For the record, science disagrees with you. According to an analysis of all current research, there is no statistically significant difference of cat heath when fed a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet. Of there is a similarly high quality study that finds that a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet is worse for cats I would love to see it.
The vegan diet we are talking about isn’t a bunch of vegetables, it’s a manufactured dry food specifically designed to have all the nutrients a cat needs.
People often use the obligate carnivore excuse, but use it in an unscientific way. Obligate carnivores have nutritional needs that can only be meet through meat in the wild, but humans are perfectly capable of manufacturing these nutrients. We are so good at it that we supplement these synthetic nutrients in meat based cat food already.
This is a contentious issue for most people, and it can be hard when you are very passionate about something to look at the evidence and change your opinion. I’ve looked at a decent number of studies on the topic recently, and they all seen to point to the conclusion that a diet without meat can be healthy for cats, so long as it contains all the nutrients they need.
A vet friend in a very trendy city encounters a lot of cats with significant health problems that stem from their owner’s attempt at a vegan diet, so whether or not it’s possible, too many people harm the health of their pets through attempting a vegan diet for it to be a safe thing to recommend trying
Yea that’s the thing.
I’m sure a team of scientists could eventually design an ethically sourced vegan cat food with synthetic versions of whatever is missing that could work fine for some cats.
The odds of a random lemming doing it right after reading one comment about it online is next to none.
Discussing it is one thing, recommending it and deleting anything that simply advises caution is weird.
Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of its big points is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.
Some great lines:
Cats on a high-protein vegetarian diet exhibited hypokalemia which accompanied recurrent polymyopathy. There was also increased creatinine kinase activity, likely reflecting the muscle damage caused by the myopathy, and reduced urinary potassium concentrations.
To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.
showed that plasma taurine concentrations decreased by approximately 87% after only 2 weeks on a vegetarian diet (from 122 μmol/L to 16μmol/L). By the end of the 6-week study, there was no detectable taurine in plasma. Taurine concentrations were not different between the potassium-supplemented and non-supplemented groups, with both groups showing this substantial drop in taurine.
To simplify: Taurine supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried
In cats fed vegetarian diets that were supplemented with potassium, a myopathy was seen within 2 weeks of the dietary change this was characterized by ventroflexion of the head and the neck. The cats also showed lateral head resting, a stiff gait, muscular weakness, unsteadiness, and the occasional tremor of the head and pinnae.
To simplify: your car feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit
Weight loss and poor coat condition have also been observed in cats fed vegetarian diets. However, most cats in another study had a normal coat condition and no obviously diet-related clinical abnormalities picked up by clinical examination [27]. Clinical signs of lethargy with altered mentation, dysorexia, and muscle wasting, along with gut signs of bloating and increased borborygmi have also been observed [30].
Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad
I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.
First of all, that analysis you posted is not particularly scientific, and there’s an abundance of evidence that vegan diets hurt cats.
Second, once you’re getting into arguments about “synthetic nutrients”, it’s pretty clear that you don’t actually know how animals nutrition works, and probably shouldn’t have a pet at all if you don’t know how to keep one without making it suffer due to malnutrition.
Not sure why you’re vegan, but it certainly isn’t because you care about the well-being of animals…
For the record, science disagrees with you. According to an analysis of all current research, there is no statistically significant difference of cat heath when fed a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet. Of there is a similarly high quality study that finds that a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet is worse for cats I would love to see it.
The vegan diet we are talking about isn’t a bunch of vegetables, it’s a manufactured dry food specifically designed to have all the nutrients a cat needs.
People often use the obligate carnivore excuse, but use it in an unscientific way. Obligate carnivores have nutritional needs that can only be meet through meat in the wild, but humans are perfectly capable of manufacturing these nutrients. We are so good at it that we supplement these synthetic nutrients in meat based cat food already.
This is a contentious issue for most people, and it can be hard when you are very passionate about something to look at the evidence and change your opinion. I’ve looked at a decent number of studies on the topic recently, and they all seen to point to the conclusion that a diet without meat can be healthy for cats, so long as it contains all the nutrients they need.
A vet friend in a very trendy city encounters a lot of cats with significant health problems that stem from their owner’s attempt at a vegan diet, so whether or not it’s possible, too many people harm the health of their pets through attempting a vegan diet for it to be a safe thing to recommend trying
Yea that’s the thing.
I’m sure a team of scientists could eventually design an ethically sourced vegan cat food with synthetic versions of whatever is missing that could work fine for some cats.
The odds of a random lemming doing it right after reading one comment about it online is next to none.
Discussing it is one thing, recommending it and deleting anything that simply advises caution is weird.
heavy sigh
Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of its big points is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.
Some great lines:
To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.
To simplify: Taurine supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried
To simplify: your car feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit
Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad
I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.
First of all, that analysis you posted is not particularly scientific, and there’s an abundance of evidence that vegan diets hurt cats.
Second, once you’re getting into arguments about “synthetic nutrients”, it’s pretty clear that you don’t actually know how animals nutrition works, and probably shouldn’t have a pet at all if you don’t know how to keep one without making it suffer due to malnutrition.
Not sure why you’re vegan, but it certainly isn’t because you care about the well-being of animals…