Welcome to the Ohio State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s pet diet information center. This resource was created to help you choose a food that is a good fit for your pet. The first step is considering your pet; is it a cat or dog, how old is it, how active is it, what is its body condition? With this information in hand, our diet search database has a wide range of foods, from generally available commercial foods to foods created to meet owner desires for “holistic”, “organic”, or diets that contain (or exclude) specific ingredients. Some therapeutic foods (to be used under veterinary supervision to manage certain health conditions and diseases) also are listed. This database is not meant to be comprehensive, but to provide examples of some of the many diets available, and to permit comparison among them.
Information in the tables includes protein, fat, fiber, and when available carbohydrate, calcium, phosphorus, and sodium content. These values can help compare different diets, and to evaluate how well a food meets a particular animal’s dietary needs. Also included are the caloric content per measured cup or can, the price range, the cost per 100 kilocalories (also referred to as Calories), and the categories the food falls under. This information is provided to help owners and their veterinary caregivers decide on a food that best fits the pet’s and client’s needs, while meeting the standard of a satisfactory diet.
Once you choose an appropriate diet, how you feed it also can affect your pet’s its health and welfare, particularly if it is housed indoors, so we provide some recommendations for feeding management as well.
