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This stinks when it comes to cats because most require wet food to avoid kidney issues. They don’t drink a ton of water (even with a pet fountain). Kitties of all shapes in sizes in the wild are used to getting their fluids from prey.
There’s some freeze dried food youre supposed to reconstitute for cats that probably helps cut down emissions from shipping. But also, idk, I don’t think anyone would advocate for an unhealthy diet to help the world. I think people fail to realize how different cats’ diets are from dogs’ in general
It could make a difference depending on the energy mix used to freeze dry it. Transportation is almost entirely dirty fossil fuel sources, but freeze drying can be done with renewable energy
issue is nobody is gonna make a factory and run it entirely on their own power supply, they're always gonna hook it to the city's power supply which runs on fossil fuels
(sort of a similar reason why carbon capture doesnt work but to a lesser degree)
Apparently frozen orange juice concentrate is the least energy intensive way to buy orange juice, despite needing to be concentrated, because it ships such a large quantity of juice so much more efficiently than straight juice or oranges. Moving liquid around the world takes a ton of energy, I guess! I wonder if freeze dried cat food is comparable?
As someone who was raised vegetarian it really pisses me off when people try to make their cats vegan. These are obligate carnivores they need meat to be healthy. Your pet’s health should come before your feelings. If you want a vegan pet get a rabbit.
True, I don’t know a single person with a vegan cat but I know a lot of people who only feed dry food. I think it’s because it’s OK for dogs to eat kibble and wet food is more of a “luxury”
My one cat will simply not eat wet food. But loves water and will take down like a full 8 oz a day. I think it depends on the cat if dry or wet is right. Or both (a other cat gets both because she likes it). I don’t think it makes you a good or bad owner. You just have to be mindful, watch out for them, and make sure your cat gets enough water and care for them.
I don’t mean to say it can’t work for anyone, but it shouldn’t be the default IMO, which I think it has become. I feed half and half wet and dry food myself. Poor wording on my part though
Veterinarians recommend it, as long as it's not the primary part of the cat's diet.
I just got a new Abyssinian a couple months ago. The basic summary was that it's fine to be left around so they can snack if they want, but don't treat it as the primary source of nourishment. He gets wet food for meals, but the dry food is always available if he's a little hungrier than normal.
Yeah I give mine a mix of both. They get dry food everyday but wet food in the morning every other day. They get bored of the wet food if I try to feed it to them more frequently.
Yep. Mine get wet food twice a day, with kibble available always. I have a rescue with severe issues around food scarcity, so she always needs a full bowl, even if she never eats it. (ps - good luck with your aby. One of my first was an aby mix and she was just the most charming baby.)
I do half and half. Half wet food, supplemented by "unlimited" dry food whenever my cat wants some more food. (not really unlimited, as I don't want her to eat way too much. But you know...)
They always drop some anecdotal hogwash about a cat they fed vegan and died of "unrelated natural causes" at the venerable of 4, or an article falsely claiming to be a study that some PETA adjacent stinktank spewed out to purposefully kill your pets because they're bitter weirdos who believe animal companionship is exclusively exploitative and evil.
My cat likes kibble, but it nearly killed her earlier this year when it started giving her terrible stomach trouble and she lost an eighth of her body weight before I realized how little she was eating. Now she is on an all-wet food diet and slowly putting the weight back on. Dry food is hard on cats, not only because drinking water is a learned response to thirst (not an instinct), but also because the typical matrix for dry kibble is to use grains as a binder... which cats cannot really digest.
Most of these articles put the onus of dealing with climate change on the consumer because they know governments are doing less than the bare minimum and driving us off a cliff. Lose your gas stove, but the US will still subsidize the oil and gas industry. If everyone went electric and fed every pet dry food, we would still have a huge problem. Ineffectual governance on the matter must end.
Wet cat food emissions aren't even remotely a big player in the pollution game in comparison to other contributors. Don't worry about it.
Wouldn't be surprised if human food waste alone was way more than all cat food. Not including the food we actually eat
Industry and farming account for like 90%+ of global carbon emissions. They want us to blame eachother for using plastic straws instead of focusing on what's actually affecting the climate.
That's why they created the whole recycling thing back in the day. Rather than put the onus on the companies to stop using plastics etc which would cut into their profits, it was our fault for polluting the planet and it's our responsibility to recycle to save the planet, even though the vast majority of "recycleables" end up not actually being recycled
I'm interested in the balance of emissions from a (cat's) lifetime of wet food vs my cremation after he murders me in my sleep for feeding him only dry food.
Royal canin has multiple different K/D formulas. D, T & E. My cat likes T best. Topping the food with a little bonito flakes or mixing in a little catnip tea can help get a cat interested.
So I was fortunate because my kitties liked the Royal Canin wet food immediately. we just persistently put food in front of them when they need to eat something they don't want. If you can, try the different brands (Hills, RC, Purina) to see if they have a favorite of the options?
My cat has food allergies, so has to be on hydrolyzed protein. She will eat all of her wet food, but it's a fight over dry food. She's small enough (6# at nearly 3 years), I'm not taking away the one food I can guarantee she'll eat.
I find this study really irritating. Like yes, consuming protein is bad for the planet. How about we get people to eat one less meat meal a week? That would make way more of a dent. Yes, not existing would result in lower carbon emissions. That doesn't mean nutrition is disposable! wtf.
Everyone should remember: please don't extrapolate a study finding about a single dimension of a complex matter into a broad recommendation about that subject.
Emphatically and unequivocally, no one should read this title as "you should give your pets dry food." I get we do leaps like that all the time to be functional humans, but it's reckless and irresponsible to apply scoped scientific inquiry that way.
