The long and short of it is, One of the lemmy.world admins demoted a mod of the vegan community over a comment about how cat can be fed a 100% vegan diet with supplements and the cat will be fine.
I once gave a vegan friend of mine pause for thought when I pointed out that we probably shouldn’t be keeping pets in the first place if those pets aren’t in their natural habitat doing what their species evolved to do. They had cats.
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point
Well I understand you point for sure. Mine is just larger than just the diet. If you are so vegan that you would force your diet into.you pet, shoud you have a pet at all?!! Isn’t that captivity?? Why is it better?? And why even have a cat if you know there are other types of pets that are vegan by nature?
If it’s a one in a 1000 cases that the cat was inherit and can’t be rehomed than that cat is too old to adapt into a new diet without being very distressed. So why torture an animal if you are a lover?
And if it’s a new animal… well get a turtle or a bird or none, since vegans are against animal exploitation and captivity.
I’m sorry but I get really angry when people come with the “Rules only apply when it suits me” shit
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point.
A person understands the reason they’re eating only plants with no animal byproducts. An animal doesn’t. An animal is just confused and irritated that their food was changed for the worse by their owner. If their diet and mountain of supplement pills/powders did not actually meet their dietary needs because it wasn’t an exact match for their regular food or natural prey, they would still end up malnourished. And not every cat’s dietary needs are the same or stay the same as they age.
Malnourished or not, you also wouldn’t be able to stop your cat from finding a mouse or insect which snuck into your home and devouring them to enhance their compromised diet. You cannot make a carnivore vegan, you can only abuse them into living in a way they do not naturally live and do not want to live, until they find a way to avoid you for just long enough to go against your wishes and savage another animal, as is their instinctive nature.
Furthermore, do you really think animals have no joy in what they eat, that that’s only a human quality? Nutrition doesn’t matter to the animal, they just want to eat what they want to eat. Cats almost never turn down an offer of cream or milk despite 90% or more of them being lactose intolerant. It’s not nutrients their body needs or can absorb, and actively makes them feel ill. But they want it anyway because it’s tasty and they aren’t able to consider the consequences of their actions as far in advance as humans can.
Edit: In fact, going off that same point but for humans, you could probably make a human live off some kind of tasteless nutrient bar that gives everything you could need, but it wouldn’t mean they’d enjoy it. Oh wait, we did do that before, as a cruel punishment for prisoners in the US, fucking nutraloaf!
You’re still making them do something they didn’t consent to. They will still chew on bugs and small prey animals (when they get access to them, which isn’t often for indoor cats), because it’s etched into their behavior. They will take every opportunity they get. You can’t make a cat vegan, you can only force a cat on a vegan diet. Can’t you understand the qualitative difference there?
The stupidity of some vegas has no boundaries. It makes me so sad to know those poor animals are being torture. You are right but we can’t really debate dumb
I would encourage people contemplating it’s use to instead get any of the many herbivore companions instead of trying to make the square peg fit in the round hole.
but I’m asking a simple question: if the cat enjoys the food, and it has all the nutrition the cat requires for a healthy life, would you have any objection?
Why have an animal to.torture it? Get a parrot of a fish then. Don’t adopt an animal, that can’t understand, and push stupid human values to it. A person that says wants to “protect” animal should respect nature. but you know… vegans are jot the best at logical thinking
Cats require a few nutrients which aren’t naturally present in plants, such as taurine. Fortunately, those nutrients are easily synthesised, and added to vegan cat foods in order to make them nutritionally complete.
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point.
That article basically says what the study says. There is no real evidence that a vegan diet is healthier for cat; they point to owner bias as the cause of any perception that these studies show it is healthier.
My point was that there is no evidence that a vegan diet is impossible for a cat. I wouldn’t try it because we don’t know it’s safe, but we also don’t know that it’s necessarily unsafe. I’m just bothered by people who jump to “vegan diet equals dead/tortured cat” because we don’t have any evidence that supports such a dramatic claim.
