The Wikipedia article on veganism for dogs basically concludes that vegan dog diets can be approximately as nutritious and palatable as meat-based alternatives, and though poorly constructed vegan diets can be bad for dogs, reducing red meat consumption is linked to lower risk for certain kinds of dog cancers.
When I looked at the wiki article today, this isn’t what I saw. It says vegetarian diets can be safe for dogs, and that it should be theoretically possible to provide a healthy vegan diet. When I check their references, the lit review on canine veganism says approximately “there are a handful of badly designed studies with a huge adverse selection problem, but they haven’t technically found health issues”. This seems at best a proof that there exist dogs than can be vegan, not that it can be assumed for all dogs. The other source is a technical analysis of vegetarian food, which isn’t relevant to a discussion of veganism. .
Thank you, that section was a weak link in the article and I replaced the paragraph with a brief summary of an article about vegan diets for a sample of beagles.
If I were a determined skeptic, I wouldn’t accept any of these results, but I’m not, because my prior is that dogs, like us, are omnivorous generalists who can thrive on a huge variety of diets.
I do think that on average, supplementing with bivalves will be good for their health, as it would be good for many vegans as well.
It sounds like your true argument is a first-principles belief in the power of omnivorism. I think that’s a fine reason to believe something, but you should say that instead of science washing with low quality studies[1].
When I looked at the wiki article today, this isn’t what I saw. It says vegetarian diets can be safe for dogs, and that it should be theoretically possible to provide a healthy vegan diet. When I check their references, the lit review on canine veganism says approximately “there are a handful of badly designed studies with a huge adverse selection problem, but they haven’t technically found health issues”. This seems at best a proof that there exist dogs than can be vegan, not that it can be assumed for all dogs. The other source is a technical analysis of vegetarian food, which isn’t relevant to a discussion of veganism. .
Thank you, that section was a weak link in the article and I replaced the paragraph with a brief summary of an article about vegan diets for a sample of beagles.
If I were a determined skeptic, I wouldn’t accept any of these results, but I’m not, because my prior is that dogs, like us, are omnivorous generalists who can thrive on a huge variety of diets.
I do think that on average, supplementing with bivalves will be good for their health, as it would be good for many vegans as well.
It sounds like your true argument is a first-principles belief in the power of omnivorism. I think that’s a fine reason to believe something, but you should say that instead of science washing with low quality studies[1].
I feel like I put in my time checking the wikipedia studies and haven’t read the new beagle study