There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that’s not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn’t for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn’t something you can arbitrarily do.
Cats have dietary needs that would require them to eat meat in nature. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
I don’t understand why people upvote summaries that don’t even try to be objective. I honestly think the mods there do notably abuse their power to remove comments, but let people decide that for themselves. This commenter is telling you who to support while being confidently incorrect on the original issue.
For the record, science disagrees with you. According to an analysis of all current research, there is no statistically significant difference of cat heath when fed a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet. Of there is a similarly high quality study that finds that a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet is worse for cats I would love to see it.
The vegan diet we are talking about isn’t a bunch of vegetables, it’s a manufactured dry food specifically designed to have all the nutrients a cat needs.
People often use the obligate carnivore excuse, but use it in an unscientific way. Obligate carnivores have nutritional needs that can only be meet through meat in the wild, but humans are perfectly capable of manufacturing these nutrients. We are so good at it that we supplement these synthetic nutrients in meat based cat food already.
This is a contentious issue for most people, and it can be hard when you are very passionate about something to look at the evidence and change your opinion. I’ve looked at a decent number of studies on the topic recently, and they all seen to point to the conclusion that a diet without meat can be healthy for cats, so long as it contains all the nutrients they need.
A vet friend in a very trendy city encounters a lot of cats with significant health problems that stem from their owner’s attempt at a vegan diet, so whether or not it’s possible, too many people harm the health of their pets through attempting a vegan diet for it to be a safe thing to recommend trying
Yea that’s the thing.
I’m sure a team of scientists could eventually design an ethically sourced vegan cat food with synthetic versions of whatever is missing that could work fine for some cats.
The odds of a random lemming doing it right after reading one comment about it online is next to none.
Discussing it is one thing, recommending it and deleting anything that simply advises caution is weird.
Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of its big points is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.
Some great lines:
Cats on a high-protein vegetarian diet exhibited hypokalemia which accompanied recurrent polymyopathy. There was also increased creatinine kinase activity, likely reflecting the muscle damage caused by the myopathy, and reduced urinary potassium concentrations.
To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.
showed that plasma taurine concentrations decreased by approximately 87% after only 2 weeks on a vegetarian diet (from 122 μmol/L to 16μmol/L). By the end of the 6-week study, there was no detectable taurine in plasma. Taurine concentrations were not different between the potassium-supplemented and non-supplemented groups, with both groups showing this substantial drop in taurine.
To simplify: Taurine supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried
In cats fed vegetarian diets that were supplemented with potassium, a myopathy was seen within 2 weeks of the dietary change this was characterized by ventroflexion of the head and the neck. The cats also showed lateral head resting, a stiff gait, muscular weakness, unsteadiness, and the occasional tremor of the head and pinnae.
To simplify: your car feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit
Weight loss and poor coat condition have also been observed in cats fed vegetarian diets. However, most cats in another study had a normal coat condition and no obviously diet-related clinical abnormalities picked up by clinical examination [27]. Clinical signs of lethargy with altered mentation, dysorexia, and muscle wasting, along with gut signs of bloating and increased borborygmi have also been observed [30].
Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad
I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.
First of all, that analysis you posted is not particularly scientific, and there’s an abundance of evidence that vegan diets hurt cats.
Second, once you’re getting into arguments about “synthetic nutrients”, it’s pretty clear that you don’t actually know how animals nutrition works, and probably shouldn’t have a pet at all if you don’t know how to keep one without making it suffer due to malnutrition.
Not sure why you’re vegan, but it certainly isn’t because you care about the well-being of animals…
Disclaimer that I’m not even a vegan but you’re spreading disinfo here to make vegans seem completely unreasonable. I suggest anyone check out the actual discussions instead of trusting this summary.
Cats are obligate carnivores in the wild. This just means they have dietary needs that would normally require meat. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
Show me a scientific study that proves this. If you can say it with confidence, it should be no trouble at all for you to prove it. I, on the other hand, am lazy and don’t care all that much, so I want the people confidently stating opinions to share their research to save me effort.
Those aren’t scientific studies. The vegans have scientific studies. You expect me to believe you know better than them, but you can’t show me sources of equal quality?