Nah mate. You literally said " there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse" and then tried to link to a faulty science study that got debunked.
Vegan diets for cats are notoriously difficult due to the fact it runs completely counter to the diet a cat has evolved to process. If you’re so dedicated to the vegan ideal that you will attempt to force an obligate carnivore - key word obligate - to consume a diet completely contrary to its digestive system then why are you keeping a pet in the first place?
this is a very emotive issue. apparently cats have to consent to everything. and their life with humans must be 100% natural. otherwise it is animal abuse.
Wtf is happening in the comments. Why are people getting so insane over this topic over and over again? If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what? The only two reasons to object are if someone is 100% convinced such a product doesn’t and cannot exist or if they’re entirely ideological about it. And if we have to apply the naturalistic fallacy that only the natural way can be morally okay, why of all things argue about pet food? I really, really don’t get it why people get so intensely emotional about it.
If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what?
Because the vegan cat food that claims to be nutritionally complete isn’t. Whenever these brands have their products studied they turn out to not be nutritionally complete. Feeding them to a cat is abuse.
So they should simply start producing one that is. Problem solved. No law of nature prevents us from supplementing the right amount of taurine and b12, so there is no reason to be irrational about it.
It’s actually more complicated than that. Of the like 6 studies done since the 90s, several found that cats didn’t absorb supplements in the same way, ie with a supplemented diet for taurine they would not find taurine in the cats plasmas after 6 weeks
And that’s the problem with this whole “but it CAN be done! I’m special!” Attitude. It leads to comments like yours that boil down to “the magic capitalism machine should just make it happen cause of course it’s possible” when the tiny amount of research done found that it’s only questionably possible, and is mostly a shitty idea.
It’s this pushing shitty ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.
It’s this shitting on new ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.
And ironically this is exactly what vegans are often blamed for btw. People turn off their brain, get all emotional, and feel justified on hating someone for muder, abuse, and torture (all claims from this very comment section) without the slightest bit of nuance. I just searched for “vegan cat food nutrition study” and very randomly picked the first search result, which brought me to a study from 2023 showing that cats fed a vegan diet were overall even healthier. So at the very least we have to agree that this isn’t as clear cut as many here claim with utmost confidence.
You found a study where they asked cat owners to self report all the data. As demonstrated in this thread and others, vegans are divorced from reality when it comes to what cats actually need to eat, so I’d say that’s not the most reliable source.
Additionally:
“This research and its publication open access was funded by food awareness organisation ProVeg International (https://proveg.com). AK received this award ID: Oct2019-0000000286”
Then look for a recent study yourself. I certainly won’t waste my time, since I hardly believe you would chance your mind even with the most robust data available. You’ve made up your mind.
There’s no reason why supplementation shouldn’t be possible. After all we’re already doing that. Obviously we can test for it (since so many people in this comment claimed that vegan brands were tested and found to be insufficient), so nothing stops us from putting taurine into the cat food to the point where it reaches the required amounts. It’s that simple. If you need to stay offended than for all means keep going. Just know that you behave just like the vegans you’re so annoyed about, and it’s showing.
There’s no reason why supplementation shouldn’t be possible. After all we’re already doing that
Zooming in on this statement right here, we’re already doing that, and it doesn’t work.
Obviously we can test for it (since so many people in this comment claimed that vegan brands were tested and found to be insufficient), so nothing stops us from putting taurine into the cat food to the point where it reaches the required amounts
Except for the parts where it doesn’t work
It’s that simple
It reallyreally isn’t.
If you need to stay offended than for all means keep going.
I’m not offended by anything, I think the whole discussion is comically stupid. The research done into the subject is lacking, because it’s a bad idea and everyone involved knows that. I guess there are worse things for an internet forum to be arguing about.
Just know that you behave just like the vegans you’re so annoyed about, and it’s showing.
I feed my cats the food they need to survive, fortunately.
