Types of Food

Dogs are carnivores. Their digestive system, from the mouth through their intestines, is designed to cope with a meat diet. The dog's teeth are adapted to tear food into swallowable-sized chunks rather than to grind the food, and their stomachs can digest food in this state.

Dogs have probably evolved from animals that lived on a diet of other animals. However, as with the fox in modern times, meat was not always available to them, and the dog is able also to digest and survive on a diet that is mostly vegetable; but a complete absence of meat is likely to lead to nutritional deficiencies.

Foods, whether for dogs or humans, have to supply energy, from which, as well as being the means of movement, the animal's body derives heat, materials for growth and repair, and substances that support these activities.

For dogs, this involves a satisfactory mixture of the major nutrients - carbohydrates, fats and proteins - in proportions similar to those required for a healthy human diet; they must also have a sufficient intake of the minor nutrients -vitamins and minerals - in proportions that do differ significantly from the needs of humans.

Dog foods may be divided into several broad categories. For many years the so-called moist diets held the major part of the market. They are the tinned foods seen on every supermarket shelf. Over the past few years other types of food have infiltrated the market.