Written by Dr. Sarah Wilson, BScH, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition)
We know that many dog parents wonder about what is best for their beloved furry family member. When it comes to the food that we offer to them, it can become really unclear what is best. Marketing relating to pet food and popular trends can be seen everywhere and can influence choices and one common question or concern is grain-inclusive or grain-free recipes – which is healthiest? Simple answer: it depends.
The goal of a healthy recipe is to meet essential nutrient needs in a tasty way, but the nitty gritty of how that gets achieved requires evaluation of a lot of moving parts. Each recipe is formulated with consideration of what each ingredient brings to the table. For example, just considering protein – ensuring the protein in the recipe is highly digestible, provided in adequate amounts, and meets all the essential amino acid requirements is important. Not every ingredient brings the same essential nutrients to the table, so it is important to use this information to formulate recipes to ensure adequacy. Careful selection of each ingredient used in The Pets Table Recipes to ensure that whether a recipe is grain-inclusive or grain-free all essential nutrient requirements are met. In addition, we run digestibility studies to ensure that those essential nutrients can be absorbed when your pup is enjoying it. All that to say that we use science-based decisions and monitoring to ensure a healthy recipe (no matter the ingredients).
What Are Grains and Why Are They Used in Dog Food?
So, what are grains? They are small edible seeds from grass-type plants (also known as cereal grasses) and include commonly seen foods like barley, corn, oats, wheat, and rice, as well as other less common examples such as millet, rye, sorghum, and teff. Some foods such as quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat are lumped in with grains, but are not quite in the same category but are considered ‘pesudo-grains’ as they are often cooked in a similar fashion and have some nutrient similarities.
Grains, just like many other ingredients we eat, have different nutritional profiles, benefits, and drawbacks. Depending on if a grain is fed whole (you’ve seen whole grain foods highlighted before) or if it has had the outer hull removed (a more refined grain) can significantly impact the recipe. Including a whole grain in a recipe (grain seed with the outer hull still on) will provide more fiber and may help create a firmer stool. Or using a more refined grain, where the hull has been removed, will provide energy, and some essential vitamins and minerals, but much less fiber content. To get a better understanding, you can think about white rice and brown rice; white rice provides energy, essential minerals, and is highly digestible, whereas brown rice provides energy, and has essential minerals, but also a bit of added fiber (because of the hull that is still on). The difference as a result is that added fiber may impact digestibility and nutrient profile as fiber can block the absorption of other nutrients.
Each grain has its own benefits to bring to the table, barley and oats for example contain beta-glucans (heart healthy phytonutrients), and some grains contain things that may be helpful or harmful (think wheat gluten – makes for great bread, but problematic for those with celiac disease). Understanding how each ingredient works together is critical to ensuring a healthy balanced diet using grains.
What Does “Grain-Free” Mean?
If a recipe that is grain-inclusive has grains, then “grain-free” means food made without any grains (wheat, barley, oats, rice, corn, etc.). Now just because a recipe doesn’t have any grains like wheat or rice, doesn’t mean that that recipe is better, or healthier, or even low carb. Many types of ingredients are used in place of grains to provide energy, essential nutrients, fiber, and help with general texture or volume. Vegetables are certainly used in recipes in place of grains, but that is a rather broad category. Often foods like legumes & pulses (i.e. various beans & lentils) and starchy vegetables like Russet potatoes or sweet potatoes are used to provide energy, essential vitamins and minerals, as well as some fiber. It is important to know how to use these ingredients so that recipes are complete and balanced, but when used properly in appropriate amounts these ingredients can help to provide nutritious food and can be a helpful option for dogs with food hypersensitivity or allergies to problem ingredients for them.
Are Grains Good or Bad for Dogs?
Overall, grains can be an excellent addition to a dog’s diet, when cooked properly and provided in the proper amounts. It is important to consider all ingredients and the nutrients they provide; many different grains can be enjoyed by many different dogs.
Grains have lots of benefits, and potentially some drawbacks. Some aspects are seen across all grains – such as they all provide energy, and contain varying amounts of fiber, essential vitamins and minerals. Other aspects are unique to specific ingredients – such as barley and oats having high beta-glucan (heart healthy fiber) content, or gluten being present in wheat, rye, and barley – but oats and rice are gluten-free.