What should stop a company from supplementing the right amount of all the nutrients listed? The article simply claims it’s not nutritionally complete, but that would only be an argument against the brands currently available and tested, not against the idea in principle.
Studies have shown that cats do not absorb adequate amounts of these nutrients from synthetic supplemented versions, it’s why vegan pet food that is technically nutritionally complete in the bag isn’t when it’s in the cat.
Vegans should instead opt for a non-carnivorous pet
The long and short of it is, One of the lemmy.world admins demoted a mod of the vegan community over a comment about how cat can be fed a 100% vegan diet with supplements and the cat will be fine.
What an asshole vegan. How stupid can you be to say you love animals and say something as dumb as this
I once gave a vegan friend of mine pause for thought when I pointed out that we probably shouldn’t be keeping pets in the first place if those pets aren’t in their natural habitat doing what their species evolved to do. They had cats.
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point
Well I understand you point for sure. Mine is just larger than just the diet. If you are so vegan that you would force your diet into.you pet, shoud you have a pet at all?!! Isn’t that captivity?? Why is it better?? And why even have a cat if you know there are other types of pets that are vegan by nature?
If it’s a one in a 1000 cases that the cat was inherit and can’t be rehomed than that cat is too old to adapt into a new diet without being very distressed. So why torture an animal if you are a lover? And if it’s a new animal… well get a turtle or a bird or none, since vegans are against animal exploitation and captivity.
I’m sorry but I get really angry when people come with the “Rules only apply when it suits me” shit
what’s wrong with it?
Cats are obligate carnivores. They need meat. A vegan cat is a dead cat.
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point.
sure. but the above post stated with supplements. so if the food is palatable and nutritional to the cat, then what does it matter?
A person understands the reason they’re eating only plants with no animal byproducts. An animal doesn’t. An animal is just confused and irritated that their food was changed for the worse by their owner. If their diet and mountain of supplement pills/powders did not actually meet their dietary needs because it wasn’t an exact match for their regular food or natural prey, they would still end up malnourished. And not every cat’s dietary needs are the same or stay the same as they age.
Malnourished or not, you also wouldn’t be able to stop your cat from finding a mouse or insect which snuck into your home and devouring them to enhance their compromised diet. You cannot make a carnivore vegan, you can only abuse them into living in a way they do not naturally live and do not want to live, until they find a way to avoid you for just long enough to go against your wishes and savage another animal, as is their instinctive nature.
Furthermore, do you really think animals have no joy in what they eat, that that’s only a human quality? Nutrition doesn’t matter to the animal, they just want to eat what they want to eat. Cats almost never turn down an offer of cream or milk despite 90% or more of them being lactose intolerant. It’s not nutrients their body needs or can absorb, and actively makes them feel ill. But they want it anyway because it’s tasty and they aren’t able to consider the consequences of their actions as far in advance as humans can.
Edit: In fact, going off that same point but for humans, you could probably make a human live off some kind of tasteless nutrient bar that gives everything you could need, but it wouldn’t mean they’d enjoy it. Oh wait, we did do that before, as a cruel punishment for prisoners in the US, fucking nutraloaf!
and if it was palatable?
You’re still making them do something they didn’t consent to. They will still chew on bugs and small prey animals (when they get access to them, which isn’t often for indoor cats), because it’s etched into their behavior. They will take every opportunity they get. You can’t make a cat vegan, you can only force a cat on a vegan diet. Can’t you understand the qualitative difference there?
The stupidity of some vegas has no boundaries. It makes me so sad to know those poor animals are being torture. You are right but we can’t really debate dumb
Bro do you like not understand the concept of pets
Giving a dog/cat shots in doing something to them they didn’t consent to.
Your logic is completely absent
do cats consent to eating cat biscuits?
I don’t think palatable nutritional vegan cat food exists, at least none with any empirical evidence its safe for cats long-term.
but if it did, would you have any objection?
I would encourage people contemplating it’s use to instead get any of the many herbivore companions instead of trying to make the square peg fit in the round hole.
but I’m asking a simple question: if the cat enjoys the food, and it has all the nutrition the cat requires for a healthy life, would you have any objection?