Cat food is food specifically formulated and designed for consumption by cats. As obligate carnivores, cats have specific requirements for their dietary nutrients, namely nutrients found only in meat or synthesised, such as taurine and Vitamin A.
Hey look, your Wikipedia link says the nutrients cats need from meat can be synthesised in literally the second sentence.
Vegetarian or vegan cat food has been available for many years, and is targeted primarily at vegan and vegetarian pet owners. While a small percentage of owners choose such a diet based on its perceived health benefits, the majority do so due to ethical concerns, such as about the large environmental impacts of animal agriculture.
The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet.
Pets eat pre-processed food, and we’ve had vegetarian protein supplements for a while. How does this work for cats? Idk, ask a vet. But these foods have been around for a while and I’m not hearing about a mass die-off of indoor cats as a result, so I’m willing to give vegan cat owners the benefit of the doubt.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind.
The expected lifespan of feral cats in the wild runs around 2-5 years. House cats routinely live into their teenage years and can hit north of 20. The ideal lifestyle for a cat is indoors, regardless of the precise composition of their diets.
Hell yeah! Nobody should force their choices on any living animal. It’s very bad for a cat to force it on a vegan diet, and it’s very bad for a fish to force it to be cat food. Obviously the cat should only eat lab meat.
I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
I don’t. Veganism is about the fact that humans can live without animal products, which is true. Not accepting that actual carnivores exist, even being unhappy with this means you’re well in extremist nutjob territory.
There are plenty of vegan friendly pets to choose from too. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, chinchillas, pygmy goats ect. If they are willing to accept insectivorous animals that list gets longer.
Why choose a pet like a cat if their diet is a philosophical problem for them? Choose a different animal.
I’m aware of some vegans stances being against having pets, but if people are feeding their cats and dogs a vegan diet at least some portion of vegans aren’t against it.
For folks who want pets who are also vegan they should choose a species compatible with that instead of forcing it on an animal who’s biology isn’t going to thrive under those conditions.
I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don’t realise that it’s a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is “as much as you are able” so I guess there is extremism everywhere.
And veganism is about living a lifestyle that causes the least amount of suffering. And not solely about not eating animal products. (Cultivated meat can be considered vegan, if it has been produced ethically and no animals or humans suffered) Not giving your cat meat causes suffering so is by definition not vegan.
Side note: Veganism is also about reducing human suffering so cocaine is not vegan. Just a reminder to vegans who use cocaine. Met a bunch of those last week.
It’s a microcosm for science denial or misunderstanding of all kinds. Vegan cats and antivax may not seem related but the underlying misinformation is not dissimilar.
I tried following up on the vegan cat research being posted and it was very difficult to get a solid answer. There are multiple brands of vegan cat food marketed and sold, and it isn’t outrageous to believe that our industrial society could find an ethical way to source the necessary nutrients and enrich the cat food.
But also there’s very few studies that test the claims of the vegan cat food. What few meta-analysis exist, and anecdotes online, would suggest that all those foods lack certain critical nutrients for long-term feline health. But the anecdotes are drowned out by well-intentioned people who want to believe it works, and the studies are small, rare, hard to read, and locked behind paywalls.
It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
No, they’re hypocrites. These are practices that vegans should not be ok with, and said actions certain don’t constitute a harmonious world view and philosophy. They should be ashamed of themselves. The real actions and ideas they should be putting forward is to not have pets, and to try to reduce invasive species impacts on local ecosystems (in which case cats are neutered to stop reproduction).
I knew a hardcore vegan girl like a decade ago when it was rather rare to see someone to that extreme, or at least to me. She said she feeds her cat only vegan food, and i was pretty sure that that’s not a thing, but i didn’t really know. Her roommate then told me that she goes through quite a lot of cats, because they either die or run away.
There was a post about making cats vegan. The mod then decided that people posting information on why that is a bad idea were antivegan or something. The mod started then removing any information that pointed to cats not being able to be health while on a vegan diet. The Lemmy.world admins them stepped in stating that improperly feeding your cat constitutes animal abuse and is unethical. This made many die hard vegans very mad.
