“Pavlov’s our family, our child,” Anthony Osuna explained emphatically in an interview with the HPR. “We just want to make sure that we’re mindful with how we approach his health.” Osuna and his girlfriend Tram Nguyen were not willing to cut corners on this one. At his young age, Pavlov could have unknown allergies or sensitivities. They had to be cautious with his food. “We don’t want the excess ingredients, the fillers,” Nguyen added. No ingredients they could not pronounce. “He’s like our son.”
He is also a dog. A corgi, to be precise, with an Instagram audience of 105,000 followers. Over their two years of puppy parenthood, Osuna and Nguyen have documented their life with Pavlov on the account @pavlovthecorgi, posting photos of Pavlov wearing ugly sweaters, balancing spaghetti on his head, and frolicking on the beaches of Southern California.
Pets like Pavlov are moving up in the world. A generation ago, dogs and cats may have been fed the most economical kibble. “Our parents would always buy the cheaper dog food,” said Osuna. But today’s pet owners — who are increasingly conscious of their own food choices — have different priorities. In a recent survey of American pet owners, 90 percent of respondents said they considered their pets to be “family members” — and they are feeding them accordingly.
“It’s part of the humanization of the pet nutrition area,” said Lisa Freeman, a veterinary researcher at Tufts University, in an interview with the HPR. For many millennial pet owners, food is an expression of their broader belief system and an important part of their identity. Food purchases are political statements. Beautiful food is an expression of self-love and a source of pride.
However, pet owners have begun to anthropomorphize the animal relationship with food in ways that might be counterproductive. If specialty foods are not objectively healthier and do not fulfill pets’ fundamental desires for human love and contact, and if food becomes a replacement for expressions of love that truly matter to dogs and cats, it is worth questioning who benefits from specialty pet food purchases: pet or person?
Royal Treat-ment
Nowhere on earth do pet owners pay more for pet food than in the United States. In 2017, Americans spent 50 percent more on their pets than Western Europeans, six times more than Latin Americans, and 17 times more than Southeast Asians. The industry as a whole is “recession-proof,” growing steadfastly even during financial crises, wrote New York University nutritionist Marion Nestle in the New York Times.
Although this is partly because pet ownership has increased significantly since the 1980s, the pet food industry’s growth has been bolstered by a growing demand for specialty foods with curated ingredient lists. Sales of dog food labeled as “premium” rose consistently between 2012 and 2017 due to the increasing popularity of brands like Blue Buffalo and Freshpet. These brands’ formulas include “only the finest natural ingredients” and are free of things like corn and wheat, which have fallen out of favor with many millennials. Most importantly, pet owners want ingredient lists to be short, sweet, and purposeful.
“@StellaAndChewys new Limited Ingredient Diet Kibble has fewer ingredients for dogs with food sensitivities!” reads a post on Pavlov’s Instagram. “Their Cage-Free Duck recipe is Pavlov’s favorite!” Online, specialty formulas like Stella and Chewy’s may cost as much as $38 for 18 ounces. In comparison, $38 is enough to buy almost 46 pounds of dog food from a middle-of-the-line brand. The only way Osuna and Nguyen were able to afford Stella and Chewy’s at all was by securing a sponsorship from the company at the beginning of 2019. Their post about the cage-free duck food came with a “#ad” disclaimer.
Pet owners’ desire to connect with their pets serves as the justification for these spending sprees. “Food is the canine love language,” Osuna said. To well-intentioned pet owners, time spent analyzing an ingredients list reflects parental love, the kind associated with practical things like nutrition and health.
However, from a nutritional perspective, “reading the ingredients is a really unreliable way to select pet food,” Freeman explained. Pet food companies recognize the ingredients list’s outsized importance to consumers, and have turned it into a marketing opportunity. “They add in kale, lentils, blueberries,” she explained, and increase the price accordingly. All of these foods sound very tasty and healthful to humans, Freeman admits, but that is precisely the point: “A lot of the ingredients may be added much more for the owners than for the pets themselves.”
Many pet foods are little more than the animal iteration of a particular fad diet for humans. Gluten-free folks have grainfree foods, where ingredients like wheat and corn are either swapped for beans or omitted altogether. Paleo people have raw meat options. There are formulas made of freeze-dried meats and veggies. Some companies even make vegan pet formulas. For each individualized human health plan, there is an equivalent diet for pets.
Ingredient omissions or substitutions associated with these fad diets can also be a red flag for consumers. Especially with smaller producers, limited ingredients or specialty formulas may fall short of the “complete and balanced” criteria necessary to nourish animals’ health.
In fact, some research shows that many of these specialty diets actually harm pets. Freeman reported that up to 40 percent of raw meat diets are contaminated with salmonella, vegetarian diets are absolutely unsafe for cats, and home-cooked meals are “99.9 percent of the time” deficient in one or more key nutrients. Grain-free diets, which make up as much as 40 percent of the pet food market, are currently under investigation by the FDA for links to dilated cardiomyopathy, a heart disease in which the heart is weakened and its pumping ability is diminished. ‘Boutique’ and ‘exotic’ diets, which include ingredients as varied as garbanzo beans and kangaroo meat, may also play a part.