Why have an animal to.torture it? Get a parrot of a fish then. Don’t adopt an animal, that can’t understand, and push stupid human values to it. A person that says wants to “protect” animal should respect nature. but you know… vegans are jot the best at logical thinking
if the animal enjoys the food and it has all the nutrition the animal needs then how is it torture?.
Do you also rant at people who keep their cats inside against their will?
You keep making this logical jump that a cat would enjoy eating shitty food with supplements. They would not. A cat would enjoy some chicken.
but what if they did enjoy eating the biscuits? Would you knock the food out of their mouths?
Cats require a few nutrients which aren’t naturally present in plants, such as taurine. Fortunately, those nutrients are easily synthesised, and added to vegan cat foods in order to make them nutritionally complete.
I thought the issue was bioavailability of those nutrients was called into question?
oh god WHY HAVE A DUCKING CAT?!!! Get a bird or a turtle please!
Look at the research before getting emotional.
While it seems dogs need atleast some meat, the scientific consensus is cats can be healthy with a vegan diet and proper supplementation.
I’m not vegan nor do I have a cat, but this debate interested me and I’ve read a couple literature reviews and big papers on the subject.
Cats aren’t what they were 15’000 years ago. Domestication has turned them into an entirely different species.
The thing I’m wondering whenever I see this discussion is:
Should a vegan have a pet that kills for fun?
Should they keep it inside all day to stop it from killing?
I don’t get why a vegan would want to have a cat at all.
Long pork is often a euphemism for people meat.
So you’re just fine with using and abusing an animal when it gets you what you want. Gotcha.
This is a nice comment explaining why the vegan ideology is just bored people feeling morally superior
Cats are obligate carnivores. They have evolved to eat meat and only meat. A vegan diet can and will kill them.
if cats are carnivores then why does mine eat corn every chance it gets, sometimes going for fresh corn over refrigerated steak?
Same reason people sometimes chew on paper.
Actually if you’re american, corn is also in cat food because it’s freaking everywhere so cats can associate it with food
My bias is minimal; I don’t practice veganism for myself of my pets.
I think your opinion is completely ignorant. While there isn’t clear scientific evidence that conclude a vegan cat diet is better, there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse. So, is your opinion based in reality or your intuition?
“However, there is little evidence of adverse effects arising in dogs and cats on vegan diets.”
Domínguez-Oliva, Adriana, et al. “The Impact of Vegan Diets on Indicators of Health in Dogs and Cats: A Systematic Review.” Veterinary Sciences, vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2023, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile, dx.doi.org/10.3390/vetsci10010052. Accessed 29 Aug. 2024.
Naturally, organizations such as the ASPCA tend toward caution and advise against vegan diets, but your statement reaches far beyond that point.
My opinion is based on fact. Alex Whittaker did a great takedown of that study, have an ABC brief
That article basically says what the study says. There is no real evidence that a vegan diet is healthier for cat; they point to owner bias as the cause of any perception that these studies show it is healthier.
My point was that there is no evidence that a vegan diet is impossible for a cat. I wouldn’t try it because we don’t know it’s safe, but we also don’t know that it’s necessarily unsafe. I’m just bothered by people who jump to “vegan diet equals dead/tortured cat” because we don’t have any evidence that supports such a dramatic claim.
Nah mate. You literally said " there is isn’t clear scientific evidence to conclude it is inately worse" and then tried to link to a faulty science study that got debunked.
Vegan diets for cats are notoriously difficult due to the fact it runs completely counter to the diet a cat has evolved to process. If you’re so dedicated to the vegan ideal that you will attempt to force an obligate carnivore - key word obligate - to consume a diet completely contrary to its digestive system then why are you keeping a pet in the first place?
Jesus, stop downvoting someone for asking a question what the fuck is wrong with you people
This is 100% not an innocent question.
this is a very emotive issue. apparently cats have to consent to everything. and their life with humans must be 100% natural. otherwise it is animal abuse.