While some may say that grains are used as ‘filler ingredients’ it is important to understand that grains contain fiber, which can be beneficial to the gastrointestinal system and feed a healthy gut microbiome. In addition, some may worry that grains can cause allergies in dogs, but this is not the case. Since grains do have some protein content, it is possible for allergies to arise, but just eating foods with grains, doesn’t mean allergies will necessarily arise. In fact, most dogs not only tolerate grains, but really enjoy the taste and the nutritional benefits too!
Nutritional Comparison: Grain vs. Grain-Free Dog Food
While a direct comparison of grain inclusive vs grain free food cannot be made since commercial dog foods are made with many different ingredients which all play different roles, it is possible to compare how grain inclusion or exclusion may impact nutrient digestibility and other aspects of your dog’s food. Knowing these details allows us to intentionally formulate foods to create the best healthy options we can.
Digestibility, Fiber and Gut Health
When considering recipes that include or exclude grains it is important to consider the impact to digestibility, as vegetables and grains contain fiber. The amount of fiber in a recipe will impact how digestible it is, and the amount of fiber in a recipe is determined by many different factors. How grains are processed will impact the fiber content, white rice has less fiber than brown rice as the outer hull (which makes the rice brown) is where the fiber content is higher.
However, grains aren’t the only ingredients with fiber, as legumes and many vegetables are excellent sources of fiber. So direct comparison of recipes’ digestibility with grains to no grains isn’t really possible, as many other ingredients are contributing to the recipe digestibility.
What is important, is understanding how the ingredients used all impact each other and hurt/help digestibility. Some recipes may have higher fiber content and may be a grain free recipe such as a sweet potato, broccoli, and green beans, and another recipe may include grains such as brown rice and barley and also provide high fiber.
At The Pets Table understanding what each ingredient offers to support a healthy, complete and balanced, tasty meal is of the utmost importance and we regularly evaluate our recipes to ensure the highest quality.
The impact of fiber on gut health is becoming more and more obvious as research grows in the field of the microbiome (the bugs that live in the gut and help support health). The use of multiple different sources of fibers, both soluble and insoluble, from foods like vegetables, grains, and or legumes helps provide food (as fiber) for the bugs that live in the gut. Fiber isn’t digested by the mammalian system (so dogs, cats, people – don’t really digest fiber), but it is digested by the tiny bugs living in the large intestine. Ensuring a healthy fiber profile can help keep healthy bugs in the gut which helps overall body health.
Nutrient Profile
The use of grains or no grains in a recipe can certainly impact a nutrient profile, as each ingredient will bring different nutrients to the table. Some grains have higher B vitamin content or have higher mineral content, and other foods such as legumes will have other nutrient benefits such as higher potassium content or fiber. Complementary nutrition is when we use ingredients in a complementary manner, helping support a complete diet using complementary foods. For example, rices tend to be lower in lysine, an essential amino acid, whereas pulses tend to be lower in the essential sulfur amino acids (like cysteine and methionine). So using this knowledge we ensure other ingredients supply what some ingredients may be missing. When formulating recipes, we ensure we use all the ingredients carefully to ensure a complete and balanced recipe regardless of grain inclusion.
Which Option Is Better for Your Dog?
We all want to know what the best option is for our own dog! We love our furry family, and want them to be happy and thrive, and we know that nutrition plays a crucial role in ensuring they are healthy and happy. Unfortunately, there is no one answer. For most dogs, ensuring they are eating a complete and balanced diet that they find tasty, is affordable, and helps them live their best life is what is most important, and grains can be a part of that story. For a small portion of dogs, they may find one (or more) grains difficult to digest, or really may not be interested in eating them, or there may even be a human in the house who needs to avoid certain ingredients, for those pups & people our grain free options can provide complete and balanced recipes that fit the bill.
As with all pets, ensuring you are feeding your dog to a healthy body condition, and maintaining healthy preventative and maintenance veterinary medical care will also help keep your pup in tip top shape!
How The Pets Table Approaches Both Recipe Types
At The Pets Table all of our recipes are carefully formulated to meet essential nutrient requirements and the standards established by AAFCO for growing dogs including large breed dogs. Whether the recipe excludes or includes grains, we make sure to create complete and balanced diets that are tasty and utilize the benefits of the nutrients in the ingredients we use. We test recipes to ensure they provide all the essential nutrients in the right amounts, we also test our recipes for digestibility, and palatability.
Whether you want to feed a recipe that excludes or includes grains, The Pets Table has options available in our Fresh recipes as well as in our Air-Dried recipes, which allows you to feel confident with the balanced nutrition you provide your beloved pup. Choosing to mix what you feed (with both Fresh or Air-Dried) is another way to provide variety, but you may also decide to mix between grain-free and grain-inclusive recipes (if tolerated by your pup/family needs). Our goal is to provide healthy and delicious complete and balanced meals for your fur family and having a variety of options can help!
