In this enlightening episode, hosts Alice and Janet welcome Dr. Sean Delaney, the founder of BalanceIt.com, a revolutionary platform utilized by over 20,000 veterinarians and hundreds of thousands of pet owners seeking nutritionally balanced home-cooked diets for their furry friends.
Join the discussion as Dr. Delaney debunks common myths about pet nutrition, addressing the pitfalls of popular recipes found online and the importance of understanding the nutritional needs of both dogs and cats. He shares insights on how BalanceIt.com assists pet owners in creating tailored meal plans, including recipes that cater to specific health conditions like liver shunts or diabetes.
Throughout the episode, Dr. Delaney emphasizes the significance of a well-rounded diet, the role of supplements, and the fascinating science behind pet nutrition. He also dives into the complexities surrounding feeding practices, the benefits of fiber for gut health, and the importance of keeping our pets lean for a longer, healthier life.
With engaging anecdotes and expert advice, this episode is a must-listen for any pet owner looking to provide the best care for their beloved companions. Tune in to learn how to ensure your pet’s diet is not only delicious but also nutritionally complete!
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All footage is owned by SLA Video Productions.
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Personalized Pet Nutrition: Tailoring Meals For Your Furry Friends – Dr. Sean Delaney
Welcome to Speaking of Pets. I’m Dr. Alice Novotny Jeromin, a board-certified veterinary dermatologist.
I’m Janet Novotny King. I’m the doctor’s sister. I am not medical anything. We’re here to provide you with some great science-based information to help you be fabulous pet owners. I’m a pet owner, rescuer, and lover. I ask those questions that you always want to ask the veterinarian. I try not to use words like pawpaws. I’m keeping it professional.
I like pawpaws. Many pet parents cook for their pets. How do they know they’re giving their pet the correct nutrition? In 2005, he founded BalanceIt.com. I love it. It’s a formulation software and food-grade products that enable us to feed our pets human food in the right proportions to make it nutritionally complete for them. I can’t tell you how valuable this service is. It’s free.
That’s incredible. What’s free anymore?
The Value And Freedom Of Balanceit.com
Over 20,000 veterinarians have used the service, and over hundreds of thousands of pets have been on it. If you cook for your pet, this is how you’re going to find out if these meals that you’re cooking are nutritionally complete. You can cook chicken and rice. How much chicken are you supposed to use? How much rice? What about the vitamins and minerals? I can’t thank Dr. Delaney enough for starting this service that’s free. He’s also co-edited and co-authored several books on veterinary nutrition. He was honored as a lifetime member of the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition, which makes him sound old, but I know he isn’t.
Welcome, Dr. Sean Delaney. Thank you for giving us, for twenty years, a much-needed service with BalanceIt.com. Over 20,000 veterinarians use it. Over hundreds of thousands of pets have used this website to get a nutritionally complete cooked diet. When people are cooking for their pets, they will say to me, “I’m cooking chicken and potatoes.” I’m like, “How much chicken and how much potato? How do you know what you’re giving is nutritionally complete?” “I looked it up on Dr. Google.” Dr. Delaney would agree that the majority of the recipes on Dr. Google are not nutritionally complete. Am I right, Dr. Delaney?
First of all, let me say thank you for having me join you, Alice and Janet. I’m going to be speaking about what I love and am passionate about, which is nutrition in general. As far as your question, there was a nice study that Davis did. Jonathan Stockman was the lead researcher. They looked at about a couple of hundred recipes. They determined how many of those recipes were complete and balanced. Unfortunately, at that time, only those from boards certified veterinary nutritionists, of which I am one, were complete and balanced.
It’s not overly surprising because there’s a lot of math. It’s also not surprising because a lot of recipes you find on websites are designed for fun and enjoyment. They’re a one-time meal, special occasion, birthday, or anniversary treat because they were a good dog or cat. They’re not designed for long-term feeding. There is some extra work, extra understanding that you need to make it appropriate for long-term feeding if you’re going to feed human food.
Many recipes you find online are designed for fun, not nutrition. They’re meant as one-time meals—special occasions, birthdays, or treats—not for long-term feeding. Share on XDr. Delaney, tell us what your company does. It’s fascinating because I didn’t know this existed until Alice showed me. How does it work?
We help people when they either have to or choose to feed human food to dogs and cats. We do two things. We help them with the mathematics where we make software. We make software for the layperson. We make software for veterinarians and for my colleagues who are board-certified veterinary nutritionists. It does all the math to figure out nutrient requirements and how much is coming from human foods. It determines if there’s a gap. We make supplements. I’ve been sitting in the facility where that’s done in Northern California. They are fortified with amino acids, vitamins, and minerals to make sure that all those nutrients that are needed when feeding a human food are appropriate and present.
It’s recipes for the human to make for their pet.
Every once in a while, people go, “I don’t add vitamins and minerals to my own meal.” That often comes up. “I don’t as a human.” What is different is when you look up spaghetti, it doesn’t say, “Add some calcium, vitamin E, and fish oil to make sure that it’s appropriate.” People say, “Why do I have to do that for dogs and cats?” The easiest way is to realize that we do fortify human food, but people don’t think about it because it’s done for them. If you go and look at your bread, pasta, or cereal. It’s enriched.
What does enriched mean? It has B vitamins and iron in it. It’s to deal with what used to happen years ago, like pellagra, spina bifida, and all these diseases that they’re trying to control. Beyond that example, you think about your milk. It will say it’s fortified with vitamin D, or it’s fortified with vitamin A and D. You’re starting to see DHA, which is a fish oil, fatty acid. You go, “That’s good. What else?” In the US, we iodize our salt because people used to get goiters and have some things. We do fortify our food, but it’s done for us. We’re not having to take an active role in it.
You say, “What if I use fortified pasta, iodized salt, milk, or something like that? Wouldn’t that meet the dog’s requirement?” Possibly, it helps. We often do use iodized salt. It helps with sodium, chloride, and iodine. It’s not uncommon to use that to fortify food, but people don’t often feed milk. They need to have another source of vitamin A and D. People don’t always use enriched flours. The levels that are included are somewhat different in part because we are different species.
We are with dogs, fellow omnivores, but we are more on the omnivore side than dogs are. They’re still a little bit more on the carnivore side. For cats, they’re obligate carnivores. They have nutritional needs that are different and unique to us. We need to account for that. It also makes sense that if we think about what the normal evolutionary diet of dogs and cats was, they’re eating whole prey. They’re taking down large ruminants.
