Should your dog stop eating carbs? A conversation with dog food entrepreneur Daniel Schulof of Keto Natural Pet Foods

How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD

High-fat diets are popular right now in the human realm, but should your dog be "low carb" too? Annie speaks to Daniel Schulof, who left a career in law in order to help combat the canine obesity epidemic by getting people to stop feeding their dog food that is high in carbohydrates. He is the author of Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma, and founder of a new company that makes low-carb dry food for dogs: Keto Natural. He and Annie discuss his journey into the world of pet food and chat about some of the myths and misconceptions about what dogs should be eating.

KetoNatural food is available at https://ketonaturalpetfoods.com/

Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma: The Silent Epidemic Killing America's Dogs and the New Science That Could Save Your Best Friend's Life

https://www.amazon.com/Dogs-Dog-Food-Dogma-Epidemic/dp/0692768408/

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Partial Transcript:

Annie:

Keto eating is kind of all the rage right now. I feel like I was an early adopter. Six or seven years ago, I read on Reddit about something called keto chow because I am super lazy about eating. I don't like shopping for food. I don't like thinking about what I'm going to eat next. I don't like preparing food very much. And my favorite food is the food that just appears in front of me. And I thought, you know, if only I could find some kind of decent meal replacement that I didn't mind eating, that would be helpful.

Anyway, so I read about keto chow, how it was really delicious and it was made with heavy cream. And that if you were gonna use this as a meal replacement, you really needed to have a diet that was overall super, super high fat, low carb.

So that's sort of how I started to get interested in learning about ketosis and this way of eating and how this type of eating worked really well in conjunction with fasting. And I was sort of interested in that cause my natural rhythm has always been to only eat once or maybe twice a day. And I had thought that that was not a good thing, that I should be eating small meals all the time. But the more I read about high fat diets and ketosis, the more I realized it was okay if I only ate once a day and that eating fat does not make you fat.

When I first started to learn about this type of eating, I thought, Huh, well, if this is a way of eating that makes sense for humans, would it be so crazy to think that this might be a good way for dogs to eat, too? And I looked around a little bit online for information on this and for products. And I really didn't find anything.

But then the other day in my inbox, I got an email and the subject was Your Dog Wasn't Built to Eat Carbs: Podcast Guest Submission. It was someone suggesting I speak to Daniel Schulof who started a company that sells super low carb, dry dog food. So I wanted to learn more.

[music]

Daniel Schulof:

My name is Daniel Schulof, and I am at least somewhat notable in the dog ownership community for two reasons. One is I am the author of a 2016 book that's called Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma, which is about the weird overlap between industry clinical veterinary practice and the scientific community in the world of companion animal nutrition.

Full Transcript at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Podcast

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