How Often Should You Feed Your Dog? Giant Study Reveals a Surprising Answer

Every dog has their own diet and requirements, including what you should feed them, and how much.

How often? A new study that assessed over 10,000 dogs offers some startling insights into the apparent links between feeding Frequency and canine health, and the key conclusion is definitely food for thought.

According to the research, adult dogs that are fed only once per day tend to score better across several indicators of health, compared with dogs that are fed more often.

Control for sex, age, breed, and other potential confounders, we found that dogs fed once daily rather than more frequently had lower mean scores on a cognitive function scale.

The results are derived from the data collected by the Dog Aging Project.

The findings suggest that the benefits of time-restricted eating may also be applicable to companion dogs.

Even for the scientists doing the research, the results are not a surprise.

When the preliminary results were announced in December, senior author and biostatistician Kathleen Kerr from the University of Washington was not confident that there would be any differences in the health of dogs.

We would have been excited to see an association between feeding Frequency and Health in just one domain. I was surprised to see so many associations.

It wasn't clear if feeding a single meal per day was linked with better outcomes for dogs in some areas. The effects of disease risk in terms of cardiac, skin, and neurological health, as well as cancer incidence, did not show statistically significant effects.

The researchers acknowledge a number of limitations to bear in mind. The feeding data was self- reported by dog owners, meaning it was subject to errors in their recollection and interpretation.

The team says that this is the largest study to date of feeding frequency conducted in companion dogs, and that there is something going on here to suggest that feeding your dog only once per day is linked with certain benefits to their health.

The researchers emphasize that the results only show an association, and do not demonstrate causality, meaning we can't conclude that lower frequency of feeding actually causes better health in dogs.

Bray points out that there could be many reasons why dogs with worse health might be fed more frequently than healthy dogs.

The researchers say that nobody should change how often they feed their dog based on this one study because there is not much more to know about the underlying mechanisms.

If supported by future studies, it may be wise to revisit the current recommendation that adult dogs be fed twice daily.

The rationale for twice-daily feeding in dogs is obscure, and our study suggests that more frequent feeding may not be optimal for several age-related health outcomes.

The findings are reported in a journal.