If you look at wolves that are reintroduced into Yellowstone, certainly people know with their own cat that they take down small birds. They take mice or rodents. They’re eating something different than butchered meat from the supermarket like processed grains. We exsanguinate, which means fancy word for we take blood out. We eviscerate, which means we take internal organs out. We debone.
Some of those nutrients, when we are doing that, lots of vitamin A in the liver, evisceration removes that. We think about bone, lots of minerals, calcium, and phosphorus. If we think about blood, there are a lot of electrolyte minerals. Your sodium is salty when you taste blood. There are a lot of other nutrients that are being lost in how we process our meat. When you’re feeding a human food to a dog or a cat, you do have gaps, and you have to fill those gaps.
That makes sense. The other thing I love about BalanceIt.com is, say I have a Yorkshire terrier that has a liver shunt. I can put that in as a requirement so that I can get the right amount of protein or the right amount of digestible protein. Sean, you make recipes for comorbidities as well.
We help lots of people who never buy anything from us. That’s important. We do that as a service to our community and our fellow stakeholders. We have thousands of recipes being made a day, and no one buys anything from us. Sometimes, it’s as simple as your earlier example. It was chicken, potato, or pasta. What is the right proportion? Sometimes, people need a week or two to get the right proportion and how much to give. I don’t know how much.
Maybe I know how to feed myself, but I’ve got a dog that’s 1/10 my size. What is that? The energy requirements do not scale linearly. It’s hard to accurately do that. The other component of that is that there are medical conditions, as you bring up, that then modify what is appropriate. It may be as simple as in your case of the shunt, where you may need to bring the protein lower. That seems simple enough, but how low? How do you not get it too low?
One of the challenges with shunts, using that as an example, is that the liver is failing in that case or it is not functioning fully. The ability to take out normal toxins, through the liver, which is a filter of the blood before it goes to the brain, is lost or is impeded. They get spacey. They seize. They have all these issues. You want to limit the amount of protein they’re getting because most of those things that they can’t handle if it goes to the brain are coming from protein-rich foods. They still have requirements for protein and, by extension, amino acids.
You’re now having to get a fine line of enough protein to meet amino acid and protein requirements. By the way, when the liver is failing, it has a higher protein requirement. It’s not as efficient. You’re balancing this. No pun intended with the brand. You’re giving them enough protein so that you’re meeting their needs for amino acids and protein, but not giving them so much that they’re having clinical signs and having a hard time because the liver isn’t filtering those things, and it’s going to the brain. That becomes even more complex than just feeding a healthy animal.
A lot of my friends feed chicken and rice. It’s very popular. Can you do that for the lifetime of the dog?
You can if fortified appropriately. That’s the key. There are some folks who worry about the same ingredients for the lifespan of an animal because maybe there’s the more likelihood of a deficiency. Diversity sometimes can be protective. We did some work when I was at the university, looking at lamb, meal, and rice-based diets. Dilated cardiomyopathy was happening. It was usually dogs that had been on these commercial diets for many months to years.
If they were switched to a different combination, some of the nutrients that were a little bit low, specifically the sulfur amino acids that are used to make taurine, which is important for heart health, and that’s the dilated cardiomyopathy, that’s an enlarged heart that isn’t pumping as well, they were somewhat protected when they were feeding more diverse food. Feeding the same pairing long-term increased the likelihood that if there was any problem with that pairing, they were going to see a deficiency.
Chicken, which is very bioavailable, has good protein quality. It’s good for amino acids. It’s good protein. Rice pairs well with a lot of things. It’s a good carbohydrate source and a good calorie source. It doesn’t have a lot of anti-nutritive factors. There are things that can antagonize things and things that can affect absorption. Chicken and rice can be fed long-term, but you have to add some things to it. These are fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals, if you want to feed them long-term to make sure you’re not creating deficiencies.
Chicken and rice can be fed long-term, but it must be properly balanced. You need to add fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals to prevent nutritional deficiencies over time. Share on XThe Rise Of Fiber (Prebiotics) And Probiotics
Janet and Sean, I’d love for you to address this. Fiber seems to be the hot thing. Especially with dogs with diarrhea. No metronidazole. Only fiber.
What became popular was probiotics. We’re seeing probiotics still having a renaissance because we’re seeing all these probiotic sodas. Coca-Cola announced they’re going to have their own probiotic soda. We forget the other biotic word, which is prebiotic. That’s the term. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, the pre being before the bio, which is the organisms that are healthy in the body, in the microbiome, as we like to say. We used to say microflora. It’s all those healthy bacteria.
The pre is that you’re giving things to those microorganisms that they can feed on. Often, that’s fiber. If you have what we used to call fermentable fiber, fermentation. We think of what ferments, such as yogurt, wine, and cheese. You’re growing something, fermenting it, microbes, to alter it. The same fermentation can happen in the GI tract. That fermentation is you’re giving things to the microbiota that they can live on.
Usually, what we call fructooligosaccharides or FOS is a very common one. Those fructooligosaccharides can be used to make short-chain fatty acids. There’s a waste product by those microorganisms. They have a lot of gut health benefits because the lining of our intestinal tract, the enterocytes, those that enter, that’s the intestinal site. All medical terms are fancy-sounding until you break them down to their Latin roots. They’re like, “That’s the super simplest thing. It’s an intestinal cell. Why don’t we just say that?”
The enterocyte that’s lining the intestinal tract doesn’t get as many nutrients or as well from the bloodstream. From the lumen, the center of the intestinal tract is a great place for it. If you have short-chain fatty acids in the lumen from that fermentation process, it’s a great energy source for those enterocytes. They’re healthier because of it. It can help the intestinal tract. We’re becoming more aware of the importance of our microbiota and our GI tract.
There are people who are doing trans-fluorination, where they’re taking healthy contents of the lumen or even feces from donor dogs and doing suppositories to repopulate that intestinal tract with the right healthy bacteria or microbes. We realize that, in addition to that, if we can give a good nutrient source to those good bacteria, they work well together. Fiber has had a renaissance, a reawakening of the importance that it can have and the impact it can have on gut health.
I remember for the longest time, fatty acids were the thing. We were dosing it.
It is especially in the derm world.
I remember I started taking it. I’m like, “What is this bruising going on?” After three days. Fiber’s the hot topic. I have a question, Sean. When you mentioned probiotics, it concerns me when I see probiotics in pet food. Annie, my Golden is on Visbiome. I keep that in the fridge in a capsule. Can probiotics in a pet food stay viable?
There’s a lot of debate. If you look at nutraceutical-type probiotics, a lot of them do have unique storage requirements. To your point, refrigerate or they’re in a very specific blister pack to keep them viable, because you want them to be living or repopulating. There has been debate about whether there is any residual effect on dead versions. I’m not convinced of that. I’m not a gastroenterologist. There’s an overlap between the two fields.