For the record, cats can not be vegan. They can survive on it but they will have shorter more painful lives and they will go blind. There bodies start breaking down without the proteins and amino acids found in meat. I understand why vegans would be unhappy with that answer but it is the way it is.
Interesting enough, that’s not the case for dog. You can put a dog on a vegan diet as long as you are very careful and are constantly monitoring. It isn’t for the faint of heart and can have very sad outcomes. It isn’t something you can arbitrarily do.
Cats have dietary needs that would require them to eat meat in nature. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
I don’t understand why people upvote summaries that don’t even try to be objective. I honestly think the mods there do notably abuse their power to remove comments, but let people decide that for themselves. This commenter is telling you who to support while being confidently incorrect on the original issue.
For the record, science disagrees with you. According to an analysis of all current research, there is no statistically significant difference of cat heath when fed a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet. Of there is a similarly high quality study that finds that a nutritionally sufficient vegan diet is worse for cats I would love to see it.
The vegan diet we are talking about isn’t a bunch of vegetables, it’s a manufactured dry food specifically designed to have all the nutrients a cat needs.
People often use the obligate carnivore excuse, but use it in an unscientific way. Obligate carnivores have nutritional needs that can only be meet through meat in the wild, but humans are perfectly capable of manufacturing these nutrients. We are so good at it that we supplement these synthetic nutrients in meat based cat food already.
This is a contentious issue for most people, and it can be hard when you are very passionate about something to look at the evidence and change your opinion. I’ve looked at a decent number of studies on the topic recently, and they all seen to point to the conclusion that a diet without meat can be healthy for cats, so long as it contains all the nutrients they need.
A vet friend in a very trendy city encounters a lot of cats with significant health problems that stem from their owner’s attempt at a vegan diet, so whether or not it’s possible, too many people harm the health of their pets through attempting a vegan diet for it to be a safe thing to recommend trying
Yea that’s the thing.
I’m sure a team of scientists could eventually design an ethically sourced vegan cat food with synthetic versions of whatever is missing that could work fine for some cats.
The odds of a random lemming doing it right after reading one comment about it online is next to none.
Discussing it is one thing, recommending it and deleting anything that simply advises caution is weird.
heavy sigh
Vegans be reposting this link everywhere not realizing how silly it makes them look. First, one of its big points is that there hasn’t been much research done into feeding cats vegan diets, mostly because it’s a bad idea.
Some great lines:
To simplify: even with protein supplements your cats muscles will decay over time.
To simplify: Taurine supplements didn’t work. Though findings are mixed between all like, 3 studies that tried
To simplify: your car feels like shit and acts like they feel like shit
Simplify: it was bad. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad, but lots of times it was bad and the owner should feel bad
I can keep going, literally every paragraph has some good “don’t fucking do that” material.
First of all, that analysis you posted is not particularly scientific, and there’s an abundance of evidence that vegan diets hurt cats.
Second, once you’re getting into arguments about “synthetic nutrients”, it’s pretty clear that you don’t actually know how animals nutrition works, and probably shouldn’t have a pet at all if you don’t know how to keep one without making it suffer due to malnutrition.
Not sure why you’re vegan, but it certainly isn’t because you care about the well-being of animals…
Disclaimer that I’m not even a vegan but you’re spreading disinfo here to make vegans seem completely unreasonable. I suggest anyone check out the actual discussions instead of trusting this summary.
Cats are obligate carnivores, sparky. That means they can’t be vegan.
Cats are obligate carnivores in the wild. This just means they have dietary needs that would normally require meat. But we can make vegan, synthetic food that meets these needs. In fact, studies have shown that cats on vegan diets tend to be healthier if anything.
Show me a scientific study that proves this. If you can say it with confidence, it should be no trouble at all for you to prove it. I, on the other hand, am lazy and don’t care all that much, so I want the people confidently stating opinions to share their research to save me effort.
A quick search reveals quite a few sources and articles to read. I hope this helps. Not an exhaustive list.
Those aren’t scientific studies. The vegans have scientific studies. You expect me to believe you know better than them, but you can’t show me sources of equal quality?
One of those is a Wikipedia link which gives you primary sources. 🤔
Hey look, your Wikipedia link says the nutrients cats need from meat can be synthesised in literally the second sentence.
