Scientific Study on RAW/Homecooked/kibble

marymrumfelt · Apr 27, 2012

The University of Illinois is the first do finally do a study comparing the three types of diets and and each diets outcome with respect to digestibility, fecal characteristics, urine characteristics, and serum chemistry of 9 domestic cats fed 3 different diet treatments. They explain why they use cats and say they expect the similar results in dogs. It's pretty interesting to see how carnivores, in this case cats, really don't digest the protein in kibble very well at all.

Check it out!

evolveanimalnutrition.blogspot.com/2012/03/raw-diet-research-finally.html?m=1

SheltieChe · Apr 28, 2012

great results for cats! Our kitty supplements very healthy nutrition for herself often and we feed her canned/ raw/ kibble whatever she wants to eat diet. Kibble is her least favored food.
It is great to see that more research being done on raw feeding. Hopefully "Mcdonald diet" for animals while not over but will get serious dent soon. Specially with all those recalls going... I like seeing in local petstores " Made in USA" labels

biowicks · Apr 28, 2012

I have searched high and low for this article, and cannot find it online anywhere. If anyone has any luck, please post a link. As a biologist, I just cannot buy into something from information posted in any blog. I need to see the original research. Get the big picture, so to speak.

marymrumfelt · Apr 28, 2012

biowicks said:
I have searched high and low for this article, and cannot find it online anywhere. If anyone has any luck, please post a link. As a biologist, I just cannot buy into something from information posted in any blog. I need to see the original research. Get the big picture, so to speak.

Here's an article on the study from the National Center for Biotechnology Information:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22003235

marymrumfelt · Apr 28, 2012

biowicks said:
I have searched high and low for this article, and cannot find it online anywhere. If anyone has any luck, please post a link. As a biologist, I just cannot buy into something from information posted in any blog. I need to see the original research. Get the big picture, so to speak.

I really did need this study to prove most of this, though. Being I have three raw fed dogs, I can easily see how they digest the protein much easier (less poop) than my cat, who eats kibble. It is nice to finally have some research on the subject, though!

Petitina · Apr 30, 2012

biowicks, I was able to get the article through proquest using my school's web of science account... but it took a bit of work.

It's an interesting study - two things off the top of my head are a bit worrisome, one, the sample size of 9 cats is low, almost too low to really come up with anything concrete. They did show statistical significance for some of the variables, but with comparing means of only 9...

Two, the diets weren't the same. It's a scanned pdf, so I can't copy the ingredients, but the kibble diet was chicken based, and the raw/cooked were beef. There were also differences in the other ingredients as well - the cooked/raw were exactly the same, but the kibble was not. So, it's hard to tell if the differences are attributed just to the ingredients, or something else beyond.

The one thing I would be comfortable saying after reading this study is based on their preliminary results, cooking a raw diet doesn't seem to change it, versus feeding it uncooked (same conclusion the authors had).

I think it would have been a better study if they had just compared the raw versus the cooked. Adding the kibble, with the different ingredients, muddies things. But, agreed, research on this is a good step. But this study does have its flaws, which hopefully will be addressed in other studies. More samples (more kitties) and more similar diets...

marymrumfelt · Apr 30, 2012

Petitina said:
biowicks, I was able to get the article through proquest using my school's web of science account... but it took a bit of work.

It's an interesting study - two things off the top of my head are a bit worrisome, one, the sample size of 9 cats is low, almost too low to really come up with anything concrete. They did show statistical significance for some of the variables, but with comparing means of only 9...

Two, the diets weren't the same. It's a scanned pdf, so I can't copy the ingredients, but the kibble diet was chicken based, and the raw/cooked were beef. There were also differences in the other ingredients as well - the cooked/raw were exactly the same, but the kibble was not. So, it's hard to tell if the differences are attributed just to the ingredients, or something else beyond.

The one thing I would be comfortable saying after reading this study is based on their preliminary results, cooking a raw diet doesn't seem to change it, versus feeding it uncooked (same conclusion the authors had).

I think it would have been a better study if they had just compared the raw versus the cooked. Adding the kibble, with the different ingredients, muddies things. But, agreed, research on this is a good step. But this study does have its flaws, which hopefully will be addressed in other studies. More samples (more kitties) and more similar diets...