When I was making pet food where we use probiotics, one of the concerns, besides viability, which is what you’re raising, and I’ll talk about how that’s addressed sometimes in commercial foods, is whether it’s the right species and the right type. A lot of the original probiotics that are considered safe are from fermentation processes, such as Lactobacillus. The lacto you hear is a milk fermentation product from yogurt. We think about the live cultures and stuff.
Is that the right bacteria? Is that representative of all the richness of the hundreds of species, or probably thousands of species, in our gut? What is the right mixture? There are species-specific bacteria. I’m trying to do the taxonomic. Remember, genus is the one step up for a species, and then the species is the second part of it. We’re homo sapiens. Homo is our genus and sapiens is our species. If we think about it, and we’re using the Lactobacillus, what species is it?
That’s the first part of it. Is that the same in the dog? You’ll see references to something that has cani in it, referencing canine versus something that’s a homo sapiens species. Species specificity probably is important, and we need to get it right. That’s why the fecal donors are more of interest, in addition to the viability. When we talk about making pet food, viability is a concern. I said I would talk about what that is.
Usually, it’s done in the enrobing or the coating stage. If you ever feel kibble, it’s a little bit greasy. That’s because the kibble, after it’s gone through and it’s been extruded, is like a dough. It’s extruded like a pasta maker. The pasta maker is a little bit misanalogous, but it’s the same idea as a die. You’re pushing it through. It’s also cooking it with both mechanical force, heat, and pressure, and so it cooks as it goes through the extruder.
It comes out. It’s cooked, but it’s still Play-Doh-y a little bit. It has to go through drying. It’s going to go through drying. It will go through a dryer. It comes out in the consistency, the hardness of what you’re associating with. It’s been dehydrated enough that it’s shelf-stable. At that point, they’re going to enrobe it and tumble it with palatants. That’s what you’re feeling in the greasiness of it. That palatant is usually like liquid liver, if we want to think of it that way. It makes it enticing to a dog or cat, more so than if we weren’t coating it. “This smells delicious.” It’s like adding a little sauce onto whatever you’re eating or buttering your toast.
When we have that enrobing stage, there’s no heat process after it because extrusion has heating, the drying has heating, and that would kill potentially the probiotic. Whereas if at the enrobing stage, it’s cooled enough. You add it there. You potentially could have it. The question of packaging and shelf stability all comes into play. You won’t see and shouldn’t see, for example, probiotics in a canned product, or retorted product because part of the canning process, the retorting process, is to sterilize what’s in that can. You would sterilize, including any probiotics.
I’ll say, “What does your pet eat?” “I cook chicken rice, and I put some yogurt in there.” Why? Is it enough to do anything?
I don’t think we have data to support that it’s necessarily beneficial. It’s probably viable to your earlier question. It’s refrigerated. We know there are live cultures in yogurt. Is it species appropriate? Do we have the right species and the right mixture of species? We’re only giving 1, 2, or 3 species of bacteria when we’re doing that. Is that the full scope of what we want? There is also a discussion about which direction it goes. Our stomach is a hard environment, for good sense, but we’re bringing down the pH. It’s very acidic.
That acidity is helping with digestion, but it’s also killing some stuff. It’s not perfect. We can also get food poisoning, but if you wanted to deliver bacteria in a viable state. That’s why people do suppositories, or go retrograde, or they’re passing endoscopes past the stomach into the intestinal tract. They can get past that kill step. Not a perfect kill step, but some of it. There’s always that discussion about taking things orally. Is that as effective as going the other direction or past maybe a more noxious, difficult environment for the bacteria that we want to survive in.
The other thing people put in the dog food is pumpkin. We won’t talk about it.
We will. I’m happy to. I want to go back to the yogurt thing, and then I’ll get to your good point, Janet, about pumpkin and fiber. The challenge I have with people saying, “Don’t add it in there,” is that we need to remember the human-animal bond and the importance of that. If the human enjoys giving a little bit of yogurt, and the dog feels like it’s a special treat, and it does add a little palpability. More power to it. As long as it’s safe, why not? If it’s enjoyed, then do it.
We need to remember the human–animal bond and its importance. If someone enjoys giving a bit of yogurt and the dog sees it as a special treat, adding a little palatability, that’s fine—more power to it, as long as it’s safe. Share on XIf people are tuning in to this, and they’re like, “I should give up on yogurt because it’s viable, but it’s not the right species,” if they’re enjoying it and doing well in it, it can be a great choice. I will comment that a lot of dogs and cats are unlike humans because of our evolution, at least the Europeans. We needed to get energy in the winter months in a very cold environment. We have adapted to continue to make lactase, which is the enzyme that breaks down lactose, into what is an unnatural state. You normally are only drinking in nursing for maybe a year or two. I shouldn’t be drinking milk anymore.
I’ve gotten past that point, but because I have European heritage, I can digest lactose. Lots of people in other cultures do not have that ability. They’ve adapted to do fermentation. We talk about the bacteria fermenting. What are they doing? They’re fermenting. They’re using lactose as a substrate to grow. They’re producing cheese or yogurt. They’re dropping the lactose content, which allows other humans that didn’t have that adaptation to continue to make lactase, so they could make it through the winter months.
If we think of someone in the Middle East. They’re not having that winter where they have to be able to get calories in cold, so their lactase drops off as they get older. They said, “I can still make cheeses. I can still ferment things.” Not only does it make it maybe more shelf-stable or stable, but it also allows them to digest it without having horrible diarrhea, because intact carbohydrates are making it to that microflora, and they’re getting great lactose. We never got to see that party, and causing all this diarrhea.
Psyllium Seed Husk Versus Pumpkin For Fiber
To your pumpkin question, people love to get pumpkin. It’s fine, going back to that human-animal bond, but it’s not a great source of fiber. If you need fiber, one of the best options is things that they use in humans, which is psyllium seed husk. It’s much more concentrated than pumpkin. Psyllium seed husk is a nice choice if you’re trying to target it.
It’s called a mixed source. We talked about fermentable fiber before. There are different ways of talking about fiber. Mechanically, we can think of it as insoluble, whether it dissolves in water or it doesn’t dissolve in water. Metamucil is soluble in water, so if you ever put Metamucil and you mix it in water, you’ll have a little warning to drink it fast because it will gel. It will gel up quickly, and it has a choke hazard for that, but it isn’t all soluble fiber. It’s about 1/3 insoluble and 2/3 soluble. Some of it is fermentable. When you say, well, are those analogous? They are not necessarily analogous.
