The general trend for life expectancy in humans has been upward for a long time. Improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and both therapeutic and preventative medical care have led to humans today living longer and healthier lives than at any time in history.
The impression most veterinarians have is that the same is true for our pets. Nutrition and healthcare have improved for dogs and cats, as they have for humans, and owned pets who are well cared for are clearly healthier than free-roaming, unowned individuals. However, not nearly as much data is collected on lifespan and mortality patterns in companion animals, so it is difficult to prove that life expectancy is increasing.
I have written about this topic previously here and elsewhere. My conclusions based on the data available then were that it seemed likely dogs, at least, were living longer, but it couldn’t be stated with any confidence. Now, however, there is a bit more data which strengthens the case a bit.
Montoya M, Morrison JA, Arrignon F, Spofford N, Charles H, Hours MA, Biourge V. Life expectancy tables for dogs and cats derived from clinical data. Front Vet Sci. 2023 Feb 21;10:1082102.
This study looked retrospectively (backwards in time) at the huge patient data set collected by the Banfield Pet Hospital group. While there are challenges and limitations in this kind of data set and analysis, it provides a useful source of data for many types of research.
In this case, the authors looked at mortality data and constructed a set of life tables, to get a sense of how long dogs and cats in this population lived and what factors were associated with this. With all of the necessary caveats (discussed in the original paper), the general trend was consistent with most of the previous data; life expectancy seems to be increasing for our pets.
Confidence in this result is increased by the consistency of other findings in the study. For example, overweight dogs tended to have shorter lives, as other studies have shown and as we would expect from much more robust evidence in humans. This relationship, interestingly, was not as clear in cats, and other research has also shown that the relationship between body weight and lifespan in cats is much more complex than typically seen in humans and dogs.
While we are always forced to cope with more limited data in veterinary medicine than our human healthcare colleagues have available, we must make decisions based on the most plausible arguments and highest-quality data we do have. Contemporary nutrition and healthcare for our animal companions are better than in the past, and this appears to be extending their lives as it does ours.
Hysterical claims that our pets are living shorter and more unhealthy lives are based purely on an anti-modernity, anti-science ideology, and they are not consistent with the facts. Examples are easy to find of the dire consequences for rejecting the evidence that modern science have improved health and lifespan; from the huge number of unnecessary deaths form COVID and the resurgence of preventable disease due to vaccine refusal to potentially serious disease associated with the use unconventional diets, this concern about declining health and lifespan is misinformed and can lead to poor healthcare choices for the pets we love.
Dear Skeptvet,
Life expectancy in the US is the lowest it has been in 20 years and going down. Don’t expect things to get better and check out the end of your graph. We have reached our peak.
Highly processed (UPF) pet foods may keep most pets alive for a good time but my experience with very large packs of dogs and for over 40 years plus a boarding kennel is that most do even better with a wide variety of fresh foods, as do humans.
Meanwhile ??
http://nephologue.blogspot.com/
The decline is largely due to COVID, drug overdoses, suicides, and gun violence. None of this has anything to do with nutrition or dog and cat lifespan, and except for COVID the US is an anomaly compared to most other developed countries.
Such anecdotal observations, unfortunately, can’t prove anything and are available to support every belief, true or false. What we need is scientific evidence, and until we have better, we have to accept that this is just a belief, not a fact.
As for tying economics to thermodynamics, interesting but not really relevant to this post.
Unfortunately as you have said, long term studies of UP diets versus non UP diets have never been carried out. You can say my observations (including how many veterinary visits for illness my dogs have had) are anecdotal and indeed they are but it’s not a ‘belief’. I don’t do ‘beliefs’, This, plus my experience with literally hundreds and hundreds of dogs and their diets that come to our kennels some for all their lives, their medications (Apoquel epidemic) and how we have sometimes advised changing their diets and seen the results and indeed have saved more than a few from euthanasia, several due to seemingly intractable colitis despite medications and Veterinary diets. Example for one 4 year old GSD it was literally swopping to a raw diet (but not chicken). It certainly surprised the vet who was waiting to PTS. Her litter sister had no problems with UP food. Also the difference in appetite with dogs on non UP foods compared to non UP food is often telling.
Is not scientific research also dependant on observation however Homeopathy and such is well,laughable but I know people swear by it so it is really difficult to sort the wood from the trees and we know that a large % patients given drugs by doctors and pharmacists for minor illnesses would do just as well with a placebo.
I am not saying that many dogs will not live long and active lives on poor quality UPFs, good genetics and breed play a part, but it is common sense to know that given the choice, dogs will ignore the UPFs and go to the fresh food bowl and there are plenty of properly formulated ones now. Why would we not give our pets a better experience ?