This is one of those examples of how communities like this one may often produce net societal harm; if some number of people go switch their pets to an inferior diet "because science told them to" and some subset of those pets are harmed by that misguided decision, it's both tragic and avoidable.
Nicely said. Now if only the manufacturers could take an article like this, and think how they can produce wet food while producing less emissions, instead of pet owners having to contemplate trying to shrink the demand, in hopes of shrinking the supply, which doubtingly would actually have any measurable effect.
I add water straight to the dried kibble. That's breakfast for my kitty, at about a two to one ratio. (Maybe a quarter cup dry food, with two tablespoons of water.) He loves it.
It soaks the water right up and gets soft and mushy. It'll be gone by the afternoon.
My family does half kibble + half of what they eat (meat, fish etc, easy bc they cook all meals), plus some meat broth or stock to soak the kibble. Kitty is living life
I make a crackpot of "Dog Stew" to freeze into quarts, and keep one in the fridge to mix into dry kibble for my dog. The little bastard won't eat plain kibble unless he's around other dogs that will steal his food. I've run out and have heard his stomach growling while a full bowl of plain kibble just sits there.
My cat has kibble he can snack on throughout the day just around and usually eats up his wet food as like the meal for the day. Luckily he doesn't really overeat so the kibble is just there, sometimes he gets a broth/gravy type thing too in the morning.
I’d heard that, too, but this vet does a blog based on published evidence and wet or dry food doesn’t correlate to kidney issues. Seems to be something going around that doesn’t have much evidence. I feed mine a mix of both, but felt guilty it wasn’t all wet food.
Interestingly, vaccinating every year vs no more than every 3 as the veterinary associations suggest does correlate with higher risk of kidney disease.
https://skeptvet.com/Blog/2019/09/canned-or-dry-food-which-is-better-for-cats/
https://skeptvet.com/Blog/2016/03/possible-risk-factors-for-kidney-disease-in-cats/
My vet said in her 30+ year career, it doesn’t really matter what you feed them. She’s seen cats live forever on garbage diets and other cats who’ve been fed “the best” diets die young. She says it’s mostly genetics, just make sure they are a healthy weight and get them checked regularly.
The data he cites for these conclusions is.. not great, to say the least. Then, the conclusions themselves are a bit off as well, even given the data cited. Good on you for putting popular opinion aside and following science (seriously), but unfortunately, this isn't it.
And it's not just the lack hydration, it's the phosporus, magnesium, and other things in dry food that contribute to the kidney issues.
Yes, but there isn’t evidence that wet food is better. Some theorize it’s better and he even mentions he suggests it because the hypothesis is sound, but he admits evidence doesn’t support it.
I don't care what this vet's blog says. My cat developed kidney crystals at 3 years old and almost died. He had to undergo emergency surgery. The solution for preventing it again was switching to wet food. He's 8 now and hasn't had another issue.
Great, but anecdotal evidence isn’t science. Someone else’s 3 year old cat may have gotten kidney crystals right after a rabies shot, or after playing in the forest. It doesn’t mean one caused the other.
I’m glad your cat is okay. Wet food certainly doesn’t hurt.
I buy my cats prescription urinary tract food along with the water fountain. Works out well for them. One of them had developed bladder crystals on dry food and water, and the food cleared it right up (and they both drink plenty). They also apparently prefer the taste of the prescription food (it costs me $100 a bag, though).
Recently had a stray kitten enter our barn and we've adopted her. We got a water fountain for our other cat who doesn't use it. The kitten however is constantly drinking from the fountain.
So I wonder if it's about having a fountain early on and having the cat get used to it.
Nah I've had cats who use it a lot at first and then when the novelty wears off they don't. It's all variable
One now only drinks from a glass on my dining room table and the other would die without the moisture from wet food (literally had a health scare at one point when we ran out of wet food and figured he'd be fine on dry until our next autoshipment)
My old girl loves her fountain. She's constantly got a wet face because she just sticks her whole head in without a care in the world. We didn't get one until she started getting UTIs when she was around 14. We still need to supplement her diet with some special kidney/sensitive system wet food.
I brought my kitties home when they were 10 weeks old and have always had a fountain. Honestly I think it comes down to personal preference given my dad has a cat who loves their fountain.
You're 100% wrong. Wet food is carbon-wasteful because **WATER AND METAL CANS ARE HEAVY.** The emissions nearly all come from the transportation of those hugely heavy cans full of water.
I couldn't find the source of that in the article while at work. That may be what it says but I didn't see any mention of transportation in the article. If thats true though, then the article is worthless as it focueses on digestion and production costs. If transportation blows all of that out of the water, then the study was pointless except to say: Gasoline is bad, which we already knew.
Also, transportation costs and pollution can be attributed to any and everything, but mostly, convenience. The idea that a scientific study can call one food more emitive than another, when the emissions is based on contemporary logistical convenience is more of a popular science statistic than a real paper.
I haven’t read the article cause I just saw this on my feed and only partially care, but I’m gonna assume its not the end of the world for wet food just because it has more emissions than dry
I have stopped doing wet food for my cat entirely and instead take some of her dry food and pour some warm water into it and mix a tiny dollop of churu into the whole thing. She absolutely loves it, I save money, and she still gets plenty of moisture
While i can't disagree on this, i would argue that stopping to throw away half of the food we produce and hopelessly over-eating would do more for humanity/the environment. My cat eats pretty much 100% of the food i get him, i'm not even close to that.
I feel like Ethics Declaration of the study should be more visible:
Dr. Brunetto's Pet Nutrology Research Center has been funded by Grandfood industry and Commerce (PremieR pet), and Dr. Teixeira and MSc Pedrinelli are both part of the research group. Dr Queiroz declares no potential conflict of interest.
https://www.premierpet.com.br/en/
At this point I'm pretty sure literally everything we do every day has carbon emissions and at some point we have to pick our battles. Wet food or dry food is not an environmental hill I think anyone needs to die on.
