One meal a day for dogs?

That’s what I’m going with. My dog has had no issues either way and one evening meal works very well for our schedule. I’m not against going back if it ever doesn’t.

Here is an article on the study I read about. I found it after we’d been doing more once a day meals than two so it didn’t inspire me and I’m certainly not promoting changing what everyone else does. If there are any long term benefits, they are unlikely to affect my dog at this point.

It’s an interesting study; I don’t have time to really read the results. But this is what I think is likely to be one of the real issues:

Studies of obesity, including possible associations with feeding frequency [20], will be an important area of future research. This investigation did not consider obesity because information on dogs’ body condition scores was not available. We anticipate that these data will be available in the future when owners share their dogs’ veterinary electronic medical records (VEMR) with the Dog Aging Project.

Most dogs are FAT. And it is possible that the frequency of feeding correlates highly with body condition.

Overall - I wouldn’t be afraid to feed once a day, for sure. I just wouldn’t assume it will make a dog any healthier than keeping it lean and giving proper exercise. Just like with humans.

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I think like everything- you can’t just say it’s better for dogs to be fed once a day or twice a day or…
If once a day is what works best for your dog, go for it
My big guy seems to do best with 3x’s a day. He eats breakfast, lunch and dinner because he won’t eat very much during one meal and likes to go on hunger strikes but for some reason 3 smaller meals keeps him eating and happy so we do that

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I came across the actual study once and couldn’t find it again. Might be buried in the link I posted but I didn’t go through it all. The gist is 25,000 people self reported their feeding schedule and health issues. It appeared that, overwhelmingly, the dogs who were fed once a day had fewer ailments and the study also implied that tooth, liver, pancreas and cognitive function were better in that group. But, they admitted it doesn’t mean much without knowing the other variables and said not to change based on the study alone.

I have never in my adult life had a picky dog or one that wasn’t dancing around my feet at meal time. LOL The last year of my cat’s life he was getting 3-4 meals a day and it caused this dog great angst to only get 2 and a lick of his spoon for the other times. The cat being gone changed things but I was surprised she got less food obsessed with only one meal. At the very least I thought she’d bug me throughout the day but she seems happy eating later in the evening.

Yes, it’s in your link - I quoted from the study - body condition wasn’t reported so they can’t really comment on whether one feeding v. two had a correlation to other factors - like obesity.

But - the study definitely has enough in it to say it’s safe to feed only once a day. The only times I would argue that it is unsafe is in deep chested dogs where bloat is possible.

I give the day’s food allotment to my girl in the morning. Occasionally she will take a few bites in the morning but for the most part she only eats at night though her food is available to her 24/7. She has done this since she was about 6 months old.

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One issue I have with that study is that they don’t seem to be controlling for variables (not uncommon in studies that rely on self-reporting).

In particular, it’s not clear that the causality runs from one meal a day to healthier dogs; it could be that people tend to feed dogs that are healthy one meal a day while dogs that have underlying health problems are often fed more than once a day.

The more than once a day feeding may not be the cause of disease, but rather an attempt by the owners to properly feed dogs that have existing health issues.

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I feed my dogs once a day. Used to do two smaller aka breakfast and dinner but found they didn’t usually finish their morning kibble. So now we feed dinner and they do well with that. If they’re acting hungry which usually seem to be weekend mornings, we’ll give them a little bit of kibble but that doesn’t happen very often.

To each their own! Do what works for your dog(s) :slight_smile:

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I free feed my dog and she tends to choose to eat once a day. She isn’t overweight.

Some tiny toy dogs like chihuahuas may require two meals a day, to avoid low blood sugar.

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Yes, mine can’t go more than six hours without getting an upset tummy and puking bile.
It’s how she is.

All my Beagles have been fed more frequent, smaller meals because they tend to be “perpetually hungry”, and can get fat easily.
In my mind more frequent, smaller meals makes them think their getting more when the daily total amount is actually the same.