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Originally Posted by pstinard  Not to beat a dead horse, but the caption to the third image was created by the New Zealand government, not by me. It reads: "New Zealand companies are well positioned in and pushing the "Prey Diet," the replicating a wild animals natural diet." Not only is that cynical (that the New Zealand companies are "pushing" a particular diet in order to increase meat exports), but it contains two typographical errors. I am not making this up. Oh, not to mention the first image I posted above, which also pushes the prey model by telling people to "visual their dog chasing a lamb," "visualize their dog chasing a deer," and tell consumers that rabbits and possums are "natural prey" in order to help with New Zealand's pest problems. How many Yorkies do you know who chase down lambs and deer to eat? Cynical, cynical, cynical.
In conclusion, I trust peer-reviewed research articles, not press releases issued by quasi-governmental industry representatives who are collaborating to dump their excess meat and pest animal exports on an unwitting public. |
I believe this *is* a peer-reviewed article. And a rather interesting one too. I don't want to say much more than that at this point, bc I actually need to read it a second time and digest it more fully.
Here is the article's "conclusion", which is always at the end of most any peer-reviewed article, and can help in terms of understanding the goals of the authors:
"To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study undertaken to investigate the relationship between physiological parameters such as macronutrient digestibility and faecal health score, and faecal microbial composition in dogs. We have shown that the microbiota changes in response to diet in dogs, with Clostridiaceae, Erysipelotrichaceae and Bacteroidaceae apparently central to the relationships between microbiota and intestinal health. The data suggest that when interpreting changes in microbial composition in relation to diet, comparisons to other species may not be valid. The data also provide a basis for future studies which may further characterise the functional role of the microbiota and how they interact with diet to influence health. The understanding gained by such studies could lead to a new definition of optimal nutrition for carnivorous pets, and a range of products based on that definition."
For me right now, the bottom line is that it's *very* encouraging to see (in layman's medical terms) what we call "in-out studies"; in other words, it's amazing to see such a deep-dive into the macronutrients and how they come out the other end - those are complicated studies, but could potentially tell us a LOT.