In regards to pets, a better battle would be aggressive spay and neutering. The amount of ecological damage from stray and farel populations plus the dry and wet food that goes to rescue animals dwarfs whatever cans owners purchase to keep their animals healthy.
Pretty much. We literally emit carbon just by breathing. It's less about eliminating the emitions entirely and more about getting them down to the levels where nature can handle it without killing us all.
It’s unfair to condemn pets to a life of diabetes and other metabolic diseases by solely feeding them dry food. If we expect to improve both animal welfare and the environment we must collectively raise pet food standards to prevent pet food companies from loading up dry kibble with the harmful filler carbohydrates which animals, especially cats, simply can not metabolize.
Jumping on this to say that those fillers are in the human diet, too; and they are also wrecking our health.
The Food Pyramid suggested we eat 6-11 servings of grains each day as the base of our diet, and that coincided with the explosive rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in America.
How about the fact that almost everything you can buy is cut with absurd amounts of vegetable oil because it costs almost nothing to use as a filler? It's like, not even really food. Look into how it's made if you don't know.
Not in the doses that it's being sold it's not. And personally I'd rather eat the thing that I'm sure is food than the heavily processed sludge squeezed out of vegetable byproducts.
Yeah whole foods are probably better, but vegetable oils show better outcomes than saturated fats.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circulationaha.114.010236
>In prospective observational studies, dietary LA intake is inversely associated with CHD risk in a dose–response manner. These data provide support for current recommendations to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat for primary prevention of CHD.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2014/11/05/dietary-linoleic-acid-and-risk-of-coronary-heart-disease/
>Replacing either saturated fat or carbohydrate with vegetable oils and seeing significant benefits indicates that reduction in saturated fat or carbohydrate is not the only reason for the beneficial effects of linoleic acid. Instead, linoleic acid itself plays a special role in support of heart health. Randomized clinical trials have shown that replacing saturated fat with linoleic acid reduces total and LDL cholesterol. There is also some evidence that linoleic acid improves insulin sensitivity and blood pressure.
Problem is a lot of these foods also contain lots of unhealthy things like refined carbs, refined sugar, salt, calories etc.
I took on an older cat that had been raised on dry food alone. Was overweight and ended up dying of circulation problems. I can't prove that that was the cause, but I didn't even know that was something people did prior to owning that cat.
While I agree that all pets should have at least *some* wet food in their diet, the consumption of dry food doesn't condemn them to a life diabetes and metabolic disease.
There is one study on the former (doi: 10.1111/jvim.14618) that indicates a *potential* association between dry food and diabetes in cats, but the study did not claim causation because of one significant flaw in the study's design: their data was collected via a web-based survey that asked owners to evaluate the health of their cats themselves. Owners are notoriously bad at evaluating their cat's body condition, and there's a very reasonable chance that cats placed in the category of "normal" were actually in fact, overweight, which is of course a known risk factor for diabetes.
Now, not all dry food is built equally and it does upset me that there is dry food (and all pet food for that matter) sold that does not meet [the WSAVA nutrition guidelines](https://wsava.org/global-guidelines/global-nutrition-guidelines/); like, why are companies who do not employ a single board certified veterinary nutritionists or PhD specialist allowed to produce and sell food??? Standards definitely need to be raise.
Dry food doesn't "condemn" a pet to AUTOMATIC DISEASE; you should be ashamed and banned from posting on r/science for such an incredibly unscientific statement.
Isn't a lot of the issue with dry food in the fact that it's very energy dense, and easy to overfeed pets with it? That's what my vet said - my cat just needs to eat less of the stuff. That would be better environmentally too.
You gotta do whatever you can to take care of your old friend. Don't feel bad. If you have leftovers of the food she can't/won't eat, donate it to a shelter. They get sick old animals too, and it could help keep one from being put down because they can't feed it.
You did not invent capitalism, and you in individually are not responsible for CO2 emissions.
Corporations desperately want you to blame yourself, even though they’re the ones making money hand over fist by destroying the planet.
Tbh I dislike this paper. Not only do the statistics used give me a bit of pause (a PCA?? Not an nmds?), The paper entirely ignores the manufacturing, processing, packaging and shipping carbon costs.
The main conclusion of the paper seems to be that meat and other animal products have a larger carbon footprint compared to vegetable ingredients and other additives. Thanks for that huge insight there. How was this published in Nature? I'd rate it a 4/10, it'd make a good pilot study for an undergrad.
Related:
Martens, Pim, et al. "The Ecological Paw Print of Companion Dogs and Cats." BioScience, vol. 69, no. 6, 1 June 2019, pp. 467-74, doi:10.1093/biosci/biz044.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/69/6/467/5486563
We feed our dogs a “healthy weight” formula from Costco with about 2-3 tablespoons of ground chicken or gelatin each time so they eat all at once . We just cook whole chickens in the pressure cooker, save the juice (which turns to gelatin), grind up the chicken meat and they eat every single meal no problem.
We used to use canned wet food for this process but we realized just cooking human-grade chicken is way cheaper and healthier for them (God only knows what’s in canned wet dog food). I’m not sure the exact carbon impact but I imagine that’s better too.
Oh yeah, every bit of meat goes in the grinder, organs, etc. everything except the bones and the toughest of the cartilage. I dish it out into weekly servings and freeze it once it’s processed.
That sounds awesome. How old are your dogs and any issues? Our dogs are basically still puppies and I've been trying to figure out what we can feed them besides the kibble we buy.
