Question: How come there is a special type of food for animals, when they could eat exactly the same as us? I understand for example, dogs can't eat chocolate, but the average meal, say some meat, eg, steak. How come animals cannot eat like us?

Joanna Cruden answered on 19 Jun 2012:

Our pets don’t get the opportunity of eating their natural diet, imagine if you had to send your dog out to catch rabbits for his/her dinner? they would have to fight each other over food.

There are so many pet animals in the UK it would also be chaos because there would not be enough to eat.

All of our pets have different nutritional requirements, for example cats are carnivores so need mostly meat, if not all meat, diet, whereas rabbits are herbivores and can only eat non meat products like corns and vegetables, and dogs are carnivores but they have opportunistic omnivore tendencies so will eat anything but not the right foods.Lots of research has gone into animal diets to ensure we can meet the needs of the animals who rely on us for their survival.

I think in the case of a dog and some other animals, if the diet is varied and you ensure you are meeting its needs you could feed it yourself but you would need to check you are feeding it the right diet and why do that when companies have done it all for you and you can give them healthy species specific extras 🙂