Soluble fiber can be fermentable, but it isn’t necessarily. Having said that, insoluble fiber is almost never fermentable. You say, “What’s insoluble fiber?” It’s things like powdered cellulose. It’s that part of the plant that, as omnivores and carnivores, we can’t digest. We’re going to talk a lot about bacteria, but to segue as well, ruminants, what makes a ruminant or herbivore? What allows them to eat what they do? They’re able to take that cellulose, which is a structural component of the plant and ferment it.
Back to our fermentation, they have that wonderful rumen content and allow it to ferment. As it ferments, it can get nutrients, such as short-chain fatty acids. They use that as an energy source. I’m a small nutritionist. I only know about rabbits. That’s about it. They’re a hindgut fermenter, so they have their cecum. They don’t do a great job of that because they don’t have a rumen. Fun fact is that they have what are called night feces. To anyone who’s had a rabbit, they eat their feces. I don’t know if you know that. That’s natural, normal behavior of rabbits, which is gross.
We had pet bunnies. I don’t remember that.
They do it at night. They’ll eat it right out of their anus. You might think they’re grooming themselves. Why do they do that? It’s because the pathway is that they have to go further down the track. The rumen is like the stomach. It’s pretty far up in the track. The rumen of a cow or a goat is taking all this plant material. It has this nice microbiota that knows how and has all the right enzymes to break down that cellulose and make energy that they can consume. It then goes to the intestinal tract, which is where we absorb nutrients. All species do.
If you’re a bunny and it’s going past your stomach and further down in your intestinal tract, you’ve now made all these wonderful nutrients from fermentation, but you can’t go upstream. What do they do? They let it pass out of their anus, then they consume it. They can get all the nutrients that happen from their fermentation process.
Is that the only species that does that?
Lagomorphs are the ones I’m aware of. Someone’s going to correct me. Lagomorphs are a category of rabbits. Most rodents don’t do that because they are omnivores. Horses don’t do it. I know that. They are a hindgut fermenter, but their pathways and how they are doing it, their cecum gets elongated in a blind pouch, which is different. You are finding where my lack of knowledge is limited to small animal nutrition.
I’ve got a question. People tell me, “I buy pet food. I open the bag. I put it into a plastic container.” I thought you were always supposed to keep it in the bag because that bag is wax-treated.
The other thing we learned is that if there’s a recall, it’s on the bag.
The number one reason to keep the bag is to be able to have traceability and understand what the lot number is, if there is a recall, or if there are any concerns. The barrier of the bag is probably better than the container that you’re going to put it into. A lot of companies have started to use metallic films. Those are pretty impressive barriers. Sometimes, if you hire in products, you’ll see it’s metallic looking, foil-like, and so that’s a multi-layer bag. Not the greatest environmentally, because you can’t recycle it, but it’s a strong barrier. What are they trying to mainly do? Oxygen. That’s our enemy.
Oxygen As The Enemy In Pet Food Preservation
Some will even do nitrogen flushing. If you’ve ever seen a reference to nitrogen flushing, nitrogen flushing is where you take nitrogen, which is not a noble gas, but it isn’t reactive. You flush out and push out any of the oxygen, and then you seal the bag. They do it often, like potato chips and things like that. It keeps the flavor and prevents rancidity. You were talking about fatty acid used to be the big fad earlier. Fats become oxidized. That oxidation is what we call fat rancidity. You can sometimes smell it. It puts off flavor. By flushing out the oxygen in the bag and then airtight sealing it, it acts as an additional degree of preservation.
What do they also do in commercial foods? They add antioxidants. The name even has it in there. We think of them as preservatives, but what are we preserving, usually? We need to preserve and avoid microbial growth. We were talking earlier about drying the kibble. When you bring the water, and you dry it, drying is thousands of millennia way of preserving and keeping food from going and growing because of what’s called water activity.
If you bring the water activity low enough, and you dry it enough, microbes can’t grow in it, even mold. You think of a moist environment. You can get mold growing if it’s moist. There’s some type of nutritive matrix. You get bacteria growing. If you dry something, you can allow it to be stable. Sometimes, you can pair that so that it’s not totally dried out. Think of leather versus beef jerky. Beef jerky is still more edible, not that they’re exactly analogous, but it gives you the idea of it.
What is it that we’re doing to beef jerky? We are adding sugar and salt. Sugar and salt act as a solute in water and reduce what’s called water activity because the microbes can’t extract that salt out of them and get the water. That’s why they call it water activity or free water. They can’t pull it. It preserves it and doesn’t allow microbial growth. It doesn’t necessarily prevent fat rancidity. The significance, if you think about beef jerky, you don’t use fatty meat. They usually use some meat that is somewhat lean.
That’s to help with the fat rancidity concern because oxidized fat will start to go off. When you’re looking at a pet food bag that has fat in the kibble or that coating of fat that we talked about in enrobing, they want to make sure that there isn’t a lot of oxygen around. They’re sealing it. They might nitrogen flush it. They might make it nice and airtight. They’re adding antioxidants. A long time ago, we used to use ethoxyquin, a great antioxidant. People say, “It’s a chemical,” and get nervous about it.
A lot of the higher-end pet foods, when you’re looking at them, will have something that says “Mixed tocopherols.” That means it has different forms of vitamin E. We always think about vitamin E nutritionally as alpha, but there’s gamma and delta. If you don’t purify it into the different forms of tocopherol, it’s mixed tocopherols, but they all act as antioxidants. You mix that in with your food. It prevents oxidation of that fat and keeps it from going rancid. You’re working against two things, which are oxidation and microbial growth. It’s drying it, putting antioxidants, and getting a good seal.
When you put that food into a bin, opening it and closing it, oxygen is going to be introduced. It is eventually going to go bad. The last little part of this is that vitamins degrade. They degrade, especially in the presence of trace minerals. They become less active. Vitamins degrading over time is also the reason you see an expiration date. We were talking about the lock code expiration date on bags. Two things are happening. The vitamins are degrading, and the fat is becoming rancid. Nothing else is changing. That’s why you have that.
Expiration dates exist because nutrients degrade over time. We were discussing the lock code on bags, but the same principle applies: vitamins break down and fats become rancid. Those are the main changes happening—nothing else. Share on XYou go, “I noticed canned food has a longer expiration date.” It makes sense because it’s completely air-sealed. There’s no oxygen anymore in there. That oxygen that can degrade and make fat rancidity isn’t happening. They don’t have to dry it because they’ve sterilized it. There’s nothing to grow in there. It stays sterile in there until you open it. Food that’s canned can have a longer expiration date. There’s still vitamin degradation that’s happening, but not as much when there’s no oxygen and any of the other things we’re talking about.