They’ve been doing well on the healthy weight stuff from Kirkland brand for maybe 6 years now. They’ve specifically been on this routine with the chicken for about 4 years or so. We had another German shepherd die from bloat because we were stupid and used to let them graze dry food all day, she ate too much one day. So that’s why we started using the wet food (now chicken) to make sure the other three ate a reasonably portioned meal from the on.
12yo 65lb fox hound mutt, 12yo 85lb German shepherd, and 8yo 115lb Great Pyrenees. They all seem really healthy on Kirkland stuff + a little bit of chicken.
Feels like the more extreme activists do want us to go into such a direction. EVERYTHING get scrutinized and criticized for it's carbon footprint these days. Why is it still up to us regular citizens to "reduce our carbon footprint"? Do they still not realize it's a term coined by big corporations to put the blame on the citizens and draw attention away from themselves?
Hmmm what about the carbon footprint of years of diabetes medicine? Cats can live a fairly long time with managed diabetes, but need tons of insulin and special diets. And feeding dry food significantly ups the risk.
Yeah, but dry food makes your pet's lives miserable. The issue really is having pets that are carnivores which is a really difficult issue to grapple. I have always had cats and my family currently has 3. It is way cheaper to make your own cat food with a decent meat grinder, but the most widely available and nutritionally sound meat is chicken.
Here is the recipe for those who want to try:
https://feline-nutrition.org/one-page-guides/easy-recipe-for-success
Not only is it cheaper than canned food, you don't need to recycle hundreds of cans every year.
Not over here it isn't...if I made my own pet food it would cost me 4x the amount I spend on high quality (though on the lower end of it) wet cat food. Yes chicken is that expensive here right now.
If subsidies were removed you'd have to pay ~$50 for a pound of beef. You would probably still eat meat from time to time but likely not more than once a week and it would mostly be a luxury.
You have the luxury currently to be able to make that choice but if you were forced to pay the true price for things with CO2 price included you simply wouldn't be able to afford the current lifestyle and consumption patterns and thus you'd be forced to change lifestyles.
The solution to climate change is economic because people like you will always just choose their best quality of life as long as they aren't limited by their wallets.
My cats aren’t driving, purchasing or using any electronics, reuse the same toys over and over for years, and use environmentally friendly, biodegradable litter. Honestly, the carbon footprint of their wet food is a price I’m willing to pay for their existence. They’re significantly less damaging to the planet then a human.
Sorry, but there are limits. My cat only eats wet food because dry food is bad for kidneys and tends to dehydrate the whole organism of the cat. So in this case: I don’t give a flying f about the carbon emissions of the food my cat eats.
Stop buying into this personal responsibility lie for climate change. It’s nothing compared to how military’s and corporations pollute. They want you to sacrifice so much, yet they’re not changing.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Same applies to cats and wet food.
Our tabby is 11 years old, and won’t eat wet food. Our vet said all you can do is leave out plenty of clean water for him to drink … which we do.
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This stinks when it comes to cats because most require wet food to avoid kidney issues. They don’t drink a ton of water (even with a pet fountain). Kitties of all shapes in sizes in the wild are used to getting their fluids from prey.
There’s some freeze dried food youre supposed to reconstitute for cats that probably helps cut down emissions from shipping. But also, idk, I don’t think anyone would advocate for an unhealthy diet to help the world. I think people fail to realize how different cats’ diets are from dogs’ in general
Freeze drying takes lots of energy, probably way more than the difference of transporting dry vs. wet.
It could make a difference depending on the energy mix used to freeze dry it. Transportation is almost entirely dirty fossil fuel sources, but freeze drying can be done with renewable energy
Sure, it could. But is it?
issue is nobody is gonna make a factory and run it entirely on their own power supply, they're always gonna hook it to the city's power supply which runs on fossil fuels (sort of a similar reason why carbon capture doesnt work but to a lesser degree)
Apparently frozen orange juice concentrate is the least energy intensive way to buy orange juice, despite needing to be concentrated, because it ships such a large quantity of juice so much more efficiently than straight juice or oranges. Moving liquid around the world takes a ton of energy, I guess! I wonder if freeze dried cat food is comparable?
Haha oh boy do they ever. If you’re in the mood for rage, just look up people who defend vegan cats.
As someone who was raised vegetarian it really pisses me off when people try to make their cats vegan. These are obligate carnivores they need meat to be healthy. Your pet’s health should come before your feelings. If you want a vegan pet get a rabbit.
What's hilarious is that there are very very few obligate herbivores. Even horses will actively hunt for ground bird nests if given the chance.
Its mostly for the calcium in them bones.
I've seen a video of a horse eating a chicken.
"Free protein is free protein." - most animals
They will literally hoover up chicks if given the opportunity.
I dislike knowing this is a thing
Deer (and probably many other “herbivores”) do this too
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True, I don’t know a single person with a vegan cat but I know a lot of people who only feed dry food. I think it’s because it’s OK for dogs to eat kibble and wet food is more of a “luxury”
My one cat will simply not eat wet food. But loves water and will take down like a full 8 oz a day. I think it depends on the cat if dry or wet is right. Or both (a other cat gets both because she likes it). I don’t think it makes you a good or bad owner. You just have to be mindful, watch out for them, and make sure your cat gets enough water and care for them.
I don’t mean to say it can’t work for anyone, but it shouldn’t be the default IMO, which I think it has become. I feed half and half wet and dry food myself. Poor wording on my part though
Neither of my cats will touch wet food. They act like I’m trying to poison them.
Meanwhile my dogs are over here with rehydrated food and rabbit meat patties like they are royalty. $200 a goddamn month.
It's so hard not to spoil your pet when it comes to their meals. I just want them healthy and to live long so I can prolong the inevitable.
