The Importance Of A Healthy Diet
The One Show Dog Food Report: The Importance Of A Healthy Diet
Our ears pricked up the other evening, as we heard the words “healthy dog food” coming from the television. It was the results of the large survey from BBC1’s One Show into what we’re feeding our dogs.
What started out as a simple request to complete a short online questionnaire ended up as the nation’s biggest survey into dog feeding. An amazing 36,000 pet parents responded, resulting in fantastic data for animal nutritionist Dr Wanda McCormick.
In brief, most people feed their dogs an omnivorous diet (88%). 3% of dogs were pescatarians, only 0.17% vegetarian, 5% purely carnivorous and almost 1% vegan.
The survey also looked for links between the owners’ and dogs’ diet, and of course, both people and pets were largely omnivorous. A third of vegan owners opt to share their animal-free diet with their dogs.
Alongside this, The One Show analysed four individual dogs on different diets over the survey period, to see how their food affects them. Commercial and homemade omnivorous diets were good, and so was the commercial vegan food (although the experts warmed to look out for Vitamin D in even commercial vegan diets, as dogs don’t process this from sunlight like humans do).
However, concerns were raised over homemade vegan diets. Dr McCormick and The One Show vet were keen to point out that these home cooks want to do the best for their pets. However, getting the right nutrients is so tricky, that almost all homemade vegan diets are deficient in some way.
We weren’t surprised that 12% of dog owners choose to make their own food, whether carnivorous, omnivorous or vegan – after all, that’s how Guru started! Certainly, we know from experience what a lot of time, research and cost goes into creating the perfect healthy diet for dogs – and as the experts said, it’s far from easy…
When we launched Guru, our aim was to recreate the tasty, home-cooked meals we made in our kitchen, and make sure that they were as nutritional as possible. Like a high-end human meal, we wanted dogs to have the pleasure of eating quality food, without the pet parents having to slave over a hot stove every day.
And the heat was a major factor. Our early research quickly showed us that the cold-pressed method would help to preserve the nutritional value of our ingredients – and we worked with a pet nutritionist to make sure we were ticking all the boxes when it came to dietary requirements. The result is a doggy dinner that’s really close to the canine’s natural diet.
So, if The One Show report made you think, think about feeding your dog a cold-pressed Guru diet. We have sample packs to get you started, or try them on a tasty treat (our dogs recommend the venison sausages!).
If you like the idea of a healthy, home-cooked diet for your dog, but feel anxious about its nutritional value, Guru could be the perfect solution…
We adore our Geekster squad and we’d love you to be a part of it too! Get in touch if you have any questions, we’re always happy to help.
The Guru Geeks xx
