10/23/2025
Your dog is a direct descendant of a wolf. Their ancestral diet is worlds away from dry dog food. But is this a problem? 🧐
Wolves are carnivorous omnivores. In the wild, they eat animals whole - muscle, fat, bones and organs. And they get most of their nutrition from meat. 🥩
But they also eat grasses, berries and the stomach contents of herbivores they've killed, getting some valuable nutritional from these non-meat food sources too. (This differs from cats, who get no nutrition at all from plant foods.)
The nutritional profile of a wolf's diet is...
56% protein
25-30% fat
14% carbohydrate
This is a far cry from the nutritional profile of your average dry dog food. While nutritional values can vary wildly, some kibbles can be as much as 74% carbohydrate and as little as 1% protein.
But before you panic, it's important to remember that dogs diverged from wolves 15,000 years ago - and have been evolving alongside humans ever since.
It's because of their remarkable ability to adapt & thrive on non-meat foods - the table scraps of our ancestors - that dogs are what they are today.
Effectively, your pet dog has come from a long line of dogs that were the best at eating a more varied, more plant-based diet. This means that, while their ancestral bias towards meat remains, dogs can eat & digest plant foods, and gain valuable nutrition from them.
This separates dogs from their wolf cousins.
"Many people see high protein and low carb as the mark of a good dog food," says our expert Laura Ward. "But what suits one dog isn't necessarily going to suit another... Some dogs do well on high protein, but for others it's too rich and lower protein is better digested. It really depends on your dog."
We asked Laura for a guide on what ratios you should be looking out for. She says "between 18 and 27% protein would suit most pet dogs. If your dog is having digestive issues and you're currently feeding a very high protein dog food, they may do better on a less rich diet containing less protein."
Meanwhile, "For working or sporting dogs, around 30% protein and 20-25% fat would best support sustained, endurance activity."
We'd love to hear your experience with your own dog - have you noticed changes in your dog when changing between more of an ancestral versus modern-day kibble diet?