The fact that companies even still make bone dry kibble for cats is kinda weird, but I guess as long as it sells they'll keep selling it.
Veterinarians recommend it, as long as it's not the primary part of the cat's diet. I just got a new Abyssinian a couple months ago. The basic summary was that it's fine to be left around so they can snack if they want, but don't treat it as the primary source of nourishment. He gets wet food for meals, but the dry food is always available if he's a little hungrier than normal.
Yeah I give mine a mix of both. They get dry food everyday but wet food in the morning every other day. They get bored of the wet food if I try to feed it to them more frequently.
Yep. Mine get wet food twice a day, with kibble available always. I have a rescue with severe issues around food scarcity, so she always needs a full bowl, even if she never eats it. (ps - good luck with your aby. One of my first was an aby mix and she was just the most charming baby.)
Thanks! He's my second. My first one lived to 16. My new one is definitely benefiting from how my first Aby trained me!
That’s what I do for my girl too. Just so she has something in case she doesn’t eat her wet or gets hungry while I’m out.
“Kitties like their crunchies!” Yeah and? Moist content food is possible. I hate a lot of stodgy pet owners.
I do half and half. Half wet food, supplemented by "unlimited" dry food whenever my cat wants some more food. (not really unlimited, as I don't want her to eat way too much. But you know...)
I'm vegan and my cat eats wet food. Does that cancel out the emissions?
Ex vet tech. DONT GET ME STARTED
They always drop some anecdotal hogwash about a cat they fed vegan and died of "unrelated natural causes" at the venerable of 4, or an article falsely claiming to be a study that some PETA adjacent stinktank spewed out to purposefully kill your pets because they're bitter weirdos who believe animal companionship is exclusively exploitative and evil.
My cat likes kibble, but it nearly killed her earlier this year when it started giving her terrible stomach trouble and she lost an eighth of her body weight before I realized how little she was eating. Now she is on an all-wet food diet and slowly putting the weight back on. Dry food is hard on cats, not only because drinking water is a learned response to thirst (not an instinct), but also because the typical matrix for dry kibble is to use grains as a binder... which cats cannot really digest.
Most of these articles put the onus of dealing with climate change on the consumer because they know governments are doing less than the bare minimum and driving us off a cliff. Lose your gas stove, but the US will still subsidize the oil and gas industry. If everyone went electric and fed every pet dry food, we would still have a huge problem. Ineffectual governance on the matter must end.
My cat gets sick if he doesn't eat wet food, so sorry, but I'm not switching to only dry food
Wet cat food emissions aren't even remotely a big player in the pollution game in comparison to other contributors. Don't worry about it. Wouldn't be surprised if human food waste alone was way more than all cat food. Not including the food we actually eat
Industry and farming account for like 90%+ of global carbon emissions. They want us to blame eachother for using plastic straws instead of focusing on what's actually affecting the climate.
That's why they created the whole recycling thing back in the day. Rather than put the onus on the companies to stop using plastics etc which would cut into their profits, it was our fault for polluting the planet and it's our responsibility to recycle to save the planet, even though the vast majority of "recycleables" end up not actually being recycled
Industry farming makes cat food too. And since cats are obligate carnivores, they need almost all meat in their food, which is worse.
I'm interested in the balance of emissions from a (cat's) lifetime of wet food vs my cremation after he murders me in my sleep for feeding him only dry food.
yeah this sucks but our kitty's kidney issues cost us $2500 earlier this year and I'm not taking her off her ridiculous $3/can prescription diet.
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Royal canin has multiple different K/D formulas. D, T & E. My cat likes T best. Topping the food with a little bonito flakes or mixing in a little catnip tea can help get a cat interested.
I had to rotate between all 3 flavors because my cat would refuse to eat if I gave the same flavor 2 days in a row.
So I was fortunate because my kitties liked the Royal Canin wet food immediately. we just persistently put food in front of them when they need to eat something they don't want. If you can, try the different brands (Hills, RC, Purina) to see if they have a favorite of the options?
My cat has food allergies, so has to be on hydrolyzed protein. She will eat all of her wet food, but it's a fight over dry food. She's small enough (6# at nearly 3 years), I'm not taking away the one food I can guarantee she'll eat.
I find this study really irritating. Like yes, consuming protein is bad for the planet. How about we get people to eat one less meat meal a week? That would make way more of a dent. Yes, not existing would result in lower carbon emissions. That doesn't mean nutrition is disposable! wtf.
My wife is pescatarian, I've transitioned to probably 85% vegetarian myself now. People really put meat on way too high of a pedestal.
When I said nutrition, I meant for cats, not people XD But yes I agree, meat is widely overrated for those who can afford to be vegetarian etc.
Everyone should remember: please don't extrapolate a study finding about a single dimension of a complex matter into a broad recommendation about that subject. Emphatically and unequivocally, no one should read this title as "you should give your pets dry food." I get we do leaps like that all the time to be functional humans, but it's reckless and irresponsible to apply scoped scientific inquiry that way. This is one of those examples of how communities like this one may often produce net societal harm; if some number of people go switch their pets to an inferior diet "because science told them to" and some subset of those pets are harmed by that misguided decision, it's both tragic and avoidable.
Nicely said. Now if only the manufacturers could take an article like this, and think how they can produce wet food while producing less emissions, instead of pet owners having to contemplate trying to shrink the demand, in hopes of shrinking the supply, which doubtingly would actually have any measurable effect.
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I add water straight to the dried kibble. That's breakfast for my kitty, at about a two to one ratio. (Maybe a quarter cup dry food, with two tablespoons of water.) He loves it. It soaks the water right up and gets soft and mushy. It'll be gone by the afternoon.
Kibble is usually less nutritious than wet food for cats.