What I love about Balance It is that we had a diabetic cat, so I could have done whatever recipe, and I could then order the nutrients. What I appreciate is that the recipe part is all done for free. That’s fantastic. What a gift for people who are like, “I don’t know if there’s enough rice or chicken.”
When I used to go on for my patients, it was fun to do. I don’t know why. It’s like you’re in the cafeteria.
It’s super easy to use.
Here’s the list of proteins. I’ll do rabbit. What do I want as my carb? I like to eat at cafeterias because I like a big selection.
The advantage of having a lot of options is that people understand what will and won’t work. The worry is that sometimes, when only given a few options, they assume that it will be okay and that everything is analogous, and it isn’t. Maybe when you’re cooking, you go, “I’ve got a great recipe that calls for ground beef. I’ve got ground turkey. I’ve got ground chicken. I’ll substitute it in.” That might work from palatability, deliciousness, and convenience. Nutritionally, it can be very different in terms of amino acids, protein levels, and fat levels.
Do you ever have pet owners, like Alice, who is a vegetarian or vegan, who want their dog or cat to be vegan as well? Is that healthy?
Vegan cats are scientifically possible now. We didn’t know that until years ago, but I don’t know of anyone who will do it.
Did you tell the cats? I’m telling you. They’re going to be pissed.
I didn’t talk about palatability, but it’s at least nutritionally possible. The reason I say we didn’t know until years ago is that cats need a fatty acid called arachidonic acid that only comes from animal sources. We didn’t realize that they could use gamma linolenic acid, which is a little bit further up the stream, but it can come from evening primrose and some exotic oils. It bypasses where they no longer have the ability to convert certain fatty acids to other fatty acids, and you can do it.
There were other things that had to happen to do that. You have to have artificial sources of other vitamins and things like that. It’s possible to do. I don’t know of any nutritionists who would recommend it, even the researcher whose name is John Bauer, who was at Texas A&M, and now is at Colorado State in retirement mode. He’s a world expert on fatty acids.
Metabolism would suggest that he would try to do it. Even though it’s theoretically possible, it’s very challenging. To dogs being vegetarian, it can be done. They’re more omnivorous, as we talked about before. You can make a vegetarian diet. There are a lot of commercial diets that are almost vegetarian, even when they aren’t. They’ll use a lot of soy protein, plant-based proteins.
I’m telling you. Those cats are going like this. “No way.”
Palatability may be a question. Cats are interesting because we know that they have to be introduced to what is food by their mother to recognize it. You can do some crazy things. There are some studies. I always wonder where this was and how this was done. They’ll talk about only giving them things that they wouldn’t normally eat, and then they fixate. They will only eat on that. Conversely, if you have a kitten who’s only eaten dry kibble, some people will say, “If I offer canned food, they won’t eat the canned food.”
The only reason it makes sense is that if you think from an evolutionary perspective that they learned to hunt, and the mother or the queen brought back prey and said, “Here, kitten, you eat this. That’s what’s in our environment. That’s what you eat.” It makes sense from their nutritional evolution as to why they can’t adapt to certain things. For example, cats are very interesting. They can’t downregulate their use of amino acids as an energy source. When you take too much protein, which is made of amino acids, you do a process. It’s a big word again. I’ll break it down. Gluconeogenesis, gluco is glucose, neo is new, and genesis is creation.
You can use amino acids to make glucose, and then glucose gets absorbed in your body. It makes ATP. If you remember your high school bio class, ATP is the energy currency of the cell. Once ATP is in the cell, it’s how you can do all your metabolic pathways. Glucose is usually used as a source. It circulates in your blood. People who are diabetic know about measuring their glucose in their blood and stuff. You can use protein and those amino acids to make glucose and gluconeogenesis.
Cats are unique. They don’t downregulate that conversion. If you’re giving them an inadequate amount of protein, and by extension, amino acids, they don’t do what humans will do. Rodents and other species, even dogs, go, “I got to prioritize protein and amino acids for building proteins, enzymes, and things I need for life. I shouldn’t be shunting it off and using it for energy.” Where that comes into play is if people have ever known about cats that have been unable to access food, especially heavier cats.
They get something called hepatic lipidosis, it is part of that pathway where they get a fatty liver. It can be even fatal because they don’t downregulate and go, “I’d better conserve my protein and amino acids for these important pathways.” They go, “I’m always going to have enough protein in my diet because I eat mice and birds. There’s lots of protein. I never have to worry about protein. I’ll use it as much as I want. I’ll use it for energy if I need to.”
That’s why, Janet, if I’m bringing a new cat food home, you can’t say to the cat, “He’ll eat it when he’s hungry,” because if he doesn’t eat, he can get that fatty liver, that hepatic lipidosis.
You don’t know sometimes. Do they like canned food? Do they like kibble? Do they like human food or a combination? That’s why, if you have a kitten, you should introduce all formats early on. Maybe in life, you’re like, “I’m always going to feed canned food. I believe in the high moisture because cats run around dry as a former evolutionary desert animal.” Still introduce them to dry food because maybe for some reason, you will have to have that as a backup plan, or you need to leave it.
Early on, you being the queen, introducing what is in your environment and what is it that you should eat, they’ll go, “Sometimes, I eat a little bit of canned chicken. Sometimes, I eat a little bit of canned cat food. Sometimes, I eat a little dry food.” If you want to go down a path of only feeding one format later on, and they’ve been exposed to it, so be it, because then later in life, they’ll go, “I remember that from my younger days. That’s food. I’ll eat it, too.”
Isn’t that funny?
See, Janet, when you pull that mousetail out of their mouth.
Pet owners will put in what their issues are with the pet, so that you can help them with the right recipe. Has there been anything odd?
What do you mean?
Do you mean foods that people choose to feed themselves?
If they put in the medical, it’s like “Fluffy doesn’t like barbecued pork.” Is there anything weird that’s come through? People are putting that information in. I hate it.
Interestingly enough, we redid how our software handled requirements. We decided to go from a hieroglyphic pictorial approach to requirements to an alphabet. Bear with me for a moment. The Korean alphabet is probably the best analogy. Many years ago, there was an emperor or king in Korea who said in Asia, we use all this iconography, pictorial things. It’s hard for people to become literate because every word has its own image. You have to memorize thousands of things to become literate.
