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Grain-free Diets - Good or Bad?
Maryanne Murphy, Ángela Witzel...
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Fashions and fads come and go in all walks of life, and for cat and dog nutrition the latest idea is that they should be fed a diet free from all grains. What does this mean in practice, and is there any basis behind the idea? Maryanne Murphy and Angela Rollins offer some background.
Maryanne Murphy
DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN
Dr. Murphy received her DVM from Iowa State University and PhD from the University of Tennessee (UT). She completed a clinical nutrition residency at UT and worked as a clinical nutritionist in private practice before transitioning back to academia in 2016. Her professional interests include obesity prevention and management, and veterinary nutrition education.
Angela Witzel Rollins
DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVN
Dr. Rollins is a Diplomate and former President of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition. She is currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Nutrition at the University of Tennessee Veterinary Medical Center, where she also attained her DVM, PhD, and residency training.
Key Points
- Owners may say they want to feed a “grain-free” diet when in fact they are specifically looking to remove gluten or certain individual grains from their pet’s diet.
- Dogs and cats have distinct (but different) preferences for foods with a specific percentage of protein, fat and carbohydrate.
- When conducting a food trial, challenge with specific ingredients is necessary to identify actual reactivity to dietary allergens; failure to do so may unnecessarily limit potential diet options.
- While cats and dogs may be well maintained on a grain-free diet, such foodstuffs are not necessarily carbohydrate-free, nor are there data suggesting these diets are more optimal than those that contain grains.
Introduction
The general term “grain” refers to dry seeds harvested from flowering plants containing either one seed leaf (monocotyledon or monocots) or two seed leaves (dicotyledon or dicots); these can be further classified as cereals, minor cereals (grasses), or pseudocereals (non-grasses) (Figure 1). Examples of dietary grains and their classifications are shown in Box 1 . Gluten, a protein mixture of glutenins and gliadins, is specifically found only in wheat, barley, rye and triticale; oats in themselves are gluten-free, but may be contaminated with wheat during harvesting or processing1.
Gluten can also be found in some processed sauces, medications and supplements, and processed meats ( 1 ). All of this terminology and background information is important to keep in mind when considering grain-free diets for companion animals, because pet owners may voice a desire to feed a “grainfree” diet when in fact they are specifically looking to remove gluten or individual grains without actually considering the entire list of grains to be inappropriate. Especially with respect to dogs, many owners appear to be most concerned with removing cereals (i.e., corn/maize, rice, wheat) from the diet. Individual owners may, however, consider some or all of the minor cereals to be acceptable, and many actually prefer to include pseudocereals in their pet’s diet. Ensuring the veterinary team and the owner are both referring to the same individual food items when using the term “grain-free” will abate any future confusion and increase the likelihood of recommending dietary ingredients with which the owner is comfortable (Figure 2).
Grain-free diets for cats and dogs have recently increased in popularity, representing 29% of the United States “pet specialty” market sales in 2015 ( 2 ) and 19% of dog food and 15% of cat food purchases in 2016 ( 3 ). Many reasons for this feeding trend are espoused, including a desire to feed a more biologically “ancestral” diet, to avoid unnecessary blood glucose fluctuations caused by diets with high-carbohydrate levels, to improve overall diet digestibility and quality, and to avoid food allergies. This article reviews what is known about grain consumption in both cats and dogs related to these points. [...]
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Affiliation of the authors at the time of publication
University of Tennessee, College of Veterinary Medicine, Knoxville, USA.
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