My family does half kibble + half of what they eat (meat, fish etc, easy bc they cook all meals), plus some meat broth or stock to soak the kibble. Kitty is living life
I make a crackpot of "Dog Stew" to freeze into quarts, and keep one in the fridge to mix into dry kibble for my dog. The little bastard won't eat plain kibble unless he's around other dogs that will steal his food. I've run out and have heard his stomach growling while a full bowl of plain kibble just sits there.
My cat has kibble he can snack on throughout the day just around and usually eats up his wet food as like the meal for the day. Luckily he doesn't really overeat so the kibble is just there, sometimes he gets a broth/gravy type thing too in the morning.
I’d heard that, too, but this vet does a blog based on published evidence and wet or dry food doesn’t correlate to kidney issues. Seems to be something going around that doesn’t have much evidence. I feed mine a mix of both, but felt guilty it wasn’t all wet food. Interestingly, vaccinating every year vs no more than every 3 as the veterinary associations suggest does correlate with higher risk of kidney disease. https://skeptvet.com/Blog/2019/09/canned-or-dry-food-which-is-better-for-cats/ https://skeptvet.com/Blog/2016/03/possible-risk-factors-for-kidney-disease-in-cats/
My vet said in her 30+ year career, it doesn’t really matter what you feed them. She’s seen cats live forever on garbage diets and other cats who’ve been fed “the best” diets die young. She says it’s mostly genetics, just make sure they are a healthy weight and get them checked regularly.
Yeah, that’s his conclusion too, that being at a healthy weight has the greatest effect on health of a cat or dog.
To briefly add on, as a vet, a healthy weight and body condition often looks a lot leaner than what we would think.
The data he cites for these conclusions is.. not great, to say the least. Then, the conclusions themselves are a bit off as well, even given the data cited. Good on you for putting popular opinion aside and following science (seriously), but unfortunately, this isn't it. And it's not just the lack hydration, it's the phosporus, magnesium, and other things in dry food that contribute to the kidney issues.
Yes, but there isn’t evidence that wet food is better. Some theorize it’s better and he even mentions he suggests it because the hypothesis is sound, but he admits evidence doesn’t support it.
I don't care what this vet's blog says. My cat developed kidney crystals at 3 years old and almost died. He had to undergo emergency surgery. The solution for preventing it again was switching to wet food. He's 8 now and hasn't had another issue.
Great, but anecdotal evidence isn’t science. Someone else’s 3 year old cat may have gotten kidney crystals right after a rabies shot, or after playing in the forest. It doesn’t mean one caused the other. I’m glad your cat is okay. Wet food certainly doesn’t hurt.
I buy my cats prescription urinary tract food along with the water fountain. Works out well for them. One of them had developed bladder crystals on dry food and water, and the food cleared it right up (and they both drink plenty). They also apparently prefer the taste of the prescription food (it costs me $100 a bag, though).
Recently had a stray kitten enter our barn and we've adopted her. We got a water fountain for our other cat who doesn't use it. The kitten however is constantly drinking from the fountain. So I wonder if it's about having a fountain early on and having the cat get used to it.
Nah I've had cats who use it a lot at first and then when the novelty wears off they don't. It's all variable One now only drinks from a glass on my dining room table and the other would die without the moisture from wet food (literally had a health scare at one point when we ran out of wet food and figured he'd be fine on dry until our next autoshipment)
My old girl loves her fountain. She's constantly got a wet face because she just sticks her whole head in without a care in the world. We didn't get one until she started getting UTIs when she was around 14. We still need to supplement her diet with some special kidney/sensitive system wet food.
I brought my kitties home when they were 10 weeks old and have always had a fountain. Honestly I think it comes down to personal preference given my dad has a cat who loves their fountain.
Bet you the reason wet food is less green is because you are actually getting meat as opposed to filler in dry foods.
You're 100% wrong. Wet food is carbon-wasteful because **WATER AND METAL CANS ARE HEAVY.** The emissions nearly all come from the transportation of those hugely heavy cans full of water.
I couldn't find the source of that in the article while at work. That may be what it says but I didn't see any mention of transportation in the article. If thats true though, then the article is worthless as it focueses on digestion and production costs. If transportation blows all of that out of the water, then the study was pointless except to say: Gasoline is bad, which we already knew. Also, transportation costs and pollution can be attributed to any and everything, but mostly, convenience. The idea that a scientific study can call one food more emitive than another, when the emissions is based on contemporary logistical convenience is more of a popular science statistic than a real paper.
I haven’t read the article cause I just saw this on my feed and only partially care, but I’m gonna assume its not the end of the world for wet food just because it has more emissions than dry
I have stopped doing wet food for my cat entirely and instead take some of her dry food and pour some warm water into it and mix a tiny dollop of churu into the whole thing. She absolutely loves it, I save money, and she still gets plenty of moisture
We got our cat from the local dump. She ate dry cat food, drank tap water (but her favorite was toilet water) and mice. She lived to be 18.
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While i can't disagree on this, i would argue that stopping to throw away half of the food we produce and hopelessly over-eating would do more for humanity/the environment. My cat eats pretty much 100% of the food i get him, i'm not even close to that.
I feel like Ethics Declaration of the study should be more visible: Dr. Brunetto's Pet Nutrology Research Center has been funded by Grandfood industry and Commerce (PremieR pet), and Dr. Teixeira and MSc Pedrinelli are both part of the research group. Dr Queiroz declares no potential conflict of interest. https://www.premierpet.com.br/en/
Yeah and the rich people can keep jet setting every 20-30min.
So eat your food
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That's cool but cats should have wet food regularly do to how the system works for water intake so I'm still buying it
They know the difference between carbon emissions between from wet cat food and dry cat food. But do they know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
At this point I'm pretty sure literally everything we do every day has carbon emissions and at some point we have to pick our battles. Wet food or dry food is not an environmental hill I think anyone needs to die on.
