One case is a case. Twenty cases start to look like a pattern.
The presenting complaints were remarkably consistent: a coat that had lost its shine, hair fall the owner had written off as “just the weather,” digestion that never quite settled, an energy level the family had quietly accepted as the dog’s personality. Individually, none of these send anyone rushing to a clinic. Together, in a young animal, they are worth paying attention to.
So I started asking a question I had not been asking often enough: what is this animal actually eating, every single day, for years?
The part of the bag nobody reads
Most pet parents in India read the front of the packet. Chicken. Lamb. Real meat. Complete nutrition. Almost nobody turns it over.
On the back, past the protein percentages, you will often find a short list of synthetic antioxidants — compounds added to stop fats from going rancid so the product can sit on a shelf for eighteen months. The common ones are BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole), BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) and ethoxyquin.
Here is where I want to be careful, because this topic attracts more heat than light.
These compounds are permitted at regulated concentrations, and the regulatory position in most markets is that at those levels they do not present a safety concern. I am not going to tell you that a bag of kibble caused any individual dog’s illness. That claim would be scientifically dishonest and I have no data to support it.
What I will tell you is what the record actually shows. The US National Toxicology Program classifies BHA as “reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen,” based on rodent studies. BHT has shown tumour-promoting effects in animal models at high doses. The European Union suspended ethoxyquin’s authorisation as a feed additive pending further safety data — a decision that reflects incomplete evidence rather than proven harm. And European regulators have noted that for cats specifically, tolerance data was insufficient to establish a safe dose for certain antioxidants.
“Insufficient data” is not the same as “dangerous.” But it is also not the same as “proven safe over a fourteen-year lifespan of daily exposure,” which is the actual question a pet parent is asking, whether they realise it or not.
That gap between what is permitted and what is well-studied is the gap I could not stop thinking about.
The trap on the other side
The obvious response is to cook at home. Many of my clients did exactly that, with the best intentions, and created a different problem.
A bowl of chicken and rice looks wholesome and is nutritionally incomplete. Home-cooked diets built without formulation almost always run short on calcium relative to phosphorus, which matters enormously in growing dogs. Cats fed home meals without supplementation risk taurine deficiency, which affects the heart and the eyes and does not announce itself until damage is done. Add the inconsistency of a busy household — one member cooks on Tuesday, another improvises on Friday — and the diet drifts.
I watched pet parents move from a food they distrusted to a food that was measurably unbalanced, and feel better about it. Sincerity is not nutrition.
What I would actually tell you to do
Four things, none of which require you to change brands today.
Turn the packet over and read the full ingredient list. If a manufacturer will not tell you what is in the product in plain language, that is information in itself.
Check whether the preservation is synthetic or natural. Mixed tocopherols (vitamin E) and rosemary extract are common natural alternatives. They shorten shelf life, which is precisely why they cost more to use.
Ask what “meat” means. “Chicken” and “poultry by-product meal” are not the same input, and the label is where that difference should be visible.
If you cook at home, get the formulation checked. A single consultation with a veterinarian on calcium, phosphorus and taurine will tell you more than a year of internet recipes.
None of this requires panic. It requires reading. The animals in my clinic could not do that part themselves — which is, in the end, the whole reason I stopped practising the way I had been and started working on the food instead.
Dr. Anshul Rawal is a veterinarian and the founder of Pawpeye, an Indian pet nutrition company that formulates preservative-free wet food for dogs and cats through in-house veterinary R&D.