The Dynamic Requirement Generator For Comorbidities
With the alphabet, we have the ability to build words with a very small number of letters. You build letters into words and words into a sentence. It makes it easier to become literate and to write and create new words. With us, every time we had a unique need, like people said, “I have a dog that has food allergy, pancreatitis, kidney disease, and copper storage disease.” We’d have to manually create a new requirement. We created what we call the dynamic requirement generator, which, on the fly, builds, combines, and makes new requirements.
We have thousands of requirements because, to your point, Janet, people have all sorts of bizarre comorbidities, as Alice put it. We have to think about the one-off scenario that has never come up, that one dog might have all those or one cat may have all those particular needs. That’s why they’re having to home cook because there are lots of great therapeutic commercially prepared foods from Hill’s, Royal Canin, and Purina. Why are they choosing to home cook? They may have to because they have all those comorbidities.
We have to support them and make new requirements. As far as amusing things, I can’t think of anything amusing. I’m not saying that you are saying. As a nutritionist, I feel sad sometimes because I realize how much these people are struggling to feed their dog or their cat. I’m optimistic about what makes me happy about what we do. You say we don’t charge for it, because I know we’re helping people who are at their wits’ end. They’ve exhausted all of their other options.
Let’s face it. People are busy. Who wants to cook at home sometimes? You don’t necessarily have a pairing that you have an animal with all these needs and a lot of time to cook, or the aptitude to cook. Sometimes, your love for your animal will overcome that. There are lots of people who, for environmental reasons, for knowing what they’re feeding, or religious reasons, will choose to cook and want to cook. That’s great. We provide that option to them. When they were forced to, because you have a sick animal, that’s tough.
I’ll add. People make a lot of life-ending decisions on whether their animal is eating or not. If we can help them find something that is palatable, that they’ll continue to eat and do well on, what a rewarding thing for me, personally, and for our company as a whole, to be able to help people. They may be making that call at the end of the day, whether they are still eating or not, as a measure of quality of life.
People make many life-altering decisions based on whether their animal is eating or not. If we can help them find something palatable that their pet will consistently eat and thrive on, it’s incredibly rewarding—for me personally and for our company as… Share on XThat’s so true, Sean, because I lost my 22-year-old cat after we got here to kidney disease.
I’m very sorry to hear that.
When people tell me, “My pet will eat anything.” I’ll say, “I am so happy to hear that.” Isn’t it horrible when any species are leaving us to try to get them to eat? You cook this, and they may taste it. It’s hard.
It was a source of pleasure at one point.
A learned aversion can be very strong with certain diseases. For kidney disease, there are things that are building up that are making them feel nauseous. We have a protection to avoid poison. If you eat this, and you feel bad afterwards, don’t eat that anymore. A lot of people have that with food poisoning. They eat something, and they get severe food poisoning. They now associate that.
The point is that you will not eat that. It can be lifelong. If you are a cat, 22 years old, like your cat, and you have high levels of things that should have been filtered by your kidney that are making you feel nauseous, and then you introduce a food at that time, they don’t connect it. “My kidneys aren’t working.” They go, “I’m feeling nauseous because of what I ate.” They have an aversion. It can be profound and very strong. They’ll refuse to eat. It’s heartrending.
I will tell you a funny story about this, though. I had a resident who now works at Royal Canin. I don’t think she’ll mind me telling her name, Sally Perea. I worked with her for many years, both at the university and another company. Sally, when she was my resident, got off the phone with internal medicine. She went, “I feel horrible.” I said, “What happened?” She goes, “The homemade diet that I formulated for this dog killed them. What did we do wrong? We were careful about this.”
The story plays out that a dog near the end of life was not eating well. She formulated something appropriate for it. The client started making it. The dog loved the food. I’m like, “Where is it? This doesn’t sound wrong. It doesn’t sound bad yet.” I’m thrilled about this situation, about how the dog died from the food. I’m like, “You’re confusing me with this story. What happened?”
The story is that every time this client was preparing the homemade diet, the dog would hear that noise when it was time to be fed and come running from wherever it was resting to eat its meal. Its last moments were at mealtime. The client put the food down, the homemade food that the dog had been enjoying for several months. It had not been eating well. Mid-kitchen, it collapsed and died.
It’s because it was running to get the food.
She goes, “Thank you so much because the last thing with that dog experience and I experienced was the enjoyment of running to that food and that whole human bond.” I always think of that story. It still makes me almost teary-eyed because it does tell you how important feeding is, and enjoyment, how much we love and care for animals, and how much we can help them. It’s not limited to nutrition. You’re a dermatologist. All the specialties have that. Veterinarians have the ability to affect and have an improvement in quality. It’s just that we benefit as nutritionists. Every animal eats. We get to help all the different types of animals with all the different medical conditions.
Libby, our dog, the air popper for popcorn, I would put the dry kernels in.
You tilt it?
The thing shoots it out.
When my husband peels a banana in the morning they come running.
A banana? You can’t even hear that.
Janet, you’ve been here.
I know. I have done things, like go to the bedroom.
They come running. They’re sleeping right here.
I’ll tell one other feeding of animals story since we’re on the pathway of fun stories. I was working at the teaching hospital. The emergency critical care resident at the time, now faculty, came down and said, “Do you have something super palatable that we can feed? We need to see if this dog collapses.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” They go, “The clients report that when they feed this dog, it collapses.” I’m like, “I don’t feel 100% comfortable.” Remember, I didn’t become a nutritionist to have animals collapse. I don’t like that urgency. I want things to happen nice and slow.
I picked some kitten food that we had. Even though it’s a dog, you can feed it. It’s super palatable. They love it. I go, “Can I watch?” They go down. They had put ECG pads to monitor because they weren’t sure if this was a sinkable effect where the heart rate was happening so fast and fainting and falling over. They go, “You’re the nutritionist. You go ahead and feed so we can watch.” Now, I’m the one doing this. I’m like, “That’s my price to see. I want to watch this.” I open up the can, and the dog just stands there, normal. It starts to see that I’m going to be feeding it. Within 10 to 15 seconds, the dog collapses and falls over.
He didn’t even eat anything.
He never even got to eat. He smelled it and collapsed. It turned out that this dog was narcoleptic. A little bit of a sad story that it had narcolepsy. It was enough to trigger it. It was the first time it had a brain tumor that affected that part of its brain. It was a sad story. It caused narcolepsy from the food. It went to sleep. Nothing was wrong with the heart. The food was there and triggered the part of the brain. It went, “Time for a little nap.”
Does that happen in narcoleptic people? I wonder.
I don’t know. That’s the level of my knowledge. I’ve never seen that before and since.
That’s crazy. This has been fascinating.
We have to have him back because I have other questions.
There’s so much. Our audience can only tune in for so long.
Why? That’s fascinating.