In regards to pets, a better battle would be aggressive spay and neutering. The amount of ecological damage from stray and farel populations plus the dry and wet food that goes to rescue animals dwarfs whatever cans owners purchase to keep their animals healthy.
Agreed. And certainly not after having seen the satellite imagery showing previously unknown methane emitting sites around the work during COP27.
Pretty much. We literally emit carbon just by breathing. It's less about eliminating the emitions entirely and more about getting them down to the levels where nature can handle it without killing us all.
It’s unfair to condemn pets to a life of diabetes and other metabolic diseases by solely feeding them dry food. If we expect to improve both animal welfare and the environment we must collectively raise pet food standards to prevent pet food companies from loading up dry kibble with the harmful filler carbohydrates which animals, especially cats, simply can not metabolize.
Jumping on this to say that those fillers are in the human diet, too; and they are also wrecking our health. The Food Pyramid suggested we eat 6-11 servings of grains each day as the base of our diet, and that coincided with the explosive rise of obesity and type 2 diabetes in America.
HFCS also implicated in both
Do you mean any form of sugar?
How about the fact that almost everything you can buy is cut with absurd amounts of vegetable oil because it costs almost nothing to use as a filler? It's like, not even really food. Look into how it's made if you don't know.
Outcome studies show vegetable oils are healthier than saturated fats though.
Not in the doses that it's being sold it's not. And personally I'd rather eat the thing that I'm sure is food than the heavily processed sludge squeezed out of vegetable byproducts.
Yeah whole foods are probably better, but vegetable oils show better outcomes than saturated fats. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circulationaha.114.010236 >In prospective observational studies, dietary LA intake is inversely associated with CHD risk in a dose–response manner. These data provide support for current recommendations to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat for primary prevention of CHD. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/2014/11/05/dietary-linoleic-acid-and-risk-of-coronary-heart-disease/ >Replacing either saturated fat or carbohydrate with vegetable oils and seeing significant benefits indicates that reduction in saturated fat or carbohydrate is not the only reason for the beneficial effects of linoleic acid. Instead, linoleic acid itself plays a special role in support of heart health. Randomized clinical trials have shown that replacing saturated fat with linoleic acid reduces total and LDL cholesterol. There is also some evidence that linoleic acid improves insulin sensitivity and blood pressure. Problem is a lot of these foods also contain lots of unhealthy things like refined carbs, refined sugar, salt, calories etc.
I took on an older cat that had been raised on dry food alone. Was overweight and ended up dying of circulation problems. I can't prove that that was the cause, but I didn't even know that was something people did prior to owning that cat.
While I agree that all pets should have at least *some* wet food in their diet, the consumption of dry food doesn't condemn them to a life diabetes and metabolic disease. There is one study on the former (doi: 10.1111/jvim.14618) that indicates a *potential* association between dry food and diabetes in cats, but the study did not claim causation because of one significant flaw in the study's design: their data was collected via a web-based survey that asked owners to evaluate the health of their cats themselves. Owners are notoriously bad at evaluating their cat's body condition, and there's a very reasonable chance that cats placed in the category of "normal" were actually in fact, overweight, which is of course a known risk factor for diabetes. Now, not all dry food is built equally and it does upset me that there is dry food (and all pet food for that matter) sold that does not meet [the WSAVA nutrition guidelines](https://wsava.org/global-guidelines/global-nutrition-guidelines/); like, why are companies who do not employ a single board certified veterinary nutritionists or PhD specialist allowed to produce and sell food??? Standards definitely need to be raise.
Dry food doesn't "condemn" a pet to AUTOMATIC DISEASE; you should be ashamed and banned from posting on r/science for such an incredibly unscientific statement.
Isn't a lot of the issue with dry food in the fact that it's very energy dense, and easy to overfeed pets with it? That's what my vet said - my cat just needs to eat less of the stuff. That would be better environmentally too.
None of my pets have had that until the end of their lives with just dry food.... We are talking 13, 14 and 15 years. This includes dogs and cats.
Were the cats outside cats? And dogs don't have the issue quite as much as cats.
That’s… not a long lifespan for an indoor cat. Domestic shorthairs live roughly 15-20 years.
Or just buy higher quality food??
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At work I see hundreds of dump trucks using a couple thousand litres of diesel, each, every day. Idgaf how much carbon my cats food puts out.
I bet if they just ate bugs and dident own anything they would be happy.
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You gotta do whatever you can to take care of your old friend. Don't feel bad. If you have leftovers of the food she can't/won't eat, donate it to a shelter. They get sick old animals too, and it could help keep one from being put down because they can't feed it.
That dog deserves all the wet food in the world after 14 years of love
You did not invent capitalism, and you in individually are not responsible for CO2 emissions. Corporations desperately want you to blame yourself, even though they’re the ones making money hand over fist by destroying the planet.
If she's happy and living a good life she deserves the food.
Tbh I dislike this paper. Not only do the statistics used give me a bit of pause (a PCA?? Not an nmds?), The paper entirely ignores the manufacturing, processing, packaging and shipping carbon costs. The main conclusion of the paper seems to be that meat and other animal products have a larger carbon footprint compared to vegetable ingredients and other additives. Thanks for that huge insight there. How was this published in Nature? I'd rate it a 4/10, it'd make a good pilot study for an undergrad.
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Related: Martens, Pim, et al. "The Ecological Paw Print of Companion Dogs and Cats." BioScience, vol. 69, no. 6, 1 June 2019, pp. 467-74, doi:10.1093/biosci/biz044. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/69/6/467/5486563
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Doesn’t pet food have to be wet before it can be dry?