Yeah, I agree it's just a start but honestly, there's no need to test this subject even because you can easily see for yourself. I test it every day as I have one animal who eats kibble and the rest all eat raw meat. You can tell by the end product how they digest the what they ate.

I don't really think the protein source in the kibble matters much. The "chicken" in the kibble is usually such a low percentage it's not probably going to affect much in terms of how they digest it. Most kibbles have hardly any actual meat in them. This study was seeing how they digest things that are processed and cooked at the degree kibble is vs how they digest a home cooked or a raw diet. I'm sure you could ask them and they'd be able to explain their reasoning for using two different protein sources.

I don't know if I agree with you on the sample size being too low. Being that it's actually harder to find a significant difference when you're dealing with a low sample means, I find that even more telling that there was a significant difference between the kibble/raw and home cooked diet. I'd like to see what the exact percentage of that just happening by chance alone was.

Petitina · Apr 30, 2012

Hi marymrumfelt!

The kibble had "chicken meal" as the first ingredient - they tested Natura food, so not quite as bad as Ol Roy - one of the researchers was funded from Natura, so maybe they wanted to test their best food? Or a new formula? Hard to know. I do wish they had posted percentages of all the ingredients for all three meals - good point.

I'm actually not sure if the exact recipes would make a difference, but it's just another variable that I wish they had controlled for. And to me, nine participants for a medical study still seems low - (their p values were less than or equal to 0.05 which will tell you about the chance) - but I think we both definitely agree that it's great that peer-reviewed research is starting to come out and that it will be interesting to see the repeatibility and expansion of this study. Thanks for posting about it - I would've missed it otherwise!

biowicks · Apr 30, 2012

As a biologist, I can't put any faith in a study where N=9. And, cats are true carnivores, whereas dogs are not. Plus, lesser stool is due to no fiber (from plant products). I worry about spoilage, parasites, and other such nasties with a raw food diet. It is true that dogs and their relatives eat raw in the wild, but they don't have the lifespan of domesticated animals, and they all have parasites. I am sticking to my kibble for the time being, that being the only thing that firmed up my puppy's stool. She really needed the fiber. Once that's straightened out, i will probably add cooked homemade food to her kibble. I don't eat raw food because of the parasite and spoilage issue and I don't want that for my pet, either. But, as always, this is just my personal preference. :smile2:

marymrumfelt · Apr 30, 2012

biowicks said:
As a biologist, I can't put any faith in a study where N=9. And, cats are true carnivores, whereas dogs are not. Plus, lesser stool is due to no fiber (from plant products). I worry about spoilage, parasites, and other such nasties with a raw food diet. It is true that dogs and their relatives eat raw in the wild, but they don't have the lifespan of domesticated animals, and they all have parasites. I am sticking to my kibble for the time being, that being the only thing that firmed up my puppy's stool. She really needed the fiber. Once that's straightened out, i will probably add cooked homemade food to her kibble. I don't eat raw food because of the parasite and spoilage issue and I don't want that for my pet, either. But, as always, this is just my personal preference.

Well, my dogs last week for example had a whole chicken -- feathers and everything. They ate on it about four days and it stayed out in the yard the entire time. They would eat as they pleased. They do this twice a month, every other week they get a whole prey item to snack on almost all week. They love it -- the riper the better for them! And you cannot make a blanket statement such as "they all have parasites." Let me tell you, my dogs get a fecal twice a year and in a year and a half have never had a parasite. They also haven't had flea medicine in over a year, so a raw diet can actually ward off fleas. You have the exact wrong idea. The raw diet puts them in the healthiest state, therefor parasites are simply not an issue due to their immune system being very good. The kibble, the carbs, cause damage to the immune system therefore it is easily invaded with parasites. (study done by on the immune system being compromised by processed food by Dr. Kollath of the Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm)

As far as the fiber, carnivores(which canines might not be obligate but are still very anatomically carnivores) have a short, relatively straight intestine where the nutrients from meat that is digested in the stomach are absorbed. they don't need fiber for this reason. Unless your dog has evolved faster than any other, she doesn't need fiber anymore than any other carnivore to have a solid poop.

I am glad to hear you'll switch to a home cooked diet! There's nothing good about a processed diet for a human or an animal.