When it comes to your pet’s health, longevity, weight and diet, you really can’t go too far wrong when you’re feeding them the foods they’re meant to be eating, as intended by nature. Ketogenic foods fall neatly into this category for cats and dogs. But what is a ketogenic diet and why is it so great for your pets?
What is a Ketogenic Diet?
You might have heard of ketogenic diets when it comes to weight loss, and other modern dietary fads, but the truth is, a ketogenic diet isn’t so much a fad, as a logical way to be eating.
In recent times, many nutritionists and dieticians have come forward to talk about the unhealthy nature of eating carb-heavy, grain-based diets, and it’s becoming a steadily more accepted stance in the mainstream.
In essence, all a ketogenic diet involves is moving the core focus of the meals from grain-based foods, over to meat and vegetable-based foods. This is ideal for pets, as it’s essentially how they’ve evolved to eat over millions of years. It’s what their digestive systems are built for.
It’s What They’re Evolved to Eat
The problem with grains like wheat, oats and corn is that most modern digestive systems in both humans and pets alike aren’t designed to cope with it. On an evolutionary scale, we’ve only really been eating farmed grains in the last five thousand years, which is a blink of an eye when it comes to the dietary evolution of mankind.
And pets have been eating it even less than that. Do you think dogs and cats were eating grain-based diets one hundred years ago? It’s always going to be more healthy to feed an animal the foods it’s naturally adapted to, and in the case of cats and dogs, that’s meat and low-starch vegetables.
Cats are carnivores, of course, and so require a much more meat-heavy diet, while dogs will eat far more vegetables, but still plenty of meat. The important thing is taking out the grain elements, and letting your pet’s digestive system deal with the foods it was designed to.
There have even been studies which show that a ketogenic diet can extend the longevity and healthspan of adult mice, and that it can help deal with digestive problems in your pets.
Isn’t it Expensive?
Like many dietary shifts over the last ten years, cost is consistently dropping for more specific diets. More and more you’ll find companies competing to provide the best possible quality pet food, at affordable prices, and that includes ketogenic pet foods.
When it comes to keeping a pet of any kind, surely the responsibility to make sure they enjoy the best and healthiest diet possible falls on you, the owner? There’s plenty of evidence and studies online showing the benefits of a ketogenic diet for animals, and now these foods are becoming more cheaply and easily available, it’s time to start feeding your pets what they’re meant to be eating.
