EditorThe results of a new study revealing just how often you should feed your dog have come as a bit of a shock to researchers, who admit they felt ‘surprised’ by their findings.
The new study, published in GeroScience last week, saw a team of scientists examine data, collected by The Dog Aging Project since 2019, covering dogs of all ages, sizes, and breeds.
The information from more than 10,000 dogs was analyzed, to look for associations between diet and health conditions, such as skin, orthopedic, kidney, urinary, liver, cardiac, and neurological disorders.
The results proved to be intriguing, with the study suggesting that dogs fed, just once a day have fewer physical health issues, and better cognitive scores, compared to dogs fed more frequently.
The researchers explained in the study’s abstract: Controlling for sex, age, breed, and other potential confounders, we found that dogs fed once daily, rather than more frequently had lower mean scores on a cognitive dysfunction scale, and lower odds of having gastrointestinal, dental, orthopedic, kidney/urinary, and liver/pancreas disorders.
Therefore, we find that once daily feeding is associated with better health in multiple domains.
The rationale for twice-daily feeding in dogs is obscure, and our study suggests that more frequent feeding may, in fact, be suboptimal for several age-related health outcomes.
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