Common Misconceptions About Grain-Free Diets
Hopefully it is clear from everything above that grains can be an excellent food to include in your pet’s diet, however it is important to address some common myths or misunderstandings regarding grains or grain-free diets.
- Myth: Grain-free is healthier because it is low carb (&/or high protein)
- Grain-free is not inherently healthier as if a recipe is not formulated properly, it may be deficient in essential nutrients. Additionally, even if grains are not in a recipe, there may be other sources of carbohydrate such as potatoes or other vegetables and depending on the other ingredients and their level of inclusion, a grain-free recipe could be high carbohydrate and lower protein.
- Myth: Dogs didn’t evolve to eat grains and so they can’t digest them
- Dogs absolutely have the ability to digest starches and grains, and depending on processing may obtain many excellent benefits from grain ingredients. Genetic studies have shown that dogs have evolved more genes responsible for carbohydrate and starch digestion compared to wolves. At The Pets Table we run digestibility studies to ensure there are Some grains that are less processed (think rolled oats vs whole oats) may be less digestible, but the fiber in those ingredients can be food for the dogs microbiome so may benefit them in other ways.
- Myth: Grains are just cheap “fillers”
- There is no legal definition of filler and so it is often used as a term to mean poor quality foods that offer no benefit other than making a food more affordable to feed. However, as we’ve talked about above, grains offer many different nutritious value and at The Pets Table we purposefully use high quality ingredients to make delicious, complete and balanced food for your dog – it’s about the ingredients providing the right amount of nutrients – not just filling a plate.
- Myth: Grains are a common cause of pet allergies
- While pets can be allergic to a protein in a specific grain, it is not common, and grains themselves are not a cause of pet allergies. In veterinary nutritional evaluation studies, the most common foods associated with confirmed food allergies in dogs were beef, dairy, chicken, wheat, and soy (and it was beef, fish, and chicken for cats) (Source). Any protein can cause an allergy in a food allergic dog, and some dogs may have problems with more than one protein, however the consumption of grains in a healthy animal will not cause allergy.
- Source – Mueller & Olivry 2016
- Source – Mueller & Olivry 2016
- While pets can be allergic to a protein in a specific grain, it is not common, and grains themselves are not a cause of pet allergies. In veterinary nutritional evaluation studies, the most common foods associated with confirmed food allergies in dogs were beef, dairy, chicken, wheat, and soy (and it was beef, fish, and chicken for cats) (Source). Any protein can cause an allergy in a food allergic dog, and some dogs may have problems with more than one protein, however the consumption of grains in a healthy animal will not cause allergy.
Other Ingredients in The Pets Table Recipes
Ensuring a complete and balanced meal that gives your dog all the essential nutrients in a delicious way means using each ingredient purposefully. At The Pets Table we consider and adjust ingredients to provide additional benefits, such as increasing the amount of sweet potato in a recipe so that a healthy amount of potassium is available for healthy immune function, or including apples, carrots, and blueberries to provide additional B vitamins to support metabolic function – but also providing some phytonutrients like anthocyanins and flavonoids with antioxidant benefits. Every ingredient is carefully chosen for the nutrient benefits and consideration is taken towards possible drawbacks as well. Using too much broccoli and cauliflower in some pets may result in more significant (ahem) flatulence – oof, so ensuring appropriate inclusions of healthy foods, so that they get the benefit of the healthy phytonutrients in broccoli such as sulforaphanes and carotenoids, without the drawback of the excessive toots.
Healthy food is an important building block for a healthy body and when our pets get complete nutrition we can see the benefits. Whether we see a shiny coat, or a happy and energetic doggo, it is clear that what they eat impacts their wellbeing. At The Pets Table we strive to ensure that we provide good nutrition backed by science, made with love, and designed to meet your dog’s needs.
Conclusion
Hopefully after reading through, you can see that both grain-free and grain-inclusive recipes can offer healthy options for your dog when they are properly formulated and carefully tested. Our recipes are carefully crafted by our Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist® and are tested regularly to ensure they provide the essential nutrients your dog needs to be their very best self. The Pets Table offers many different options to provide variety and you can find the best match to support your pets overall health and everyone’s’ happiness. Try our recipes for 50% off your first box and see for yourself.