Australian firm introduces flexitarian diets for dogs

Many pet parents are adopting one of pet food's hottest trends: raw, fresh and high meat diets. However, high meat diets typically have a high environmental impact. While many pet parents are resistant to turning their dogs vegan - although research shows they could - Planet A Pet Food helps people move to a flexitarian diet for their dogs.
 
Planet A launches Australia's freshest, entovegan dog food, combining upcycled veg and insect protein, with a food-grade plant-based meat analog, that's being used in restaurants and food service around the country. 

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"People have the idea that their dogs should eat meat, and a lot of it," says Planet A founder Amanda Falconer. "And they often say they're uncomfortable forcing their 'environmental' choices onto their dogs. When we created Planet A, we wanted to meet people where they were in their dog nutrition beliefs but also give them options to mix it up…just as they do for themselves. And that's because, even though I'm vegan myself, I know the majority of people are going to be meat reducers, not vegans."

Even though dogs don't have a requirement for the ingredient - meat - but the nutrients it provides, giving dogs the pleasure of the taste and texture of meat was also important. Working with small animal nutritionist Dr Anna Sutton, Planet A Pet Food created nutritionally complete meat-free food that dogs love, featuring human food-grade plant protein, that looks and tastes like meat, but isn't.  

The Planet A No-Meat Dinners also combine insect protein, food by-product ingredients together with sustainably harvested algae. Consumers just add water to rehydrate the food, so that it's fresh, when they need it.

Food by-product ingredients include:

Black solider fly larvae protein, produced using traceable pre-consumer food by-products, like bread from Bakers Delight, excess stock from Simplot and unconsumed food from McDonalds. The production of 1 tonne of insect protein powder creates 2.5 tonnes of insect fertiliser and utilises 14 tonnes of food by-products, preventing an estimated 28 tonnes of greenhouse emissions, resulting in a net offset of over 25 tonnes of carbon emissions per tonne of protein powder. 

Vegetable powders from Australia's largest tomato processor, Kagome. They've developed LycoFibre®, an antioxidant-rich ingredient produced from tomato skins, and NinjinFibre® carrot fibre. About 25% of carrots used for juice is waste, and so Kagome's drying process converts 7000 tonnes of carrot pulp per year into 700 tonnes of value-added powder.

Vegetable powders lightly dried from out of spec (size-wise) veg and the leaves of cabbages, broccoli and cauliflower. These are also used in human food snacks.

 Up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions globally come from the food system and pet food accounts for about 25% of that and growing. About a quarter of all food grown never leaves the farm and Australia discards about 7 million tonnes of food every year. 42% of Australians have either reduced meat consumption or stopped eating it altogether. They have about 2.7million dogs between them. 

By Planet A