Association Between Diet Type and Owner-Reported Health Conditions in Dogs in the Dog Aging Project

Alternative dog diets, such as home-cooked and raw, have grown in popularity. Claims regarding health benefits for these diets have limited supporting evidence.

To evaluate whether feeding home-cooked, commercial raw, or homemade raw diets is associated with health conditions compared to extruded diets.

Twenty-seven thousand four hundred seventy-eight dogs.

Cross-sectional, survey-based study. We analyzed a large cross-sectional dataset (n = 27 478) of dogs fed homemade cooked (n = 1214), commercial raw (n = 961), homemade raw (n = 329), or extruded (n = 24 974) diets. We investigated associations between diet and 13 owner-reported health condition categories. Logistic regression was used for the analysis of all health conditions.

Controlling for sex, age, and body size or breed, a home-cooked diet was associated with higher odds of gastrointestinal (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.4; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.2-1.7), renal (aOR: 1.3; CI: 1.1-1.6), and hepatic disease (aOR: 1.6; CI: 1.2-2.0) compared to an extruded diet. A commercial raw diet was associated with higher odds of respiratory disease (aOR 1.7; CI: 1.3-2.3) compared to an extruded diet.

Analysis of cross-sectional data can only suggest effects of diet on health and are most useful for hypothesis generation or for testing existing hypotheses.