Could ultra-processed food be making your pet sick?

Tinned pet food is convenient and often inexpensive. But claims it could be healthy are hard to swallow, warns Dr Tom Lonsdale

As we enter 2025, you might be thinking about making healthier choices for the year ahead – not only for yourself but for your pets, too. You’ve heard about the dangers of ultra-processed food for humans: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, bowel issues, and cancer. But what about your dogs and cats?

Unlike humans, who eat a variety of foods, many pets eat the same canned or bagged food for every meal, their entire lives. While humans live an average of 80 years, pets with shorter lifespans experience diseases like arthritis, kidney problems, diabetes, and cancer earlier and more severely. Bad breath, skin issues, and digestive problems are often the first signs of trouble. Add the stress and expense of repeated vet visits, and it’s clear why many pet owners want to improve their furry friends’ diets.

Unfortunately, navigating pet nutrition can be overwhelming. TV ads and supermarket shelves are dominated by brightly packaged processed food, promising health and convenience. Even prescription diets sold by vets are often industrial products with long shelf lives. Yet, there’s no solid scientific evidence proving these canned and packaged foods are suitable for daily feeding. Manufacturers sidestep the responsibility to prove safety, and regulators rarely intervene.

In response, raw diets are becoming popular, with companies offering raw meat, vegetables, and supplements. While these diets often appear to improve pet health, much of the benefit comes simply from stopping the consumption of processed food. Any homemade or alternative diet can seem like a step up from industrial junk.

To understand what works best for your pet, look to their natural instincts. Dogs love gnawing on raw, meaty bones and burying leftovers for later. Cats are natural hunters, stalking small prey like rodents and birds. Even feral dogs and cats thrive on raw food they hunt or scavenge.

For domestic pets, a balanced compromise is feeding raw meaty bones. Zookeepers have long fed raw bones to wolves, lions, and tigers, and this approach works well for pets too. Raw meaty bones are nature’s perfect food and medicine for carnivores.

Raw meaty bones offer numerous health benefits, including:

• Endorphin release: Chewing provides physical exercise and immune stimulation.
• Dental health: Prevents gum disease and cleans teeth.
• Digestive support: Stimulates gut enzymes and maintains a healthy microbiome.
• Nutrition: Provides essential nutrients for cell growth and repair.
• Stress relief: Promotes natural behaviours, reducing anxiety.
• While raw bones covered in fur or feathers are ideal, butchered bones of the right size can still deliver significant health benefits.

Interestingly, the same principles of avoiding ultra-processed food apply to us. By observing our pets thriving on natural diets, humans can learn valuable lessons about nutrition and health.

Dr. Tom Lonsdale BVetMed MRCVS is a distinguished veterinary clinician and author with over 50 years of experience. Known internationally as a pioneer and authority on the nutritional and medicinal features of a natural diet for pets. Tom is a vocal advocate against what he perceives as collusion between the veterinary establishment and the pet food industry. He has earned the moniker, ‘The Whistleblower Vet’, for debunking misinformation about pet health.

Main image: Courtesy Dr Tom Lonsdale