We can do part two.
Sean, before we go, what pets do you have?
I’ll be brief. I lost my own dog.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry. How old?
That’s okay. It was too young, almost an eleven-year-old Standard Poodle named Rosie.
I love them. What color?
Black. She died of cancer.
They’re so smart. I love working with Standard Poodles. Sebaceous adenitis was my research area. One time in Cincinnati, we ran a biopsy clinic. Can you imagine 30 Standard Poodles? I was in Standard Poodle heaven. They’re such nice dogs.
I have to be careful so I don’t cry on the show, but she was an absolute sweetheart in that. I miss her very much.
Dr. Delaney, we ask all of our guests, what is your pet or human peeve? It can’t have an amino acid in it.
Keep Your Animal Lean To Increase Quality Of Life
Can I answer it in a different way? What would be my message as a nutritionist? Keep your animal lean. If I convert that into a peeve, it is us allowing and accepting animals to be overweight or obese. The reason I say that, going back to what I talked about in my own personal experience, the great sadness of having dogs and cats is that we typically outlive them. It is the price we pay to have them in our lives. When people talk to me as a nutritionist, they’re always trying to figure out, “How can I get more time?” That’s what it comes down to. The only thing we have as an answer is to keep them lean. We know that with multiple species and multiple studies.
The great sadness of having dogs and cats is that we usually outlive them—it’s the price we pay for having them in our lives. When people come to me as a nutritionist, they often ask, 'How can I get more time?' In the end, the best answer we have is to… Share on XI remember one of those studies. Didn’t the lean ones live two years longer than the others?
Yes.
How do you know the right weight for your dog?
It’s visual and tactile. It’s when you do what’s called body composition scoring or body condition.
BMI for humans?
BMI is a height and a weight. It doesn’t work well because we have the NBA basketball players and we have the jockeys. We do not have someone with a hundredfold difference. We have two-pound dogs, and we have 200-pound dogs. Cats even have variation. We have to look at where fat normally accumulates rather than measuring it to be able to come up with a numerical value like the BMI.
Body condition is looking at fat over the ribs, abdominal fat, and fat near the tail base. What we want is looking from the chest back, an hourglass figure. We’re looking from the side. We want to see the chest go up towards the tail. You’re going up an abdominal tuck. That’s our visual look. We’re seeing the silhouette we want to. That’s every breed. I don’t want someone to say, “My pug is a sausage.” They can have an abdominal tuck. They can have a waistline.
We want to feel. We want to feel how much fat. We want to feel the ribs. We don’t want to see it without any coverage. There’s an exception. There are some breeds. My sister, for example, loves Whippets. She’s on her second Whippet. You’re going to see the ribs, but most dogs shouldn’t see the ribs. You can feel it easily. Over in the tail base, we want to feel a little bit of the pelvis. We don’t want to be a coffee table flat across and just a cushion.
Regardless of age, breed, dog, or cat, those are visual cues to tell us if they’re appropriate. We want to be able to easily feel the fat. We want to see a waistline. If you don’t, you’re giving a little too many calories. You need to cut it back. If it’s a cylinder, then talking to your veterinarian about an appropriate weight loss food is in order. Hopefully, everyone will learn over time if we keep on talking about it, and we talk about our pet peeve of keeping lean throughout. It doesn’t reduce enjoyment. You can still enjoy your food without overeating.
What about Janet’s cat with the paunch?
You’ve never seen our cat. He doesn’t like me.
She had him on camera before you came on. He has this big paunch that hangs.
It’s not very attractive when he’s out running. I’m sure the women are running.
Gravity gets us all. That’s why we get our jowls and everything else. There is some of that effect. What you would still be able to do is you should be able to feel the ribs. You should be able to see that even if from the side, if you were to get underneath there, it’s just skin, and then it goes back up, and that there is a tummy underneath there.
If I lift that up, he’s still cut.
You can feel the ribs easily. With all those things, hopefully together will help give you a clue. Every veterinarian should be able to do what’s called a BCS or body condition score, and tell you, “We’re good, or we’re not.”
He needs shapewear, Janet.
The neighbor’s cat is so big. He sits with his paws, like Buddha’s belly.
That’s bad.
That’s Murphy.
That’s not fair to him. I remind us that no one wants to be in that state. You can enjoy things. You can have food that you enjoy, but in moderation. Quality of life comes into play. I know Alice, you briefly said living two years longer. A key part of that, arthritis in that particular study, is that the onset was later. There are a lot of conditions and comorbidities that come with being overweight, not just lifespan.
All of us talking about our gravity, our jowls and our aging, we want to not just live longer if it’s a poor quality of life. We want to be able to have an active life and do what we enjoy doing. The same is true of our dogs and cats. It’s key for us to remember that it’s not just more time. It’s more good quality of life. I like to say keeping an animal lean increase both the quantity of life, but also the quality of life. Those two things together are key. As much as I like to make palatable food, have animals eat, and see them enjoying eating, I want them to do it in a way that keeps them lean.
I have to tell you. Peanut butter came in handy because our Golden was semi-sprayed in the face by a skunk. She’s fine. We got her cleaned off, but after, she’s all wet because we wiped her all down and everything. She was distracted. I used peanut butter in an old toy rubber, a KONG. That distracted her. It was a tablespoon of peanut butter. It’s not a lot, but it distracted her from what happened. Meanwhile, I’m freaking out.
It’s not exactly analogous, but if we’re Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. We have to remember that you can give love in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, that’s attention. Sometimes, that’s petting and playtime. Providing that KONG treat is part of that. That’s important. They’re a social animal. The peanut butter was that comfort that you provided in a stressful event and a reward for probably putting up with, “Why are you doing this to my face?” and everything else. It’s not giving them an entire jar of peanut butter.
Except at the end when it’s empty.
If it’s a clear peanut butter jar, it’s super amazing to see the dexterity, the capability, and the length of their tongue.
It’s like a rubber spatula in there. We can hardly wait until we get to the end. We have a separate jar. Alice’s husband does it differently. We have a separate jar on the cupboard that has Libby and a big heart and paw prints on it. That’s just for her because then you can double dip.
I don’t want to be the food or calorie police when we talk about keeping it lean. It’s important that we recognize that treats, the yogurt we talked about in the beginning, in the bowl, or the peanut butter, all that in moderation, if it’s a safe and non-toxic food, and things like that. Those are important. I enjoy giving when I have my dog still alive. Not to make myself cry, what was the last thing I did? I was giving treats.
