07/03/2023
Interesting reading
WHY YOU NEED TO AVOID SOY IN PETS...HEADS UP FEEDERS OF "VEGAN" PET FOOD..
Folk keep asking me what this "hipro soya" is Omni pet food (and many such brands that promote plant-based diets for meat-eaters). Well, let me tell you...
Like "corn gluten pulp", the dregs of the corn processing industry and "beet pulp", the dregs of the beet processing industry, hipro (meaning "high protein") soya is the squished remains of the yummy soybean oil refining industry.
To be fair, ultra-processed hipro soya protein powder (example of soy protein powder extraction attached...yum!) IS high in protein and, to be even more fair, it has the indigestible outer hulls removed. This puts this product a fair step ahead of the likes of corn gluten and beet pulp above, which are completely indigestible waste products often added to vet-recommended dry and canned foods to artificially boost the meagre protein content on the back of the packet (that dogs can't actually digest that protein is hardly relevant!!!).
Compared to cereal-based pet foods sold by vets, containing the legal minimum amount of protein you can include and still call your crackers complete (18% for adults and 22% for pups), Omni vegan pet food is a luxurious 30% protein (and 40-50% carbs, we are not told exactly), most of it, I assume, coming from this hipro soya.
However, as an ingredient for meat eaters, it's fair to say soy has its detractors. Adapted from my book "Feeding Dogs":
"...the high concentration of phytoestrogens found in soy, namely isoflavones, are known to have beneficial and harmful health effects on humans and dogs. Cerundolo et al. 2004 analysed the phytoestrogen content of 24 commercial dry pet foods that listed soy as an ingredient and found that all contained ‘phytoestrogens in amounts that could have biological effects when ingested long-term’.
Soy isoflavones, such as genistein and daidzein, have a similar function to human estrogen, albeit with weaker effects. Soy isoflavones can bind to estrogen receptors in the body and cause either weak estrogenic or anti-estrogenic activity.
Asides phytoestrogens, soy is also high in not only phytic acid - an "antinutrient" known to cause growth issues in humans when present in medium to high concentrations - but also trypsin inhibitors (trypsin is a digestive enzyme which breaks down proteins in the small intestine, messing with it can stunt growth in most animals studied)."
And we're not done picking on soy just yet. Processing soy protein is known to result in the formation of a number of nasties, including toxic lysinoalanine and highly carcinogenic nitrosamines (Google them!), free glutamic acid (a potent neurotoxin, made all the worse by the fact soy is notoriously high in aluminium because of chemicals used to grow it, all of which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys).
So, I personally would be very wary of soy for pets, certainly in the ultraprocessed form (love love love edamame beans from Thai restaurants...ever have those?!). I for one cannot see how it would be GOOD for the dogs guts. In fact, it's likely to pertrub them.
The following is taken from a review piece on bloat and torsion by Kruiningen, the scientist who first pointed the finger at cereal and soy for causing the shocking rise of bloat and torsion in dogs (rising x1500 times since 1970, for some reason...see his first expose "Acute gastric dilatation: a review of comparative aspects, by species, and a study in dogs and monkeys") and later became famous for realising that the gas produced in bloat and torsion was fermentation gas, coming up from the intestines and not in from the mouth (instantly dispelling the need of high feed stations and the concern re exercise in deep-chested dogs...for more see my piece on "Bloat" on DogsFirst .ie), meaning it was more likely a gut flora / digestion issue than anything else:
"...Every‐day feeding of rations consisting exclusively of cereal grains and soybean meal undoubtedly affects the gastric flora...Of additional concern is the technologically advanced, excessive processing that occurs in the manufacture of cereal grain, soybean dog food preparations...There is evidence suggesting that the replacement of a soybean-containing dry cereal product with a product without soybean meal has been successful in eliminating acute gastric dilatation."
In 2006, Raghavan et al. found no such effect when looking at just the labels of pet foods in bloat cases, though tests of the actual food did not occur, for some reason. Still, deep-chested dogs should beware. Perturbing gut flora is to be avoided at all costs. Studies show feeding raw results in less waste, less gas and more balanced gut flora communities. If worried about bloat and torsion, I can't see how these high plant-fibre foods are going to help.
I'm also extremely wary of ultra-refined oils like sunflower and rapeseed, and that's just out of the bottle. They're pure poison (no time for that now). I can only imagine what state they'd be in after being ultra-processed in the kibble formation process, and vegan pet foods use such oils in high dose.
It's almost like the issues we know ultra-processed vegan food for humans has is sort of present in the ultra-processed vegan foods for dogs, just potentially worse in the latter...being meat-eaters and all and thus being biologically adapted to meat, choosing meat-flavoured items (and shunning most carbs) in every taste trial ever conducted, all backed up with head-to-head studies showing raw fed dogs are SIGNIFICANTLY HEALTHIER than dogs veg largely vegan pet food.
But never let science get in the way of a profitable gimmick.
REFERENCE
Cerundolo, r., Court, M.H., Hao, Q. et al. (2004). Identification and concentration of soy phytoestrogens in commercial dog foods. American Journal of Veterinary Research. 65(5): 592–596
Image taken from "Soy Protein Products, Processing, and Utilization" Deak et al. 2008