Pets eat pre-processed food, and we’ve had vegetarian protein supplements for a while. How does this work for cats? Idk, ask a vet. But these foods have been around for a while and I’m not hearing about a mass die-off of indoor cats as a result, so I’m willing to give vegan cat owners the benefit of the doubt.
The expected lifespan of feral cats in the wild runs around 2-5 years. House cats routinely live into their teenage years and can hit north of 20. The ideal lifestyle for a cat is indoors, regardless of the precise composition of their diets.
I think the bug take away is to talk to and listen to a expert. Especially don’t start making huge changes to your cats diet
Vegan owners get new cats all the time. I don’t think it’s a question of changing the diet, but starting them on it.
Why do people even try to keep cats on vegan diet? It was your fucking choice, not the cats.
Im vegetarian, my cat eats meat. Im not gonna force anything on him unless he comes to me and tells me he wants to try it.
Hell yeah! Nobody should force their choices on any living animal. It’s very bad for a cat to force it on a vegan diet, and it’s very bad for a fish to force it to be cat food. Obviously the cat should only eat lab meat.
I don’t. Veganism is about the fact that humans can live without animal products, which is true. Not accepting that actual carnivores exist, even being unhappy with this means you’re well in extremist nutjob territory.
There are plenty of vegan friendly pets to choose from too. Rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, chinchillas, pygmy goats ect. If they are willing to accept insectivorous animals that list gets longer.
Why choose a pet like a cat if their diet is a philosophical problem for them? Choose a different animal.
A lot of vegans seem to view even owning a pet, of any kind, as evil.
I’m aware of some vegans stances being against having pets, but if people are feeding their cats and dogs a vegan diet at least some portion of vegans aren’t against it.
For folks who want pets who are also vegan they should choose a species compatible with that instead of forcing it on an animal who’s biology isn’t going to thrive under those conditions.
I am a vegan. While my dogs were alive they ate meat as well as veggies. It seems to me that a lot of vegans don’t realise that it’s a scale and not binary. The whole philosophy of veganism is “as much as you are able” so I guess there is extremism everywhere.
And veganism is about living a lifestyle that causes the least amount of suffering. And not solely about not eating animal products. (Cultivated meat can be considered vegan, if it has been produced ethically and no animals or humans suffered) Not giving your cat meat causes suffering so is by definition not vegan.
Side note: Veganism is also about reducing human suffering so cocaine is not vegan. Just a reminder to vegans who use cocaine. Met a bunch of those last week.
It’s a microcosm for science denial or misunderstanding of all kinds. Vegan cats and antivax may not seem related but the underlying misinformation is not dissimilar.
I tried following up on the vegan cat research being posted and it was very difficult to get a solid answer. There are multiple brands of vegan cat food marketed and sold, and it isn’t outrageous to believe that our industrial society could find an ethical way to source the necessary nutrients and enrich the cat food.
But also there’s very few studies that test the claims of the vegan cat food. What few meta-analysis exist, and anecdotes online, would suggest that all those foods lack certain critical nutrients for long-term feline health. But the anecdotes are drowned out by well-intentioned people who want to believe it works, and the studies are small, rare, hard to read, and locked behind paywalls.
It’s bizarre to me that harcore vegans want to own a pet to begin with. Keeping bees for honey is bad, but separating a kitten from its mother at an early age and castrating it for your convenience and deciding how they live (restricted to an apartment or not) is totally fine?
I understand that most pets live a good life, but man, I can’t bring myself to make choices like these. I mean there are ways to circumvent it (get an older cat from an asylum for example) but it doesn’t really remove the “pet dilemma” to me.
No, they’re hypocrites. These are practices that vegans should not be ok with, and said actions certain don’t constitute a harmonious world view and philosophy. They should be ashamed of themselves. The real actions and ideas they should be putting forward is to not have pets, and to try to reduce invasive species impacts on local ecosystems (in which case cats are neutered to stop reproduction).
I knew a hardcore vegan girl like a decade ago when it was rather rare to see someone to that extreme, or at least to me. She said she feeds her cat only vegan food, and i was pretty sure that that’s not a thing, but i didn’t really know. Her roommate then told me that she goes through quite a lot of cats, because they either die or run away.