It’s important to recognize that treats—whether yogurt, peanut butter, or others—can absolutely have a place in moderation, as long as they’re safe and non-toxic. These things matter. Share on XI feel bad for the rabbits because all they do is eat their poop, and that’s their joy.
They’re supposed to.
Let’s pause for a moment. We want to give rabbits nice, long hay so that they can sit there, work, chew, and grind down their teeth so they don’t get malocclusions and have to have any of that dentistry work. It’s like our nails. They’re constantly growing out their teeth because they know there’s going to be wear from eating that plant material. It’s important for them. We talk about fiber. Sorry, we’re going to talk about microbiota. They need those longer fiber types to help support the microbiota to be able to get the nutrients they need.
When we talk about rabbits, they have their enjoyment. It’s just what we wouldn’t chew. You and I are not going to be chewing on hay and going, “This is great.” We have to be careful. People love to give yogurt treats and those dry treats. They like to give too much greens, too much fruit, a little bit in moderation. Rabbits, we need to stick to our roots. No one would think of giving a steak to a rabbit.
They never showed Bugs Bunny in his poop.
We got the carrot.
Dr. Delaney, this has been so educational. I love that you offer this service passionately for humans because it helps humans’ lives to make the pet happy and vice versa. Thank you so much. We appreciate your work.
We have one-pot recipes to make it a little bit easier for folks.
I should do crockpot recipes. Talk about easy.
I appreciate you having me. As you probably can tell, I can talk about nutrition all day, all the time, to the point where you’re like, “Please stop.” That’s okay. The wonderful thing is that we don’t all want to do the same thing. The wonderful thing is that there is specialization. For me, I am so grateful. I didn’t go to vet school to become a nutritionist. I found it all along the way. I’m so thankful I did because apparently, it was my calling.
That’s how I see it. It’s a calling. It’s not a job. It’s a life, and a calling. I agree.
Where did your wife get her Chemical Engineering degree?
She went to Davis, too. My wife and I met in Calculus class in community college in Southern California, in Glendale Community College. She was doing a lot better than I was in Calculus. She’s a second-generation chemical engineer. She has that genetics, probably.
It’s in her blood.
When I went to Santa Barbara, she changed majors. She was in Biomedical Engineering and went to Chemical Engineering because I’m not going to be what my father is. She doesn’t say that, but there’s a little amount of that. She ended up transferring when I got into vet school at Davis. She transferred as an undergrad and finished her Chemical Engineering degree at Davis. We’ve always stayed, raised our children, and all that stuff in Davis.
My son went to Georgia Tech. He’s a chemical engineer. All I can tell you is he crushes rocks. Something floats to the top, and they skim it off. It’s a metal. These are rocks and metal that float to the top.
Chemical engineers do all sorts of things. My wife is involved in business now and has been for a long time. Chemical engineers can do so many things. My wife, for a long time, did auto industry consulting for pollution control. She became an expert on engine emissions. She was at a consulting firm that dealt with mobile sources. Think cars, trains, and airplanes. The other half was stationary, things like generators, power plants, and factories producing emissions.
She did that for many years. When I left the university and went and ran a pet food company for about four years, she took over Balance It and ran it from an administrative role. We still had a board of nutritionists on staff. She stayed on when I came back. She is still a chemical engineer. When we built this facility, she was involved in the design. When we do process engineering, she does those types of things.
Most of her time now, she’s in accounting and HR because of the nature of the small business and stuff. Chemical engineering is fascinating. The company I went to work for got acquired by Procter and Gamble. If you don’t know about Procter and Gamble, they love to hire chemical engineers. Three of the four counterparts, because they got bigger when they merged, were all chemical engineers. I handed off a lot of my tasks to the chemical engineers, which was fascinating.
One of the chemical engineers had worked on making probiotics. We talked about that. One of them had worked on making shampoo, Pantene. Another chemical engineer, I wasn’t handing it off, but was doing procurement. He switched over from procurement with paper pulp to do Brawny, which is their brand. Chemical engineering is where you want to be in life because that is the ticket to every field.
I’ll tell you. He loves what he does. He enjoys it.
You have to be a genius, though.
The other interesting thing is that he loves to bake.
So does my wife. How weird.
They bake. You know why? It’s very precise.
That’s what it is. My wife loves to bake. My daughter got the chemical engineering change. She’s a junior and is already in Calculus. She is a high school student and is a TA. She’s got that. It came right down from Grandpa. She loves to bake. I came home to chocolate chip cookies. A few days before that, I got some other baked goods. It’s something in the brain that’s the same.
He’ll drive some nuts because I’ll be like, “That’s about a quarter of a cup.” He’s like, “No, you got to measure it.” I’m like, “I don’t have time for that.”
My wife gets the grand scale out on a British baking show.
We want to thank Dr. Delaney. This has been so informative. We would love to have you back. I still have a million questions. Janet, let’s close it down. This is Dr. Alice Novotny from Cleveland, Ohio.
This is Janet Novotny King, a Cleveland, Ohio native. Thank you for joining us. Remember, give your pets extra biscuits. Keep them lean. Thank you, Dr. Delaney, for joining us. We so appreciate the good work you do. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Important Links
About Dr. Sean Delaney
Dr. Delaney received his BS in Zoology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and DVM from the University of California, Davis (UCD). He completed a small animal medicine and surgery internship at what is now VCA Sacramento Veterinary Referral Center and the first full-time Clinical Nutrition Residency and an MS in Nutrition at UCD. He has been a board-certified veterinary nutritionist® since 2003.
Dr. Delaney was a clinical faculty member at UCD from 2003 to 2013 with a four-year hiatus as Senior Executive Vice President and R&D head for Natura Pet Products through its acquisition by Procter & Gamble. In 2003 he formed Davis Veterinary Medical (DVM) Consulting, Inc., A California Benefit Corporation since 2023, that provided pet food industry consulting services from 2003-2016 and since 2005 offers the Balance It® formulation software and food grade products for the feeding of human food to healthy and sick dogs and cats that has been used by over 20,000 veterinarians and 100,000s of their clients.
Dr. Delaney has served as the Chair of the AVMA VSOC representing the ACVIM and the interests of over 13,000 varied veterinary specialist colleagues from over 20 other specialty organizations. Dr. Delaney is also a former Board member and Board Chair of the American College of Veterinary Nutrition (prior to its integration into ACVIM in 2021 which he helped spearhead) and is a current co-editor & co-author of the text Applied Veterinary Clinical Nutrition 1st & 2nd editions. He also currently serves as the volunteer Board Chair of the non-profit Mark Morris Institute that provides nutrition education at 26 veterinary schools in North America, educational materials, and online software. Last June he was honored as a Life Member of the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition.