Hi, new follower but I’ve seen your posts reblogged via talesfromtreatment! I’m currently in the midst of applying to vet school, and so of course I’ve been interested in the grain-free discourse. Do you have any thoughts on the grain-free options that Hills and Purina offer? I’m mainly confused about them since I’ve heard that legumes in boutique grain-free diets are the suspected cause of the higher rates of DCM, and yet (at least some of) Hills’ and Purina’s grain-free recipes contain peas.
Good luck on getting into vet school!
So, I don’t recommend grain free as a general rule. However, if someone is insistent on going grain-free, I recommend the Purina and Hill’s diets to them because at least those diets have gone through lifetime feeding studies and we know that they don’t cause DCM, and not one case of nutritionally-mediated DCM has been reported from any of the WSAVA-compliant companies. When I toured the Hill’s facility about 4 years ago I asked why they still produced grain-free diets and they said that they didn’t believe in the fad but they wanted owners to have a known safe grain-free option. They have since gotten rid of their Ideal Balance line which had probably 20 options and was grain-free; they now offer only one simple grain-free option for dogs and one for cats. I would rather that than Blue Buffalo, raw, homemade, Natural Balance, Acana, etc.