The role of UP foods in human health is now, as you know being evaluated. The length of life may be longer but the overall health of most Americans is poor. It’s less nutrition and more the drugs that help keep them alive.
The other thing was, just FYI as the quality of all life is in danger. I lecture on climate change ane ecosystem and environmental degradation.
Pet food, for instance will become more and more expensive and pets will be affected by our increasing problems.
I don’t know what this means. Everyone has beliefs about the world, and most of these are either based on personal experience or the experiences of others. As far as the number of anecdotes (how many dogs you have seen), numbers don’t make anecdotal observations more trustworthy because they don’t address the core biases inherent in our uncontrolled experiences. That’s what scientific research is for. Any conclusions we draw from such experiences (for example, that switching to a raw diet is what helped the GD you mention) is subject to all of these biases and may well not mean what it seems like it means.
Controlled observations, which are quite different from uncontrolled observations (aka anecdotes). Quite a different thing.
Given a choice, many dogs will also eat rocks, poisonous mushrooms, chocolate, batteries, etc. Their choice is not an indicator of the health value of the food.
Part of the problem here is the assumption that kibble is the same as potato chips because they are “processed.” Human snack and convenience foods are nutritionally VERY different from commercial pet foods, and it is not simply the “processing” that is the problem- it is the nutritional content. Apples and oranges here.
As for the idea that people are overall unhealthy, that’s too vague and unrelated to the issue of what we should be feeding dogs and cats to matter much. Sure, obesity rates are high, people drink and take too many drugs, people shoot themselves and others with guns in the U.S. too much, etc., but it is not plausible to blame all of this on “nutrition” and ignore the complexities and the differences between human and companion animal health. Poor people eating fast food because it’s cheaper and they live in food deserts with few options, who are also not able to exercise and living stress-filled lives and dogs living in a home with good overall care and also eating kibble are very different situations that have little to nothing to do with each other in terms of risk factors for negative health outcomes.
As I’ve said many times, fresh-cooked diets may have health advantages, and I personally suspect that is true. But the demonization of kibble in the absence of good scientific evidence doesn’t promote healthier feeding, it just drives people to unsafe and unbalanced alternatives (raw, most hot-cooked diets) or to more expensive fresh diets that haven’t yet proven their worth in terms of health, much less their economic and environmental sustainability. We need the data so we can make accurate and informed choices!
When I say I don’t do ‘beliefs’ I think you know what I mean. For instance I don’t believe in God because I see no evidence for it, other people do obviously.
I haven’t known many dogs that want to eat rocks but I am sure faced with a rock and a bowl of food, it won’t be the rock. Mostly they chew and swallow rubbish from boredom and because chewing is a requirement of their nature and many dogs don’t get enough. There are of course dogs who will eat literally anything but is a rather odd refutation of the point I was making..
Did I say I was against all kibbles or that many dogs didn’t live long and active lives on them? No, I actually made this point. Regarding the GSD, one of quite a few examples, it was a fact. She had been treated for several years and had been to a specialist referral vet but was so bad that the only reason she was not euthanised beforehand was because the owners didn’t want her sister to be in the kennels without her. Can I say why putting her on raw food appeared to solve her colitis, no I can’t but she was a different dog and lived another 7 years without another flare except when the owner tried chicken. That is not my bias as over the years that was the one food system that hadn’t been tried which was the only reason we tried raw with the owners’ permission. Raw isn’t normally the go to for chronic colitis.
Can I give you data we get dogs so many dogs off Apoquel by taking them off Royal Canin, Hills etc. no I can’t.
Our vets asked could we do a survey of dogs who had had cruciate ligament problems including those that had been operated on. How many had had early neuter or spay, (under 12 months). Well yes I suppose we do have data for that!
You didn’t comment on the vagueness of the ingredients in Hills Renal ? I want to know what I am feeding my animals, cereals, oils and fats, what by products etc. ? The EU labelling of pet food is so much better.
Eating a diet heavy in UPFs is by means confined to the impoverished, not at all. As you know dog food was originally made (as were breakfast cereals) to use up cheap cereals and the poorer quality ones still do. Good old Mr Kellog.
I will be keeping an eye on life expectancy and maybe come back to you on that one in a few years !
Sure. My point was that all beliefs about the world are founded on some kind of evidence (the area of philosophy known as epistemology). This is true for mundane beliefs (fire burns) as well as more dramatic ones (e.g. God). You undoubtedly have beliefs (or opinions, if you prefer) about nutrition, and my point was just that our confidence in such beliefs should be proportional to the strength of the evidence. Since anecdote and personal experience is weak evidence, opinions founded on these should be held with low confidence.
