Home-Prepared Diets

Benefits of a home-cooked diet and why to use balancing supplements.


ACVIM CIE Consensus Statement

 

​Benefits of a home-cooked diet

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The 2026 ACVIM-endorsed consensus statement on canine chronic inflammatory enteropathy (CIE formerly IBD) supports a diet-first approach and includes home-prepared diets among acceptable therapeutic diet-trial options. When a veterinarian chooses a home-cooked diet, Wagtritious Multi and Macro-Min can be used as part of a calculated formulation to help balance the recipe toward AAFCO adult-maintenance nutrient standards.
Read the article here.

AJVR Home-Prepared Diet Deficiencies

​Why to use balancing supplements​

The article is “Findings from the Dog Aging Project: home-prepared diets for companion dogs feature diverse ingredients, and few are nutritionally complete” published in American Journal of Veterinary Research in 2025. It examined owner-reported home-prepared diets from dogs enrolled in the Dog Aging Project.

Practical Takeaway for Home-Cooked Diets

Home-cooked diets can be a great option for many dogs, but they need to be carefully balanced. A recent study of owner-prepared homemade dog diets found that most were unlikely to meet all AAFCO essential nutrient requirements (Complete & Balanced).

The most common concerns with homemade diets are not usually the protein, vegetables, or carbohydrate ingredients. Instead, the biggest gaps are often the nutrients that are harder to provide consistently through whole foods alone, especially minerals and vitamins.

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Meat + vegetables + starch/oil without a complete balancing supplement = likely deficient.

The study assessed 1,726 owner-reported homemade diets, and only 6% had the potential to be nutritionally complete. Because exact ingredient amounts were not collected, the true percentage of complete diets may be even lower.

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Common problem areas include:
 

• Calcium and phosphorus balance, which is especially important in meat-based diets
   

• Trace minerals, such as zinc, copper, iodine and selenium
   

• Fat-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins D and E
   

• Essential fatty acid balance (omega-3 & 6), which can change depending on the oils or fats used

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• Overall vitamin and mineral completeness, which is difficult to achieve without a properly designed supplement plan

This means that simply feeding fresh meat, vegetables, grains, and oils does not automatically make a diet complete and balanced. Even diets that look healthy can be missing key nutrients if they are not formulated correctly.

For this reason, home-cooked diets should be made from a complete recipe and paired with the appropriate balancing supplements. Wagtritious Multi and Wagtritious Macro-Min are designed to help provide the vitamins and minerals that are commonly difficult to meet in home-prepared diets when used as directed as part of a properly formulated recipe.

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All Fresh Pet Food Should Use a Balancing Supplement

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