In animal nutrition school, we must read veterinary texts that include but are not limited to veterinary nutrition for veterinary technicians, clinical nutrition for vets, Royal Canin Veterinary Nutrition, and Purina Veterinary Diets. Veterinarians read these same texts in veterinary medicine school.
I can personally attest to the fact that these textbooks that Royal Canin, Hills, and Purina write are pretty biased and come across as more of a defensive text on why their food is “okay” to feed pets rather than a proper educational and nutritional account of what pets require anatomically.
Unfortunately, the ingredients are extremely low quality in most veterinary-approved diets and diets designed for specific health conditions. Veterinary kibble often contains meat by-products, meals, chemicals, preservatives, synthetic vitamins and minerals, fillers, dyes, etc. What you pay for that food to be veterinary-approved differs from the quality you would expect.
However, it makes sense why veterinarians recommend these foods. The nutrition texts they read in school for their short class in nutrition are written by the companies that manufacture the leading kibble brands. They spend the bulk of their time studying critical life-saving medicine. Their guest professors and lectures provided on nutrition are typically veterinarians or veterinary reps who work for Hills Science Diet, Royal Canin, or Purina veterinary diets. They recommend what they know and, more importantly, what they have been taught. If a veterinarian wants to learn more from a non-biased party and receive more education on nutrition, they have to attend classes after veterinary school.
I don’t blame any veterinarian for endorsing kibble. As health educators and practitioners, we work off what we have been taught in school.
Nutrition academies luckily educate pet nutritionists in many different areas of nutrition using all types of texts, giving us a different, less biased perspective. We read books on Anatomy and Physiology, pharmacology, vitamin supplementation, raw feeding, cooked diets, disease and disease prevention, and even the veterinary nutrition textbooks to understand better why veterinarians recommend the low-quality foods that they often do. We learn what nutrition is best for pets’ species classification and what they should eat based on their genetics and anatomy.
Let me leave you with this simple question – If a veterinarian doesn’t know much about canine and feline nutrition, only what the low-quality veterinary kibble companies have taught them, does it matter that a veterinarian backs the food you are feeding?