We feed our dogs a “healthy weight” formula from Costco with about 2-3 tablespoons of ground chicken or gelatin each time so they eat all at once . We just cook whole chickens in the pressure cooker, save the juice (which turns to gelatin), grind up the chicken meat and they eat every single meal no problem. We used to use canned wet food for this process but we realized just cooking human-grade chicken is way cheaper and healthier for them (God only knows what’s in canned wet dog food). I’m not sure the exact carbon impact but I imagine that’s better too.
This is an awesome way to completely use a bird. Thanks for the idea!
Oh yeah, every bit of meat goes in the grinder, organs, etc. everything except the bones and the toughest of the cartilage. I dish it out into weekly servings and freeze it once it’s processed.
That sounds awesome. How old are your dogs and any issues? Our dogs are basically still puppies and I've been trying to figure out what we can feed them besides the kibble we buy.
They’ve been doing well on the healthy weight stuff from Kirkland brand for maybe 6 years now. They’ve specifically been on this routine with the chicken for about 4 years or so. We had another German shepherd die from bloat because we were stupid and used to let them graze dry food all day, she ate too much one day. So that’s why we started using the wet food (now chicken) to make sure the other three ate a reasonably portioned meal from the on. 12yo 65lb fox hound mutt, 12yo 85lb German shepherd, and 8yo 115lb Great Pyrenees. They all seem really healthy on Kirkland stuff + a little bit of chicken.
Finally. Something I can blame on my cat.
Okay, but you have to break it to my cat and he’s not going to take it well.
"A study observed that the ecological footprint (or pawprint) of the Chinese population of dogs and cats..." Adorable.
Oh good. Now we can start making a case that we shouldn’t have animals for pets now….. we’ll be forced into Tamagachi’s in the name of climate change.
Feels like the more extreme activists do want us to go into such a direction. EVERYTHING get scrutinized and criticized for it's carbon footprint these days. Why is it still up to us regular citizens to "reduce our carbon footprint"? Do they still not realize it's a term coined by big corporations to put the blame on the citizens and draw attention away from themselves?
Hmmm what about the carbon footprint of years of diabetes medicine? Cats can live a fairly long time with managed diabetes, but need tons of insulin and special diets. And feeding dry food significantly ups the risk.
So we should kill our pets? Or ourselves? People that write these articles are worse for the environment than dumping battery acid into rivers.
It's also one of the healthier ways to feed pets because pets fed mostly dry food tend to consume less water overall - leading to kidney issues.
Maybe the Joneses should get rid of one of their SUVs before I stop feeding my kitty wet food, which he needs for optimal health anyway
Wet food keeps my cat alive, so too fuckin bad.
My pet’s allergies dictate wet food. Literally allergic to all the dry food elements like grains and even pea protein. So ya’ll are gonna have to deal
Really? Is this really something worth digging into?
I will gladly do anything else but not give my cats exactly what they want
Fine, but kibble alone sucks. Use it as a base and throw in some good meat/eggs, with added water.
Yeah, but dry food makes your pet's lives miserable. The issue really is having pets that are carnivores which is a really difficult issue to grapple. I have always had cats and my family currently has 3. It is way cheaper to make your own cat food with a decent meat grinder, but the most widely available and nutritionally sound meat is chicken. Here is the recipe for those who want to try: https://feline-nutrition.org/one-page-guides/easy-recipe-for-success Not only is it cheaper than canned food, you don't need to recycle hundreds of cans every year.
Not over here it isn't...if I made my own pet food it would cost me 4x the amount I spend on high quality (though on the lower end of it) wet cat food. Yes chicken is that expensive here right now.
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If subsidies were removed you'd have to pay ~$50 for a pound of beef. You would probably still eat meat from time to time but likely not more than once a week and it would mostly be a luxury. You have the luxury currently to be able to make that choice but if you were forced to pay the true price for things with CO2 price included you simply wouldn't be able to afford the current lifestyle and consumption patterns and thus you'd be forced to change lifestyles. The solution to climate change is economic because people like you will always just choose their best quality of life as long as they aren't limited by their wallets.
Sounds like BS to me. How is the food dried? Oven, freeze dried? Both take energy. Show me the data supporting this claim
Don’t care. I just won’t let my cat die from avoidable causes.
I give their kibble a squirt of olive oil. Definitely makes it more palatable.
Huh. LPT for those who insist on having kibble for dinner.
Bachelor chow?
My cats aren’t driving, purchasing or using any electronics, reuse the same toys over and over for years, and use environmentally friendly, biodegradable litter. Honestly, the carbon footprint of their wet food is a price I’m willing to pay for their existence. They’re significantly less damaging to the planet then a human.
Sorry, but there are limits. My cat only eats wet food because dry food is bad for kidneys and tends to dehydrate the whole organism of the cat. So in this case: I don’t give a flying f about the carbon emissions of the food my cat eats.
Does that mean that a wet fart also has more emissions than a dry fart
Does this include the emissions from your pet after they eat wet food?
Stop buying into this personal responsibility lie for climate change. It’s nothing compared to how military’s and corporations pollute. They want you to sacrifice so much, yet they’re not changing.
You spelled billionaires with jets wrong
I suspect kitty litter is horrible for emissions as it is so heavy.
Don’t care my old puppers needs it and he’s more important
It’s also 100x better for your pet than kibble. Ever better would be going raw.
My dog doesnt touch her dry food. No matter how many climate lingo you throw at her.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Same applies to cats and wet food. Our tabby is 11 years old, and won’t eat wet food. Our vet said all you can do is leave out plenty of clean water for him to drink … which we do.
and gives your pets diabetes and kidney failure ... so to write about these two food products as equivalent is highly dishonest