Since I take things like this out of dogs in practice every week, I have a different sense of how common the behavior is. My point here was that any preference a dog expresses by choosing one food over another has nothing to do with the health value or safety of that food because dogs make harmful choices all the time. I think that’s a pretty fair refutation of the point I understood you to be making.
Anyway, this conversation is getting a bit circular. I understand you feel that 1. kibble qualifies as HPF, 2. You have seen dogs appear to have health benefits from switching to other types of food, and 3. You believe this is supportive, to some degree, that these types of food may be superior, at least for some dogs and some conditions. I consider this an unproven hypothesis, and nothing you have said moves the needle from there to established fact. Hopefully, we will get the data we need to determine the truth, and I will be just as happy if you turn out to be right as if not since knowing with confidence gives me better options to offer my clients and my own dogs.
I wanted to thank you for this very interesting article and for your blog as a whole. I am European, 67 yoa and I have been witnessing this gruesome and fast growing trend to do away with science-based medicine by more and more people. The aggression of the snake-oil mafia is terrifying. Here in the land of Blaise Pascal and of the best medical care in the world, every Pharmacie now boasts a wall full of hyper-expensive BS-products, the effectiveness of most of them already scientifically disproved many times over. This ruthless money-making has now found its’ way to the vet’s office as well. While the vets here give excellent care, they also always try to slip in some homeopathic product, 4 times more expensive than the good old Big Pharma treatment. Supplements too. I have had them make a note in my patient file not to ever me anything else than science-based treatment and that feels surreal and alarming. I am very grateful for the higher life expectancy of my furry friends, thanks to excellent health care. Thank you so much for being an advocate for reason, logic and science. People like you and Paul Offit are needed more than ever. Kind regards.
https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/dogs-drug-extend-longevity seems to me that veterinarians can promote unproven medical care in the market place for the purpose of preventative medicine all by themselves without the fda and usda government officials getting paid a salary to help veterinarians do it. if these drugs extend-longevity why aren’t we taking them? I wonder how much money Pfizer made selling their usda conditional use unproven dog dental vaccine..
Wow, such cynicism! If you want better evidence for veterinary treatments, FDA and USDA approval is a damn sight better than just wiping up a supplement in your garage and selling it with no evidence and no oversight.
We aren’t taking drugs to extend lifespan and healthspan because none have been proven safe and effective yet. The assumption that something must be BS if it isn’t already approved for humans isn’t a rational one, especially if you think FDA approval is meaningless anyway.
Usually, veterinary medicine lags behind human medicine, but in this area we might actually go first, partly because it is easier to test such drugs in species that don’t live as long as humans.
The failure of one therapy doesn’t have anything to do with the success or failure of another. This is just like the alt med proponents like to invalidate all of science-based medicine by pointing to ever time science was wrong about something.
Wow, such cynicism>>> to be clear i am a cynic of fda and usda using things like conditional use laws to pick and choose before those treatments have be proven safe and effective.
Dear Skeptvet,
Could the increase in pet age you point out be actually a reflection of the emergence of alternative diets to conventional pet food (i.e. kibble) in the last couple of decades?
Addressing you apple to oranges comparison, based on current scientific consensus do you think humans would live longer on a nutritionally complete protein shake that contains all necessary vitamins and minerals and appropriate macros from birth to death, instead of a varied whole food diet?
Best
IZ
I doubt that unconventional diets have reached a level of popularity that could impact life expectancy numbers even if they have health benefits (which is still unproven). Surveys show that 70-90% of owners still feed canned or dry diets, so that seems a stretch.
I think a properly formulated balanced and complete diet for humans would likely be better than what many people actually eat. Would it be optimal? Almost certainly not. But convenient, safe, and adequate nutrition is probably better for people than the haphazard choices we often make, fast food, and extreme diets, which is what a lot of folks eat. Balanced and complete whole food diets are great, but they are often more expensive, contain components frequently not available to many people (especially the poor), and don’t succeed in attracting people away from less healthy alternatives, and promoting them has been widely unsuccessful for decades. This, then, is a false choice that doesn’t actually exist in the real world most people eat in.
The issue is not whether commercial pet foods are perfect, but whether they provide safe and appropriate nutrition and whether alternatives would lead to better health or longer lifespan. That may be true, but we won’t find out through thought experiments but rather through actual feeding studies, and those ar currently lacking.