No-Poop Dog Food

A Dutch company called Energique claims to have developed a type of dog food that has the pleasant side effect of drastically reducing what comes out the other end. Basically, the company claims that if you feed your dog this stuff, your dog will barely poop at all:
Energique has also been working on the many complaints about dog excrement. With the body absorbing almost 90% of the food intake, only 10% is excreted. On the entire dog population, that saves 55 million kilograms of dog excrement in the Netherlands alone.
An Ananova article gives some more details: "They claim remaining 10% comes out the other end as a smell-free dry pellet that can be picked up by hand in a tissue. According to research by the University of Utrecht, a dog will normally need to go three times a day, but with Energique it only needs to go once a week."

This strikes me as a very odd claim. If true, could it possibly be healthy for the dog? I would imagine that the total surface area of a food has a lot to do with how much of it can get digested. For instance, a powder would probably get digested more fully than a chunk of meat. But is the one necessarily healthier than the other, just because more of it is getting digested?

The amount of poop a dog produces would almost seem to be a function of how much it eats. Surely if you feed your dog tons of this Energique food, it's still going to excrete most of it.

Food

Posted on Sun Apr 15, 2007



Comments

Surface area isn't that important. If the material in the food is digestible it will all be absorbed.

Zero fiber (zero ash) food is plausible, but no, it would not be healthy, and a big part of what is excreted is not "used food" in any case but true excretion in the form of bile acids, for instance. It's a hoax or just a scam.
Posted by Carl Fink  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  12:34 AM
From what I shovel up from my lawn, it would be great if my dogs pooped less, but I don't see how anyone could believe this could actually be healthy for their dogs.
The only people I could see feeding dogs this stuff would be cat lovers 😉
Posted by Nettie  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  01:41 AM
Ananova pretends to be a legitimate news site, but from what I've seen over the past several years, they simply make a lot of shit up.

Spend some time on that site over the course of a few days and you'll see a LOT of stories that are extremely non-credible.
Posted by Cranky Media Guy  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  02:44 AM
The most effective way to get your dog to poop less would be to feed it less.
Not necessarily good for the dog (unless you're one of the many people who overfeed their pets), but it would produce a lot less feces.

For the sake of Dutch dogs, though, it hope this whole thing is a hoax. Like almost all other vertebrates, dogs need fiber in their diet, and, as Carl says, excrement is necessary to get rid of normal waste products, not just undigested food.
Posted by Big Gary  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  08:38 AM
if this is true, and turns out to be heathly for dogs, then why not do it for humans! i would like to poop less!
Posted by Rob  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  11:06 AM
there are ways to reduce the amount your dog poops. Thats by feeding a high quality food. They still poop at least a couple times a day, but not as much as when they eat low quality food. There is no safe way to get them to poop once a week though.
Posted by red_dragon_girl_69  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  02:37 PM
Dog food of good quality usually results in less poop since the dog can digest it better.Ah,people already stated that:-o
But nevertheless,I suppose both humans and dog needs to crap,we need the fibres and cellulose to clean out the intestines.
Posted by Cecilia  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  05:40 PM
I had a dog once that could only eat a very specific brand of food...otherwise it had LOTS of liquidy poop. (See, I didn't believe the previous owner when he told me that she could only have a certain kind of food...and I paid dearly for that.)

It was gross. When I got rid of her later...I let the new family know she HAD to eat THIS food, and only this food. They didn't believe me at first either.
Posted by Maegan  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  09:56 PM
This has already been done for horses. A beer promotion (about five years ago) involved two Clydesdales taken on a tour of country pubs; the horses would stand docilely in the bar for up to an hour and let patrons pet them. They were on a special diet to prevent them dropping great ploppy ones on the carpet. I don't know how long it's safe to keep animals on such a diet though.
Posted by Wendy Collings  on  Sun Apr 15, 2007  at  10:35 PM
This wouldn't work for our Basset. She craps 2 lbs. for every 1 lb. of food she eats.
Posted by Craig  on  Mon Apr 16, 2007  at  10:23 AM
My Weimaraner loves the fresh meat food for about 3 years now and she's doing very well. The poop is indeed about half of dry foods and very easy to collect ( only still 3 times a day ). I think Ananova made something up with the statement that a dog only has to go once a week. I can't find anything about it on the website of Energique. The only disadvantage is the price, about 30 % more expensive than a premium dry food.
Posted by Lens  on  Mon Apr 23, 2007  at  05:09 PM
If people could see what goes into their <a >commercial dog-food</a> (unfit for humans and dogs left-overs and filler grains) they would never bother with high-street brand names. If Energique is the solution to current <a >Dog Food Secrets</a>, I will definately support it. By come to think, if they have a similar diet for human will you take it? I think I will give it a miss at the moment.
Posted by alan  on  Tue Jul 17, 2007  at  01:49 AM
Basically the better your dog food is the less poop that will come out. If you notice your dog has large amounts of stool, it means your dog is not digesting all of the food.

Whereas a food with easily digestible food will often result in less poop.
Posted by Dog Food Reviews  on  Tue Jan 13, 2009  at  10:29 PM
The higher grade dog food brands usually produce less stools. The higher grade dog food brands are filled with more ingredients that dogs can easily digest and not fillers. You can find higher grade dog food brands at: <a >Dog Food Reviews</a>
Posted by Sean  on  Tue Jan 13, 2009  at  10:36 PM
how often should a dog poop?
Posted by BEVIE  on  Thu Oct 22, 2009  at  05:00 PM
how often should a small dog go poop?
Posted by bevie  on  Thu Oct 22, 2009  at  05:01 PM
good archive thanks
Posted by oyun indir  on  Tue Jun 01, 2010  at  08:57 AM
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