Supplier Butternut Box has launched a multi-year research project into the nutritional benefits of fresh dog food.
The collaboration with the University of Surrey, which is partly funded by Innovate UK via a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), will investigate the health outcomes of feeding fresh food to dogs and aim to provide “objective data on the relationships between different diets and dog health, to support the veterinary profession in providing nutritional advice”.
Led by Dr Teresa Hollands, senior lecturer at the University of Surrey, the project will develop and employ methodologies to explore how different diets may influence skin health, immune response, and overall well-being and draw on recent advances in human nutrition in areas such as gut health and the microbiome to help drive progress in canine nutrition. The study will focus on dogs in their home environment.
Butternut Box co-founder Dave Nolan said: “At Butternut, we’re proud to invest in and champion transparent research that ensures our business decisions are guided by cutting-edge science.
“In recent years, we’ve focused on demonstrating the health benefits of feeding Fresh, as well as broader issues like weight management and fussy eating behaviour – these findings are made public on our Research Hub at ButternutBox.com. We’re excited to collaborate with the University of Surrey in this ground-breaking KTP project, which we hope will illustrate the transformative power of Fresh over traditional diets.”
Dr Susan Armstrong, senior lecturer in veterinary clinical research at the University of Surrey, added: “For too long health effects of poor nutrition on dogs has not fully been understood and evidence-based information has not necessarily been widely disseminated. This project is so exciting as we aim to investigate, in an ethically robust manner, how nutrition affects dogs’ wellbeing by measuring biomarkers in unprecedented detail and with total transparency of findings.”
