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the_dunk_tank
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https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0284132
Not to be a stick in the mud here, but... what? How on earth does "cats fed vegan diets tended to be healthier than cats fed meat-based diets" follow after "considering these results overall"? You mean the results that weren't statistically significant? Those results? And that one statistically significant disease difference? It was for kidney problems, and the vegan cats had more problems than the non-vegan ones (table 6).
If there's a case for feeding cats a vegan diet, this ain't it.
I'm actually genuinely surprised that cats do that well on a vegan diet. It doesn't have to be healthier than meat to be an upgrade—if it's on par with meat and no animal dies to make it, it's a clear winner.
I didn't think we were there yet with cat food, but the study seems to suggest we are, even if they try to draw a stronger conclusion from their data than they can actually justify.
Look at their data. The vegan cats are roughly where meat eating cats are:
Yeah! It's actually really encouraging. I need to look into seeing if I can get my hands on any and if my cats will tolerate it.
Aggressively vegan here: Please do, but be careful. Loop your vet in (it's gonna be painful as fuck, ask me how I know), when introducing any novel food (even if it was a new type of meat) be on the lookout for allergic responses and go slowly. Kitteh will need time to acclimatise.
Also research the food carefully, there are a lot of brands that are dubious and very poor regulation. I don't care for any cats so I can't help there sorry :(
READ THE STUDY!
FFS don't skim the study. 3% of non vegan cats had kidney problems, 4% of vegan cats did.
So you're saying that vegan cats had roughly the same health as non vegan cats and we're not destroying our planet in industrial livestock murder. Sounds great!
No need to shout. I did.
No. That is not what the study is saying. The study is saying that "we took a look, and couldn't tell if there was a difference or not." Which is understandable, given the methodology. Internet-based questionnaires/surveys are easy to conduct, but tend to have big error bars. It's a common trade-off made when first beginning to investigate a hypothesis.
It's your typical "absence of evidence" versus "evidence of absence" conundrum. The authors note this in their comments on the limitations of their study and on avenues for further research:
Comrade, I'm not trying to argue that cats are "obligate carnivores," or that cats should or should not have vegan diets. I'm not arguing about whether or not cats can meet their nutritional needs from vegan diets. I am only stating that the particular study linked does not provide any usable evidence in support of a conclusion. That's literally what "no reductions were statistically significant" means: that the collected data is not sufficient to draw reliable conclusions.
Other studies may very well have more rigorous methodologies that convincingly demonstrate the nutritional completeness of vegan diets for cats. But not this study.
That's fair enough. Not all nutrient deficiencies have acute presentations, and the seven indicators of illness may not account for all the ways nutrient deficiencies could present, but if the crowd shrieking about animal cruelty was right in its hyperbolic hypothesis, then it would be likely for at least one of those seven indicators to get tripped.
FYI I have no patience for non-vegans concern trolling vegan issues. If you're actively harming sentient animals, your opinion is clouded by your own guilt. Apologies in advance if you happen to be vegan.
I don't know why you're so concerned about my taking my ending summary, out of context, when I wrote paragraphs summarising the lit review and minor differences in kidney issues with non vegan vs vegan cats.
Science doesn't speak in absolutes expect in maths. If you read anything outside of the abstract, you'd see that there's a few other existing studies that support it, no studies claim the opposite, and further research should be done as in all medical research of this type.
No kidding. No if only the "cats must eat meat" side had this sorta need for rigorous methodology.