Everything you need to know about vegetarian dog food

People following a vegetarian diet avoid eating meat and fish, while a vegan diet involves completely avoiding all animal products. This lifestyle is more than just a fashion trend as vegetarian and vegan products can now be found in lots of areas.
Many vegetarians and vegans have dogs. This causes something of a moral dilemma. On the one hand, they know that most animal products are far from being sustainable and can be the cause of animal suffering. On the other hand, they still feed meat to their pets. That's why lots of people are now wondering how much meat a dog needs and whether a completely meat-free diet might be possible. And that's exactly the question we intend to answer here!

Issues such as animal welfare, health, food shortages and environmental protection are increasingly topical, with discussions shaped and made more urgent by recent scandals in the food industry. Sustainability is a buzzword that comes up often in relation to meat consumption because the mass production of meat products is affecting the world's climate. The consumption of meat, milk and eggs is responsible for at least 51% of global greenhouse emissions caused by humans.

To get the right vegetarian or even vegan diet for you or your dog, you need an in-depth understanding of canine or human nutritional requirements.
It is possible to put together interesting homemade food for your dog. However, this is a laborious task that requires knowledge and time.
The key thing is for your dog to get protein, or rather its components the amino acids — and the source does not have to be meat. Meat is not essential in a dog's diet. The crucial feature of dog food is that it should contain all essential nutrients, particularly the vital amino acids. These are absolutely essential and cannot be produced by the body itself.
Our vegetarian dry food for dogs is a complete feed that offers everything a dog needs in a nutritious balanced meal. Often, vegetarian food is simply a supplementary option. Our VeggieDog, by contrast, is a perfectly designed complete feed that requires no additional components. Unfortunately, protein intolerances and meat allergies are widespread among dogs these days. Plant-based proteins offer an excellent and very healthy alternative for sensitive pets.

Lots of dogs who are already being fed vegetarian and vegan food show that animals can be healthy and happy on a balanced, entirely plant-based diet. Science does not support the received wisdom that dogs are pure carnivores like wolves, for whom a vegetarian or vegan diet would not be healthy. However, preconceptions and misinformation of this kind are deeply entrenched. The main argument is still that a meat-free diet is "not species appropriate" or is "unnatural". While it is true that dogs evolved from wolves, a lot has changed over the course of time, and they have adapted to human lifestyles. Unlike wolves, dogs are better equipped with the enzymes required to break down starch in food. But what about protein?

Protein involves long chains of amino acids. During digestion, these proteins are broken down into individual amino acids. Only then can the dog use these substances to build muscles or other body tissue. The essential thing that the dog needs from protein are these little building blocks. Some amino acids are essential for dogs: they must be absorbed from food because the body is not capable of producing them itself.
Whether these specific amino acids come from meat or plant-based protein is irrelevant. The important thing is to ensure an adequate supply. A sophisticated combination of various plant proteins can sometimes even be a better source of essential amino acids than meat. Accordingly, it is absolutely no problem to give your dog a vegetarian diet.
All the other vitamins and minerals that your dog needs from its daily food are included in our VeggieDog vegetarian dog food. By using only plant-based ingredients, the food also has a very pleasant smell and consistency.

VeggieDog brings a complete feed to our range that is entirely meat free. How is that possible? The most important thing is to ensure your dog gets enough protein, or to be more precise the building blocks known as amino acids. Since dogs cannot create these themselves, it is essential to provide them in food.
The high-quality ingredients in VeggieDog have been assembled with particular care and in consultation with nutritionists following international nutritional guidelines to ensure all your adult dog’s nutritional requirements covered. This means there is no need to feed your dog anything else. VeggieDog is a balanced complete meal:

Our vegetarian dog food is not just good for your dog but also for the environment. In keeping with our motto "Greenify our future", at Green Petfood our mission is to produce all our products in a sustainable manner. Here are a few facts about the sustainability of our dog food:

• 125% climate-neutral production: our CO2 emissions are offset with a forest conservation project in Tanzania!This allows us to stimulate oxygen production for our beautiful planet as well as protecting the habitat of endangered species. And we are setting a standard: we offset more CO2 than required to compensate for our CO2 emissions, to put it precisely 25% more than required.
• Lower CO2 emissions by avoiding meat: consumption of meat, milk and eggs is responsible for at least 51% of the global CO2 emissions caused by humans. What's more, conventional livestock farming has an impact on agricultural land because land use per unit of protein is generally lower for plants than it is for animals. By avoiding meat you are making a contribution to climate protection and reducing your CO2 footprint and pawprint!
• Less animal suffering: it is obvious that by excluding meat from our vegetarian dog food we hope to reduce levels of animal suffering out there. The more dogs that switch to vegetarian food, the fewer animals that will need to be kept in poor conditions for the production of dog food.

As a food manufacturer, your pet's well-being is our top priority, closely followed by concern about sustainability. With this dual focus, we deliberately differentiate ourselves from well-known petfood manufacturers and conventional dog food.
This is the reason why VeggieDog contains NO meat. All ingredients are natural in origin, containing no artificial colourings or flavourings, no genetically modified ingredients, no sugar, soya or milk, and needless to say we do not carry out ANY animal testing.
In "conventional" food, you will often find flavour enhancers, sugar and other substandard ingredients. In addition, some manufacturers continue to carry out cruel feeding tests on laboratory animals. It is simply not true to argue that no additional animals die to make pet food due to the use of slaughterhouse waste. Even if bones, cartilage and tendons are often used, increasing numbers of petfood manufacturers are seeking to attract customers with products containing pure lean meat. The fact is, the petfood industry is a billion-dollar business, and the meat industry benefits from this. Rarely is there any connection with sustainability or animal welfare.
Do you want to see whether your dog will eat Green Petfood dog food? To start with, just try a sample of our vegetarian dog food in a 900 g pack.