02/26/2026
To be AAFCO a 6 month study of 8 dogs is all that's required. 6 months?! Kidding me?
But I'm called uneducated or crazy bc I refuse to trust nutrition advice from a vet. If this is considered nutrition, your advice is objectively bad.
A pet owner recently went into the vets with a dog with itchy skin and ears. The vet prescribed a veterinary diet for dermatosis, aka, skin conditions.
Costing just €15 PER KILO, it's marketed as "a delicious dietetic dry food for dogs with dermatosis or excessive hair loss".
Sounds ideal for this patient.
The ingredients are: Purified rice starch, hydrolysed soya protein, soya oil, minerals, cellulose, hydrolysed protein, pork fat, fish oil.
...aaaannnd that's it.
Rice. Soy. Indigestible plant fibre (to get that protein content up), some pork fat and some fish oil. A vit/min pack at the end and presto, consider the skin NOURISHED.
It's science folks. Please trust it.
And aaaaalll this science just costs €15 per kilo guys!!!
From my side, the omega 3 in this product is doing the heavy lifting. It's 1.4% omega 3, which is a good dose, and studies show giving omega 3 to itchy skin dogs reduces itching and steroid need.
After analysing such diets (finding 10 of 12 were adulterated with proteins not on the label, making exclusion diets impossible on such products), Ricci et al. (2009) hypothesised the only reason they could find behind the partial amelioration of clinical symptoms on hypoallergenic diets was that they contained fats from fish oil, a welcome reprieve from all the omega 6 they usually contain.
Junk like this (€15 per kilo, did I mention that?!) keep pet owners feeding the ultra cheap, ultra processed, ultra high-carb, chemically preserved CRAP that gave their dog the skin condition in the first place.
Studies show REAL food plummets skin issues in dogs, reducing atopic dermatitis, skin inflammation, skin histamine expression, improving skin flora, improving skin health (by vet assessment), on and on. And most at risk are puppies
Look at all those studies below for God's sake!
And yet real food is never even CONSIDERED by veterinary dermatologists the world over.
Isn't that strange?!!
Just this "prescription" (has no medicinal qualitites so the use of that term is illegal from the outset, but this is petfood land...) crap, two thirds of which, studies show, fail to provide the MINIMUM nutrition to your pet necessary to sustain them over a six-month food trial.
For €15 a kilo.
You might as well save yourself a tonne of cash and feed them Cheerios and some Seven Seas fish oil caps.
Folk paying thousands to consult with special "skin consultants". And their advice, after aaalllll their training - keep feeding ultraprocessed crap, obvs, and take a variety of potent anti-inflammatory drugs for the symptoms that never seem to go away.
It's rotten. A crime against dogs at their most vulnerable.
A CRIME.
Pure and simple.
***
STUDIES SHOWING KIBBLE FUELS SKIN DISEASE IN DOGS (THE #1 REASON FOR VISITIING THE VET TODAY) :
A case-control study of risk factors for canine atopic dermatitis among boxer, bullterrier and West Highland white terrier dogs in Sweden.
Nødtvedt A, Bergvall K, Sallander M, Egenvall A, Emanuelson U, Hedhammar Å. Veterinary Dermatology. 2007;18(5):309–315. doi:10.1111/j.1365-3164.2007.00617.x.
Fresh Food Consumption Increases Microbiome Diversity and Promotes Changes in Bacteria Composition on the Skin of Pet Dogs Compared to Dry Foods.
Leverett K, Manjarín R, et al. Animals (Basel). 2022;12(15):1881. doi:10.3390/ani12151881.
Anderson et al. (2020) – Diet affects skin gene expression in both healthy and atopic dogs.
Anturaniemi J, et al. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2020;7:552251.
Hiney et al. (2021) – Clinical health markers in dogs fed raw meat–based diets vs commercial extruded kibble.
Hiney K, et al. PLoS ONE. 2021;16(7):e0255021.
Leverett et al. (2022) – Fresh Food Consumption Increases Microbiome Diversity and Promotes Changes on Skin.
Leverett K, et al. Animals (Basel). 2022;12(15):1881.
Sypniewski et al. (2024) – F***l microbiota composition, serum metabolomics, and markers of inflammation in dogs fed a raw meat–based diet vs dry kibble.
Hiney K, Sypniewski L, et al. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2024;11:1328513.
Puppyhood diet as a factor in the development of owner-reported allergy/atopy skin signs in adult dogs in Finland.
Hemida MBM, Vuori KA, Salin S, Moore R, Anturaniemi J, Hielm-Björkman A. Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine. 2021;35(5):2374–2382. doi:10.1111/jvim.16211.
Identification of modifiable pre- and postnatal dietary and environmental exposures associated with owner-reported canine atopic dermatitis in Finland using a web-based questionnaire.
Hemida M, Vuori KA, Salin S, Moore R, Anturaniemi J, Hielm-Björkman A. PLOS ONE. 2020;15(5):e0225675. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0225675
Environmental and phenotype-related risk factors for owner-reported allergic/atopic skin symptoms and for canine atopic dermatitis verified by veterinarian in a Finnish dog population.
Anturaniemi J, Uusitalo L, Hielm-Björkman A. PLOS ONE. 2017;12(5):e0178771. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0178771.
