have to keep it in inventory. it didn't actually make you a lot of money at all, like we made more money just doing nail trims than by selling a bag of dog food. interesting. It just, it didn't actually bring up anything financially. But I can understand how intimidating is where you don't see your brand on a wall. And you feel like you're being isolated because of that. I've also had conversations recently with a couple of pet food brands. And I'm like, you know what, in veterinary practice, I used to have to pull teeth, sometimes of brands trying to get information on them. Whereas like with Hills, when you're in that hospital, and you have a question about a Hills product, you have a full online to talk to them, like you can call they pick up within five minutes, you can ask them any questions you want about their diet. Right? So that's I think, you know, when we, when you see those diets they're there because they're comfortable with them. And because if they have any questions about any of these diets, they literally are a five minute phone call away. Whereas you know, with other diets, I've been on hold for hours with some other diets trying to get basic information from them. So I think there's a trust factor to where you might not see other things in there. And like I think this also speaks to, you know, brands started to come in and actually educate. Yeah, I'm just gonna bring on their diet. Yeah. And then you suddenly started to see other diets being offered in clinics. So I think it's just a matter of like, if we want more vet clinics to be open to more diets. Companies need to prioritize educating veterinarians as well. Like, go out and be like, Hey, here's my one sheet on my diet, this is everything about it. Here's the digestibility. This is why we think it's really good. This is how and where we source our ingredients. Like if you brought those one sheets I think you're gonna find a lot of vets that are pretty open minded about it.
And I can also attest to Primal. I don't know if you know that. But they actually did continuing education, their raw pet food company through DVM 360. I sat in on it, and they did a poll. And at the beginning of it, it asked just like how many people are comfortable with raw diet? And like, as expected, it's DVM 360, I would say is not an integrative platform for continuing education. It was about 70% people were not comfortable with raw. after the entire presentation that went down to 20%. So I think it kind of speaks to the fact that it's not that vets wouldn't be open to some of those things. I think they have concerns. And if we try to address concerns with fresh food, then we could move and kind of bridge that gap a little bit in general, but yeah, I know it's intimidating to come into somewhere and not see, you know, the food that you're feeding represented in the clinic, and depending on how they're representing it . See about it can also be really frustrating too.
That's all great information. Well, Nikki, in your mind, what are the positives, and if there are any negatives of homemade diets for our dogs, because I know, just feeding chicken and rice is probably not supplying all the right nutrients, right?
No. So I would say the the positives of homemade diets is one you have control, right, you can pick exactly what ingredients you want, what composition you want, you can have that customization rate of the diets, let's say you have a diet and a dog that needs a low fat diet, you can have, you can create a diet that is low fat for that dog. Another thing is, there are studies looking at fresh food in general in comparison to kibble and we do see better microbiome like diversity. with fresh food diets, we do see better digestibility with fresh food diets, which may help with dogs, you know, they have an intolerance or a GI issue. Having them on a fresh food diet can be potentially beneficial. Obviously, the negatives are like if people may not stick to their recipe, they may not use a balanced recipe and also quality control. Like, you know, I know me creating or doing my own cooking at home. Like it's not like I'm taking a sample and submitting it to a lab for pathogen testing. Like diet, you know, there's a possibility that my diet might have pathogens and like humans would have recalls like with spinach and you know, vegetables, we do see recall. So we aren't testing our diets. Also, our batches are really small. So like we're a manufacturer, or even a fresh food manufactured diet a teaspoon off of like an oil or something may be pretty insignificant for us, if we're making a one pound batch a teaspoon is much more significant. So I would say that would be a potential negative as well as that, you know, our margin of error isn't quite, you know, the same as if you're doing you know, a ton batch of a food. But you do, you do have that control. And like, you know, if you do have a dog with allergies, you can make sure that there is no chicken in their in their diet if they're allergic to chicken, where we know there's a lot of cross contamination in the pet food industry as a whole, with allergies with having proteins that aren't listed on the label inside pet food. Those would be my potential positives and negatives associated with fresh food for dogs.
So in your mind, if you took most of the conventional vets, would they feel more comfortable with a cooked diet versus less comfortable If we feed raw?
I would say yes, just because of the potential pathogen contamination. So and there's been a lot of different studies looking at it to varying degrees. And there's some of the studies are well done. Some of the studies have a lot of issues. So we'll just because there's some things, but what we do know is like obviously, raw meat has more of a potential of contamination than if you cook it. So it's going to make veterinarian more uncomfortable, because in there, I don't know if you've ever read like the code of ethics, or like that, but it actually includes human health as well. So that's why they are often like they have to recommend pathogen control and stuff like that, because they can't just look at the animal, they also have to look at zoonotic pathogen transmission to humans that makes sure that's actually part of the veterinarians code is to look at these zoonotic diseases as well. So when they're looking at it, and they go, Okay, well, if there's a potential contamination issue with humans, we also have to take that into consideration with our recommendations as well. So I would say generally speaking, most conventional vets will be much more comfortable with a cooked homemade diet than a raw homemade diet. Okay. In general, I think they'll be more as more with because like that presentation with primal, they talked about all the different processing methods like high pressure processing, and fermentation and stuff like that as well. And more of the manufactured diets are doing more testing on all their foods. So I think, I mean, this is just me, completely out of the air. But I think over time, as that gets better, more conventional veterinarians may be more comfortable once they're educated in those things, on Raw diets that are manufactured because they're doing more testing for pathogens, if that makes sense
the HPP process which we've talked about on the show.