Oh, you were downvoted because people correctly detected a sealion.
potentially. I have no idea what this means.
okay, thanks. fairrr
Wtf is happening in the comments. Why are people getting so insane over this topic over and over again? If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what? The only two reasons to object are if someone is 100% convinced such a product doesn’t and cannot exist or if they’re entirely ideological about it. And if we have to apply the naturalistic fallacy that only the natural way can be morally okay, why of all things argue about pet food? I really, really don’t get it why people get so intensely emotional about it.
Because the vegan cat food that claims to be nutritionally complete isn’t. Whenever these brands have their products studied they turn out to not be nutritionally complete. Feeding them to a cat is abuse.
So they should simply start producing one that is. Problem solved. No law of nature prevents us from supplementing the right amount of taurine and b12, so there is no reason to be irrational about it.
It’s actually more complicated than that. Of the like 6 studies done since the 90s, several found that cats didn’t absorb supplements in the same way, ie with a supplemented diet for taurine they would not find taurine in the cats plasmas after 6 weeks
And that’s the problem with this whole “but it CAN be done! I’m special!” Attitude. It leads to comments like yours that boil down to “the magic capitalism machine should just make it happen cause of course it’s possible” when the tiny amount of research done found that it’s only questionably possible, and is mostly a shitty idea.
It’s this pushing shitty ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.
Taurine should be the easiest to supplement, since it’s already widely synthesized to supplement traditional pet food with. Three decades old studies really shouldn’t be the only thing we’re looking at before we’re going at each others necks about something.
It’s this shitting on new ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.
And ironically this is exactly what vegans are often blamed for btw. People turn off their brain, get all emotional, and feel justified on hating someone for muder, abuse, and torture (all claims from this very comment section) without the slightest bit of nuance. I just searched for “vegan cat food nutrition study” and very randomly picked the first search result, which brought me to a study from 2023 showing that cats fed a vegan diet were overall even healthier. So at the very least we have to agree that this isn’t as clear cut as many here claim with utmost confidence.
You found a study where they asked cat owners to self report all the data. As demonstrated in this thread and others, vegans are divorced from reality when it comes to what cats actually need to eat, so I’d say that’s not the most reliable source.
Additionally:
“This research and its publication open access was funded by food awareness organisation ProVeg International (https://proveg.com). AK received this award ID: Oct2019-0000000286”
Riiiiiiiight….
Then look for a recent study yourself. I certainly won’t waste my time, since I hardly believe you would chance your mind even with the most robust data available. You’ve made up your mind.
There’s no reason why supplementation shouldn’t be possible. After all we’re already doing that. Obviously we can test for it (since so many people in this comment claimed that vegan brands were tested and found to be insufficient), so nothing stops us from putting taurine into the cat food to the point where it reaches the required amounts. It’s that simple. If you need to stay offended than for all means keep going. Just know that you behave just like the vegans you’re so annoyed about, and it’s showing.
Zooming in on this statement right here, we’re already doing that, and it doesn’t work.
Except for the parts where it doesn’t work
It really really isn’t.
I’m not offended by anything, I think the whole discussion is comically stupid. The research done into the subject is lacking, because it’s a bad idea and everyone involved knows that. I guess there are worse things for an internet forum to be arguing about.
I feed my cats the food they need to survive, fortunately.
If only this was readily researchable…
But yeah, animal cruelty gets people het up. This is the internet, don’t fuck with cats
What should stop a company from supplementing the right amount of all the nutrients listed? The article simply claims it’s not nutritionally complete, but that would only be an argument against the brands currently available and tested, not against the idea in principle.
Studies have shown that cats do not absorb adequate amounts of these nutrients from synthetic supplemented versions, it’s why vegan pet food that is technically nutritionally complete in the bag isn’t when it’s in the cat.
Vegans should instead opt for a non-carnivorous pet