Study: Few home-prepared diets are balanced

Ingredients are diverse in home-prepared food for dogs, according to the results of a recent study. Furthermore, only 5% of the 1765 cases studied potentially met maintenance diet standards set by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO).1

These and other insights were presented by the study’s lead author, Janice O’Brien, DVM, a PhD student in dog nutrition epidemiology at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Virginia, at the 2025 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) Forum in Louisville, Kentucky. She shared that about 25% of diets for pets enrolled in the study were partially balanced (1 to 10 nutrient imbalances), and 52% were unbalanced (10 or more nutrient imbalances), while approximately 17% could not be categorized.1

O’Brien, who previously served in the US Army Veterinary Corps and has practiced veterinary medicine in a small animal clinic, said that adding vitamins and minerals to home-prepared foods is necessary in the majority of cases. “There's probably some sort of supplement that is going to have to be added, and it needs to be added all the time,” O’Brien said in a dvm360 interview at ACVIM Forum.

Overall, the study sought to discover whether a complete diet can be achieved with home-prepared meals, based on ingredients listed by pet owners. The results showed the most common animal sources reported by pet owners were chicken, beef and turkey. The most common ingredients with percentage of diets they were contained in as follows1:

• Meat: 89%
• Vegetables: 64%
• Organs/offal: 26%
• Fruit: 25%
• Nonmeat proteins (22.6%)
• Fats/oils (14%)

In another recent study—published in ACVIM’s Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine—for which O’Brien was also an author, investigators found an association between home-cooked diets and higher odds of gastrointestinal, renal, and hepatic diseases when compared to an extruded diet.2 However, there is a lack of previous research about how pet owners are feeding their dogs at home.1

According to data from the Dog Aging Project, which has supported both studies, about 6% of the 40,307 dogs in a subset sample had home-prepared foods, either cooked or raw, as their primary diet with another 25% of dogs in the analysis having home-prepared foods as a secondary diet component.3 O’Brien noted that many pet owners might be feeding a commercial kibble diet, but then adding a home-cooked food on top and mixing it in.

O’Brien emphasized that pet owners should be closely following the recipes they use for their animals’ meals. “If you have a recipe that's formulated, make sure that you continue doing that exact recipe all the time, because otherwise, if you drift away from what it initially was, that's going to result in changes to the balance of the diet,” she said.

Takeaway

Veterinary professionals should keep in mind that pet owners really care about their dogs, O’Brien said. “They're really intending to do the best thing for them. I don't think they're intending to do something that's bad, and I think it's just a way that we as a profession can maybe communicate that better,” she concluded.

References

1. O’Brien J, Ruple A, Tolbert K. Abstract NM04: Home-prepared diets for companion dogs are made from diverse ingredients and few are balanced. Presented at: American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) Forum; June 18-21, 2025: Louisville, KY.
2. Ortiz AV, Luo I, O’Brien J, et al. Association between diet type and owner-reported health conditions in dogs in the Dog Aging Project. J Vet Int Med. April 21, 2025. doi:10.1111/jvim.70060
3. About the diet survey. Dog Aging Project. 2024. Accessed June 19, 2025. https://data.dogagingproject.org/HlesDiet?year=2024#primary-diet