exactly, yeah. So that's something that I think as conventional vets that know more about stuff like that, they may be like, Okay, well, you know, you want to do raw, I would recommend this brand because they're doing high pressure processing. I'd recommend this brand because they're doing fermentation or, you know, these different things because that's what they'd still want to you know, address that human zoonotic, you know, pathogen. area, but also allow adults to be on potentially raw food if they're doing really well on it. So I think that's, I guess an area. That's a great point. Because, you know, there aren't many manufacturers of the whole food diets that are educating veterinarians. So for any manufacturers listening, this is an area that you should definitely explore. Because who are we if we don't have education, and we all need to be open to learning, because things change every day.
And there's so much to know about nutrition to your point. And we have to be our dog's advocates, when it comes down to it, we can't feel quote unquote, ashamed or bullied, or however you feel about what you feed, and maybe what your vet thinks. So it's really up to us to have an open and honest conversation with our vets. So how do you recommend we have the conversation itself?
So as coming from again, the conventional side, and I, honestly, I feel like this would probably go to an integrative or in a holistic side, I feel like the first thing to do is if you have a recipe, you're following for your dog's food, and you're gonna say in, you know, you're going to go into the clinic and be like, I feed homemade food and you've never talked to them before you don't have that relationship. Bring your sheet with you of what you feed. So like if you have a recipe you’re following, bring that with you. I know, I recently transferred to a new hospital, and my dog came in for their first exam. And I printed out my balance sheet that had all the AAFCO and NRC minimums on it to show like, this is what I'm feeding my dog. All the minimums are met, I follow this recipe, like I am trying to do my due diligence, like trying to address some of those concerns that a veterinarian might have, because I home feed my dogs, right. So I bring that one sheet with me and show it to them and try to be open and honest. And I know, when I was in practice, and someone would say they feed home cooked and I generally just be curious, okay, you know, what are you doing? What's your recipe? And I could tell they'd be so worried about showing it to me. And I'm like, No, I just want to see it so that you know, if I see something where I'm like, you know, you don't have any zinc in your diet, let's add in some, you know, muscle meat, let's just put something in it's not necessarily to criticize, but let's have a conversation. And I don't think we should be scared about those conversations. We just should try to be as honest as we can about them. So like I'd say bring your recipe with you be proud of your recipe but also be open to feedback on it. Right? So if they see like you don't have any calcium maybe your best gonna recommend some calcium or maybe they're gonna recommend like a multivitamin supplement add on. If you are missing you know, they see multiple deficiencies potentially in there. So that would be my my real first thing is show your recipes. My second thing is tell your why. No one feeds fresh food just because. no one. no one home makes the food puts in all that time and money for no reason. You have a Why? Tell it to them? Whatever it is, I know for me with my dog asked he had horrible GI issues when he was on multiple different diets. We tried prescription diets he was on he was doing okay, but not great. I went to a boarded nutritionist and a conference You know, he told me how did you balance it and I've been on balance and ever since Ash is doing great, tell your why to them. Why is it that you decided to feed fresh foods? What was that moment and I think that'll have our allow some empathy in that situation to tell your why. And then the other thing is to if you are getting say you know present your recipe and they don't see very comfortable open up the option of working with either a small animal like a dog food formulator so someone like a veterinarian that formulates dog food a you know diplomat or a nutritionist in veterinary nutrition that you're open to working with like balancing or pet diet or to use like a premix like Honest Kitchen or Dr. Harvey's or something like bring, like open that up a little bit like hey, I'm I'm open to trying to make this better. And I think that's kind of the best way to approach that situation. I think we just need to be open to having the conversation as well. Even if it makes us uncomfortable. Even if it's hard. You got to think of your dog. Right and like I feel like it goes both ways. Like as a veterinary professional. Someone comes in with a homemade diet. There is a why behind it. We need to ask questions and be empathetic and try to direct them rather than criticize, because I feel like the criticism doesn't help. it doesn't move the needle at all. And I see a lot of vet clinics being like, Okay, well, this I know this is imbalanced. Why don't you just try kibble, but like they have a why to walk, why they don't want to do that. So let's give them options that allows them to still do their why, but achieve what you want as well, which is balanced. Perfect. That's kind of the conversation that I'd like to see more in vet clinics in general.
Well said. And Nikki, are you seeing more practices? You know, because I've see some practices are getting bigger with several associates. And you know, they are branching off into acupuncture and other holistic treatments, are more bringing on nutritionists as part of the entire offering of veterinary care, or is that still no not happening?
So, there are, so the hard thing is, is there's not that many board certified veterinary nutritionists in the US. So like, there's only 19 in the US that offer consoles to clients. Like that's not that many for all of us. So what some veterinary hospitals have done is, they either offer services in the sense that you can go and use something like Balance IT, that is free. Anyone can go on to Balance IT site and create a recipe. So some clinics will use Balance IT create homemade recipes for people, if that's what they're looking for. So like, I've used it in clinic before when someone says like, Oh, I see chicken, rice and vegetables. And I'm like, Okay, well, let's take those things, plug it into Balance IT that we're going to give you the right proportions and the vitamin supplements. And now it's balanced, and like you've checked the boxes kind of thing. So that's been helpful from that clinics, we'll have people or I will say, people, they'll have nurses or technicians that have taken certification courses. There's a couple of different ones. One at University of Tennessee, there's one through BC, I forget the full acronym, but there's a couple of different like, certification courses for nurses, or even better nurse staff in general. But it's usually centered around manufactured foods, not homemade food. I would say that that's a portion of the veterinary field that is lacking. I know that a lot of veterinarians have started that are more holistic have started to use software programs to offer those consults to make sure it's also balanced at the same time. So there'll be veterinarians that do formulation. And usually what I recommend for people if they are, you know, looking at homemade, and they want someone to either double check their recipe one, talk to your vet and speak open to it beforehand, because some will just tell you right away, or it'll be on their website. The other thing is that you can also go on to the AHVMA is the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association and find a vet through there. And many of those that will either be Chinese, like food therapy veterinarians, or they will have us they'll be using like some computer program to do balancing of recipes. So you'll get more feedback. And I mean, the one thing good about I guess everything that's going on in 2020 was that many of these vets are now offering telemedicine consult. So, even if he lives in the middle of nowhere with only the one vet around you, you might be able to get a console online with one of these veterinarians. So I think that might be a really good option. But yeah, fortunately, we are seeing more partnerships like that I worked with we had a acupuncturist and holistic that that came to our hospital once a week, we did her surgeries, and she did acupuncture on our patients that were older, it was like a trade. And we also did her dental so like there are partnerships like that happening. But I think that we can do more as far as whole with food formulation. I also know that you can get full on comp to like with veterinarians online through like I know Just Food for Dogs has a custom formulation, pet diet calm, you can create an account and actually purchase recipes on there. I think it's like $25 for your first recipe $5 after that. So you do have options, but in clinic usually it's around manufacturer days, and I think that's because most people still do seasonings after days. Right? So a small portion that the homemade. So that's changing. Yeah, it is changing and something that's evolving. The same with like eating fresh food is an emerging option for people right like we used to only have like one or two options to see fresh food and now I feel like there's dozens that it popped up over the last 10 years. So it's better for sure. Yeah, a lot easier too because they don't want to cook or you don't want to do it at home like you have other options that are available where you can buy premade which I think is really nice, right?
Wow, great, great info. Well, Nikki, as we wrap up, I guess in the end, in your mind, it is okay, if we want to change vets who maybe we just don't feel like we're being heard when it comes to diet, and you gave a great resource, the AHVMA to look for integrative or holistic veterinarians near you that are going to be more open to a fresh food diet. So it's okay.
Exactly. And it's fine. And I would tell people, it's actually especially like I live in San Diego. So there's a lot of options of this. Like, you can have more than one vet too like you want to perspective have a conventional and a holistic veterinarian, like have both. Because then you can get like, you know, you can get one side of the story and then get the other side of the story, especially for chronic conditions, it's kind of nice to be able to look at both sides sometimes to be able to manage these conditions so that you have a full perspective of all the things that are to offer and you're not pigeon holed into one side. So I think it's good to have both sometimes, too. But there are lots of different options now out there as far as specialties and stuff for veterinarians so that you can make sure you feel comfortable because if you're not comfortable, It's not going to be a good situation to work.
That's so true. Yeah. Well, Nikki, thank you so much. This has been wonderful because we all know about the elephant in the room, and we've just talked about it and it is okay to have these conversations with your veterinarian, and you should. So thank you for being here. Nikki, where can everybody find more information about you and the canine health nut?
https://thecaninehealthnut.com/
FB & IG: @thecaninehealthnut
Nikki mentioned: Balance IT
American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (to find an integrative or holistic vet near you)
Pet Diets for complete and balanced recipes
Just Food For Dogs and you can use code WOL50 when ordering for the first time and get 50% off for orders up to $25
Dr. Harvey’s Use code WOL10 for 10% off of your order
Nikki, where can everyone find out more information about you and the Canine Health Nut?
We appreciate our sponsor: Just Food for Dogs
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Thanks to the folks at Just Food for Dogs for sponsoring today’s episode!
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