Trick or Treat
In northern Seattle, Dawn and Ben Ford run a mobile bakery for dogs called the Seattle Barkery. Since 2014, they have roamed the city’s farmer’s markets with a menu of dog-friendly treats. For a food truck, the menu is robust. There are cheesy donuts, bacon cupcakes, and even ice cream sundaes. Pet owners flock to the Barkery, tugged by pets who cannot seem to get enough.
“‘He won’t let me leave without getting something!’” Dawn said, quoting one of her customers in an interview with the HPR.
As a category, pet treats are the single fastest-growing sector of the pet food industry according to consumer analytics firm Euromonitor. Sales of cat treats, for example, have experienced double-digit growth over the past five years, with increases expected into the foreseeable future. In 2017, Americans spent $6.7 billion on treats, on top of the $22 billion that went into other pet food categories.
At the Seattle Barkery, Dawn explained that first-time customers often choose treats that they themselves could envision eating. The gluten-free bacon cupcakes and carrot bagels made with coconut oil draw in first-timers. But according to Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, these presentation games are meaningless to pets. “What you’re panicking over is what you want,” he said in an interview with the HPR. “Dogs don’t care whether they get a pink cupcake or a yellow muffin or dog-friendly whipped cream.” Instead, they care about other standards of presentation: Does the treat come with a pat on the head? A loving word?
The reason pets like treats, Bekoff said, is because they facilitate human-pet bonding. Pets have the overarching prerogative of interacting with their owners. It does not matter how many sprinkles are involved or how adorable their cupcake selfie will be on Instagram.
Sandra Woien, a philosophy professor at the University of Arizona, tries to think of dog treats from a utilitarian perspective in which money buys units of pleasure. If a dog derives five units of pleasure from a $1 treat its owner has at home and five units of pleasure from a $10 treat bought elsewhere, then the cheaper treat is the better choice. The pet is just as pleased, and the owner has $9 left over to spend on its well-being.
When consumers choose the expensive treats from elsewhere, they are paying for things that do not necessarily advance pets’ interests. Convenience may play a role, but Woien thinks there is a vanity component to public pet splurges; in an interview with the HPR, she likened feeding pets extravagant treats to carrying around a Louis Vuitton purse. While the purse’s logo flaunts status, pet treats signify love, or at least the appearance of love. “Look!” Freeman said, mocking social media posts showing off expensive treats, “Here’s my dog on Instagram with her $16 sundae from the hottest spot.”
This does not mean that the cheapest option is always the best, but rather that it may be good practice to view treats from a pet’s eyes. Rather than projecting human food preferences onto animals, an objective perspective could result in a happier pet. At the Seattle Barkery, where customers’ first question is whether any of the bakery items are grain-free, Ford prods customers to venture beyond the “easy” items. “We have chicken hearts or chicken feet,” she points out. These kinds of foods — unappetizing ‘scrap meat’ by most Americans’ standards — are highly nutritious. The dogs love them, and a subset of the Barkery’s most devoted customers frequently buy them out.
What Is A Treat?
In the United States in 2016, 54 percent of dogs and 59 percent of cats were overweight or obese, quite possibly because of an overindulgence in high-calorie treats. Unsurprisingly, this trend mirrors the United States’ human obesity crisis; over two thirds of Americans are currently overweight or obese.
To keep the pounds off, Freeman suggests that pet owners substitute high-calorie foods and treats with alternatives like apples, oranges, or even some vegetables. Pets do not see this as deprivation because they primarily value the nature of the interaction. “Anything can be a treat,” she said, “if you make it one.”
“If it’s put in a special place and made to be a special treat, [pets] will get very excited about it,” Freeman said. For example, Freeman’s dogs have grown to love carrots so much that she cannot even say the word out loud. “I actually have to spell it out,” she said, laughing.
Bekoff agreed: “I’ll bet if you give them something you have around your house right now, if you give it with caring and love, [your dogs] will be happy.” This is in agreement with the general consensus view that pets’ gustatory preferences are not nearly as finicky as our own. “Dogs will eat cat poop,” said Freeman simply. “They are not the most discerning eaters.”
Even Pavlov the corgi fusses much less over his diet than his owners do. “Given the choice, he’d probably just eat shredded cheese,” said Nguyen lightly. “Like me.”
“Pet owners love their animals. I love my animals. They’re a part of my family. I want to make sure they’re absolutely getting the best possible food,” Freeman told the HPR. She echoes virtually every pet owner’s sentiment, which shows that their dietary decisions come from a pure, well-intentioned place. But between calorie-laden treats and nutritionally inadequate diets, it is clear that human standards provide a poor lens through which to view pets’ well-being. “Some of the decisions people have made out of love may not actually be helping [pets],” Freeman said.
Providing health and happiness for our pets requires more than a simple child-pet analogy. “At the end of the day, Pav is just a symbolism of our child,” Nguyen concluded. “He’s a different species from us.”
Without humans to determine that they prefer specialty diets or beautifully-prepared treats, some dogs and cats may be better off eating a more traditional diet with limited human-esque treats. They might consume fewer excess calories, and avoid the effects of diet-related nutrient deficiency. Perhaps most beneficially, their owners would have more time and money to fulfill their pets’ most fundamental desire for human love and contact. This can be as cheap as a frisbee and as easy as a half hour outside — literally a walk in the park.
Although food is one of Pavlov’s love languages, he has another one: “Just spending time with a toy and [his owners] is all he needs,” Nguyen explained. No cupcakes required.
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