Nestlé Purina have written an article about vegan and vegetarian dog food that is FULL OF MISINFORMATION!
The irony is in the company that Nestlé Purina bought out in 2020 (see bottom of this article - you may be VERY surprised!)
Prof Andrew Knight even had to reply online to the article that was published by Nestlé Purina in November 2025 as it is so full of untruths about the healthy rise and surge in popularity of sustainable plant-based dog food.
To date, they have not replied to his comments or changed anything about their article, so we feel obliged to expose the misinformation that they are spreading about sustainable plant-based nutrition for dogs.
Why have they written such a damning article on their Nestlé Purina site?
The only reason for spreading this misinformation, is that Nestlé Purina is a billion dollar corporate that floats on the stock exchange.
They are prepared to protect their market shares at any cost as the boom in the growth in sustainable plant-based dog food options is obviously a very big threat to their profit margins!
Quoted from this article to show the sheer value of Nestlé Purina:
"The global pet food market reached a value of nearly $73.56 billion in 2024. The top ten competitors in the market made up to 78.05% of the total market in 2024.
Nestle Purina Pet Care (Nestle SA) was the largest competitor with a 31.81% share of the market, followed by Mars Petcare Inc. with 29.91%, Hill's Pet Nutrition Inc. with 6.09%
The top opportunities in the pet food market segmented by ingredients will arise in the animal derivatives segment, which will gain $16.9 billion of global annual sales by 2029."
That is a shocking statistic of how many billions (no maybe trillions!) of birds, fish and animals will be raised for slaughter to be added to Nestlé Purina's pet food when we have the perfect solution with plant-based and fermentation protein dog food.
With that much money at stake, we see why Nestlé Purina have quoted so many untruths in this article.
Let's bust the myths and misinformation that they are spreading on their Purina website:
First misinformation
"It’s incredibly difficult to create a vegan dog food that can keep dogs healthy in the long term. Dogs need a variety of specific nutrients and have different requirements to humans, meaning you can’t feed a dog the same diet that a vegan person would eat.
In particular, it’s difficult to meet dogs’ protein requirements with a diet that contains only plant protein, and there’s a risk of deficiency of various essential vitamins and minerals too. This means that we don’t recommend feeding your dog a vegan diet unless you’ve sought veterinary nutritional advice." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
ALL complete dog foods need the valuable addition of supplements and nutrients to be recognised as complete and balanced by FEDIAF before it can be marketed.
Most recently, the University of Nottingham conducted an analysis of 31 commercially-available dry dog foods, including six plant-based varieties.
The study concluded that, “when properly formulated”, plant-based foods can be a “healthy and viable alternative to meat-based options”. They highlighted that plant-based dog foods would need to be correctly supplemented with iodine and B vitamins to be nutritionally adequate.
We have chosen only properly supplemented premium complete foods with adequate levels of Vit B and Iodine at Just be Kind.
The studies from Nottingham also mentioned that 66% of the veterinary diets in the trial eg renal diets with low crude protein (very possibly those of Purina) were found to be deficient in one or more essential amino acids, meaning dogs would need to take additional supplements on those diets.
Second misinformation
"A study carried out by The Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association (PFMA) on 86 vegetarian dogs in Europe found that over half the dogs were fed a diet deficient in protein, essential amino acids, calcium, zinc and vitamins D and B12. This shows that it’s still difficult to make a vegetarian diet for dogs that’s healthy and well-balanced." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
The link to this study leads to an error page as UK PetFoods has not been called PFMA since 2022 and this study possibly does not even exist as there is no link - definite fake news!
It’s the nutrients that matter and these don’t have to come from another animal. Taurine, for example, is now commonly synthesised for use in both plant-based and conventional commercial dog foods. The synthetic nutrients are molecularly identical to the animal-derived versions and perfectly safe to add to pet foods as quoted by a 2022 handout in UK Petfoods.
We appreciate that cat foods are mentioned in this handout and not dogs as cats have an essential requirement for Taurine to ensure heart and eye health and it has to be added to ALL cat foods.
It is not essential as an addition to dog food unless it is a grain-free or plant-based recipe, but thankfully the molecularly-derived taurine that has to be added to cat food, can be used in dog foods too!
Third misinformation
"Feeding a diet that hasn’t got the right balance of nutrients can have serious health consequences for your dog in the long term. For example, some published research suggests that dogs eating vegetarian, vegan or home-prepared diets may be deficient in an amino acid called taurine, and this can increase the risk of a heart disease known as dilated cardiomyopathy." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
Taurine is the first ingredient to be added to all complete vegan dog foods, including its precursor Methionine.
Please read the story about Henry whose heart health IMPROVED when he moved to a complete plant-based dog food diet instead of Purina Cardio diet!!
Please note the ingredients below added to the Purina Cardio diet - all of the byproducts of the heavily subsidised animal agriculture and fishing industry with the use of dried chicken, fish oil, pork fat and digest made from chicken entrails! (compare these to the pure and natural ingredients we use in our complete premium plant powered dog foods!)
Fourth misinformation
"Currently, there’s relatively little research published on vegetarian and vegan dog diets, and we don’t yet know of any general health benefits. There have been a few studies carried out, but further research is needed to analyse the long-term health effects." - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
There is also so much evidence of the long term effects of a plant-based diets in dogs even shown in this unique Google review and story sent in by Andrew in Bedfordshire when his 'best-mate' Harvey the Beagle had passed away!
Andrew felt compelled to write up Harvey's story even after his death as he felt that the plant-based complete food that Harvey was given over his lifetime; gave him an extra 7 years (!) of quality life when he was diagnosed with so many allergies and intolerances.
Fifth Misinformation
"Feeding this type of diet may be more environmentally friendly than feeding diets containing meat products" - as quoted from Nestlé Purina article
It goes without saying that -
Vegan Pet Food is THE ‘Most Effective’ Measure to Tackle the Climate Footprint of Dogs & Cats (read article here)
Remember that Nestlé have pulled out of the dairy methane alliance where they have to declare how they are planning to reduce emissions.
They are more focussed on growing their dairy industry and pet food meat-based market than seeking sustainable and far more nutritious alternatives.
What is the irony in the article published by Nestlé Purina?
After running down vegan dog food with this damning article; the pure irony is in the fact that in 2020, Nestlé Purina bought out fresh UK dog food company Lily's Kitchen (as shown by the article below or this link here.)
