(T3) Lecture 11b - Nutritional disorders and wellness diets Flashcards
What are 2 food sensitivities (aka adverse rxns to food)?
- Food allergy (hypersensitivity)
- adverse rxns to food that have an immunologic basis - Food intolerance
- adverse rxns to food due to nonimmunologic mechanisms
*Adverse food rxns mimic other diseases
What are the symptoms of a food sensitivity? When do clinical signs appear?
- Skin
- pruritus, self-inflicted alopecia, eosinophilic plaques, indolent ulcers on the lips in some cats - Digestive tract
- vomiting, small bowel diarrhea, large bowel diarrhea
Clinical signs appear 4-24hr after consumption of food with offending antigen
What are food allergens generally?
- Large proteins: beef, dairy products, fish and gluten intolerance
- Lactose intolerance
What is the traditional way to diagnosis/ identify allergens?
First of all: ruling out of other causes of allergic disease
- Feeding an elimination diet and demonstrating a decrease or elimination of clinical signs
- “Challenging” the animal with the original diet and observing a return of clinical signs
- Feeding select ingredients to identify the specific dietary component to which the animal is allergic
How would you formulate an elimination diet?
Take allergens out and feed a different protein or hydrolyzed protein
Diagnosis and management of dietary hypersensitivity
Select an elimination diet containing novel protein and CHO sources
- e.g. Cat: lamb and barley; Dog: fish and potato; Horse: timothy hay
- feed the elimination diet for 8-10 wks
- observe for diminishing clinical signs of hypersensitivity
If the elimination diet decreases clinical signs, re-feed the original diet
- observe for return of signs
- if signs reappear, is definitive diagnosis of food hypersensitivity
How can food allergens be identified with an elimination diet?
Food allergens can be identified by adding a small amount of a SINGLE suspected allergen to the elimination diet
- observe for return of signs
How are dietary hypersensitivities managed?
For lifelong management, a diet that is nutritionally complete and balanced and does not contain the food allergens to which the animal reacts must be fed exclusively
- additional treats and human foods should not be fed unless they are known to be free of the allergen
4 Non-allergen Diet Considerations
- Reduced number of novel, highly digestible protein source (> 87%) or contain a protein hydrolysate
- usually 1 animal protein source and 1 veg protein source
- free AA and small peptides are poor antigens - Avoid protein excesses
- Avoid additives and vasoactive amines
- ex. histamine - Be nutritionally adequate for animal’s life stage & conditiion
Homemade elimination foods: recommended ingredients
- 1 CHO and 1 protein source
- Feline foods: lamb baby food, lamb, rice, rabbit
- Canine foods: rice, potato, lamb, fish, rabbit, venison, and tofu
- Not relevant for equine nutrition
What is the most common form of malnutrition in companion animals?
Obesity
- due to changes in lifestyle to sedentary companions
What is obesity?
Overconsumption of calories
- excess body fat deposition
- increased ratio of fat to lean tissue
Animals in positive energy balance for extended period of time
- energy intake increases
- energy expenditure decreases
Why is obesity “bad”?
Excessive body fat has detrimental effects on health and longevity
How do we assess obesity in companion animals?
Body condition score
Other important info?
- body weight
- how much of body weight is fat mass
Definition of overweight
- Above optimal: animals 1-9% above optimal wt
- Overweight: animals 10-19% above optimal wt
- Obese: animals >20% above optimal wt
What is normal or optimal wt?
Breed specific! Need the range of the breed to know what to aim fo
- certainly a bit of variation, so use BCS to finetune
5 main categories of risk factors for obesity
- Breed
- high incidence in dogs - Gender and gonadectonomy
- females more at risk
- neutering of dogs and cats lowers basal metabolic rates; increased efficiency of energy utilization & increases appetite; decreased voluntary activity - Age
- decrease in energy requirement
- older dogs and horses
- middle-aged cats have highest incidence - Physical activity
- daily energy expenditure
- playful/outdoor cat vs sedentary cat
- working vs sedentary dog
- exercising horse vs pasture pet
- individual temperament - Type of diet fed
- caloric comp of foods and feeding
- highly palatable diet
- overall, sedentary animals have higher BCS when fed free choice
Why is less energy-dense food important?
For weight loss
What will you take out/add in for less energy dense diets?
- less fat, more fiber
- to stimulate satiety
- if the fiber is fermentable you help even more with achieving a satiety response
Weight loss diets for cats
Obese cats should be fed a commercial cat food formulated for wt loss
- contain adequate amounts of protein, fat, vitamins, and minerals
- restricting normal maintenance diets may result in nutrient deficiencies
How do commercial foods for wt loss in cats provide fewer calories?
- Decrease fat content to 8-12% DM basis
- reduces calories, but food still palatable - Increase amount of complex CHOs
- highly digestible with lower energy than fat
- only slightly increased amounts in wt loss diets - Increase indigestible fiber
- increase bulk but decrease digestibility of diet
- increased defecation
- may not reduce voluntary energy consumption!
How are weight loss diets for dogs formulated?
- Complex CHOs as source of energy for dogs
- lower in energy than fat and highly digestible
- maintenance diets: 30-50% of calories from CHOs
- wt loss diets: 50-60% of calories from CHOs (more fiber); fewer calories but same digestibility; no increased defecation as with high fiber diets - Fiber diets create bulk to decrease appetite; but have adverse side effects:
- reduce nutrient digestibility
- poor skin and hair coat quality
- poor diet palatability and acceptance
How are weight loss diets for horses formulated?
- Wt loss management dependent to individual horse status
- lower the amount of ration for high-calorie diets
- consume diet containing lower energy concentration
- increase energy expenditure through exercise - Dietary changes are the easiest to implement
- reduce level of nonfibrous CHO and fat and feed more fiber
- feed bulkier feedstuffs, such as grass hay
- restrict grazing of lush pastures
*as always, adjust diet to ensure adequate intake of other associated nutrients
Health risks of obesity: diseases associated with or exacerbated by obesity
- Metabolic alterations
- Endocrinopathies
- Functional alterations
- Other diseases