Is an 80/10/10 diet for pets balanced?
If you’ve dipped a paw into the world of homemade pet food, you’ve likely encountered the 80/10/10 ratio for DIY pet food formulation, sometimes simply referred to as a ratio diet.
If not, strap in. I want to thoroughly unpack this style of feeding, including some of the issues with it, like:
- the different interpretations of ‘muscle meat,’ ‘bone’ and ‘organ’
- what may be missing
- the importance of variety
- how this ratio applies to growing animals
I’m going to use the terms 80/10/10 and ratio diet interchangeably – but first, what do they mean?
The 80/10/10 ratio is a simple framework that considers the ideal breakdown of a homemade diet to be 80% muscle meat, 10% bone, and 10% organs, of which 5% is liver. It’s sort of akin to a food pyramid for raw fed dogs, if the food pyramid looked like this:
But look, at face value, I don’t disagree; it is a simple and useful framework for people who want to understand their pet’s nutritional needs at a very high level. But as you can see from the analogy in the diagram, there is a LOT of detail missing and, as I’m sure any vegan readers have already proclaimed, these aren’t the only available sources of what we actually require, which is essential nutrients.
Most of us know that from ‘plants’ we get fruit, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, flours, legumes, roots, herbs, oils, bread, sugar, cake, chocolate, alcohol etc., and that from these we should eat some as often as possible, and others as a treat every now and then. But what if we didn’t have this working knowledge of the vast differences between the many things that come from plants? I’m going to have a very different nutritional outcome (and day) if I chug olive oil for energy, vs if I were to eat nothing but lettuce.
Lettuce and olive oil is obviously an extreme example, but my point is that much like ‘plants,’ ‘muscle meat’ is simply far too broad of a category to be meaningful without at least a basic working knowledge of the different nutritional profiles of different meats, and how they correspond to the nutritional needs of your pet.
Similarly, ‘bone’ doesn’t mean ‘meaty bone’ or ‘bone-in meat,’ it means edible bone. So not 10% whole chicken wing; 10% just bone content with no meat or fat. Many people interpret 80/10/10 to be 10% meaty bones, when this is usually far too low to meet the required calcium and phosphorus levels in dogs and cats. To feed 10% edible bone, you first need to determine this from the bone content in the meaty bones you select.
The other thing that’s (potentially) missing is a whole lot of essential vitamins, minerals and fatty acids. This can be due to a combination of factors, including a lack of variety in meats, and opting for poor quality cuts too often. 3-star beef mince is a nutritional lightweight compared to protein and iron packed kangaroo mince, while budget-friendly chicken gizzards give you far more nutritional bang-for-buck over top shelf chicken breast. The source of the organs is key too; 5% beef liver may limp you over the line for some minerals, but chicken liver is only marginally more nutrient dense than muscle meat and will leave you seriously lacking.
It’s also very difficult to consistently provide sufficient vitamin D3 and E, for example, without including targeted foods that I don’t think would fit a lay person’s interpretation of muscle meat, bones or organ. Same goes for omega 3 fatty acids, zinc, iodine, manganese and magnesium.
And while some people will tell you that fibre is not technically required in a canine or feline diet, I disagree and believe that if we are replicating an ancestral diet, then we need to replicate it fully, and that includes replacing the fibrous animal parts that would be eaten in the wild, such as the fur and feathers of prey. Plant matter isn’t mentioned at all in the ratio diet framework, but it is a widely held understanding in fresh feeding circles that fruits, veggies and any other plant matter goes on top of the 80/10/10, as an extra 10-20%.
There are no clear guidelines around rotating protein sources, beyond it being strongly encouraged, along with different cuts of meat, and sources of liver and other organs. And on that point I agree; variety is absolutely essential to the success of a home-formulated diet, and particularly when following the 80/10/10 framework. However, it needs to go beyond just offering a variety of muscle meats and different livers.
The recurring issue with this style of feeding isn’t so much what is in the ratio, but rather with what isn’t. And the main thing that’s missing is detail. And therein lies an unsurmountable issue; it’s a ratio, so as soon as we start adding and taking things away, it stops being 80/10/10. If I had to assign a ratio to my dogs’ diets it would be something like 30/10/10/20/10/10/10, but that’s not quite so catchy –it is, however, based on my decade of experience formulating commercial pet food.
Ultimately, I don’t believe it is possible to create a nutritionally balanced homemade diet using an 80/10/10 ratio, even with sufficient variety.
There will always be some recurring nutritional gaps, and it is this ongoing nature of the deficits that is problematic. Nutritional deficiencies aren’t always as dramatic as a case of scurvy on House, or an anti-raw feeding influencer will have you believe, but this can mean they go unnoticed or be dismissed as nothing serious.
A zinc deficiency might present as brittle nails or flaky skin; not enough omega 3 fatty acids EPA/DHA can make their coat go from shiny to dull over time; and vitamin E deficiency can lower their defences against infection. None of these warrant a trip to the emergency vet, but over time they can worsen and result in serious health issues.
The most concerning of the lot, in my opinion, and particularly so in a ratio diet, is a vitamin D3 deficiency combined with insufficient bone in the diet. Vitamin D is directly involved with absorbing calcium and phosphorous from the diet, all three of which are essential for the health of the musculoskeletal system (these minerals are the main reason we feed bone at all). If the diet is already routinely low in calcium and phosphorus from inadequate bone, a vitamin D deficiency may further reduce the body’s ability to absorb the calcium and phosphorus that is present. This is particularly detrimental for growing animals, but it can cause joint pain and degeneration in animals of all ages.
An 80/10/10 ratio diet is particularly unsuitable for growing animals, because they have considerably higher nutritional requirements for certain nutrients compared to adult animals. For example, puppies need more protein and fat than adult dogs, as well as calcium, phosphorus, iron, copper, sodium, manganese, zinc and selenium. Both too little and too much calcium and phosphorus in the diet of a growing animal can cause serious musculoskeletal issues during their key growth period.
All of this is not to say you can’t create a nutritionally balanced diet at home – you absolutely can! But it needs to contain a wide variety of foods, including targeted functional foods, all in the right ratios, and it’s a lot more complex than just a 3-way split of muscle meat, organs and bone. This is the fundamental reason my range of products exists – if I thought it was possible and accessible to easily formulate and feed a balanced diet at home, they wouldn’t need to.
The above doodle is a closer representation of what I would consider a balanced diet, and even this is missing things I routinely feed by dogs, plus by the time we get to this level of complexity most people are completely zoned out. Luckily, Vital blend is designed to complement this exact style of feeding and has been formulated to address common nutritional gaps in a ratio or 80/10/10 diet, in order to ensure it is balanced.
That brings me to one caveat I probably should have mentioned sooner – what do we mean by ‘balanced’? A decade of being a fly on the wall in raw feeding Facebook groups has taught me that one man’s balanced is another man’s garbage – but that, my friends, is a story for another day.
'Til then.
