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> you think that I can't have an opinion about things without having zero emissions I neither said nor implied that, and in fact I'm saying the opposite. You

> you think that I can't have an opinion about things without having zero emissions I neither said nor implied that, and in fact I'm saying the opposite. You absolutely have a right to your moralizing regardless of your GHG emissions. > I do think GHG heavy meat-consumption that is associated with climate change should be disincentivized just as much as I think GHG heavy fuel-consumption should be. Well thank God, I thought it was just me. FWIW I also have family members who are dogs, and I spent countless hours developing a vegetarian dog food recipe, and I spend countless more making the shit. I learned the AAFCO guidelines (which are woefully inadequate IMO), and made a spreadsheet to make sure my dogs get what they need from calcium to taurine. I, my wife, and my kids are all vegetarians, and my kids were horrifed to learn how many animals have to die to feed our pets. > Whataboutism is only an effective rhetorical device if your intentions are in bad-faith. If I were pointing out hypocrisy only to justify my own life choices, then that would qualify as whataboutism. But I assure you that's not the case. I personally find factory animal farming to be the nearly the most repugnant, immoral thing that humans do. But I also understand that not everyone wants to spend a chunk of their life making vegetarian dog food, so I'm not about to accuse you and your girlfriend of immorality if you make different choices.

scoofy 3y ago
>I personally find factory animal farming to be the nearly the most repugnant, immoral thing that humans do. I certainly agree with you there. It's good to find some common ground. I think there are perfectly good reasons for you to hold moral views over my decisions. I do think that moralizing isn't effective, I just think that if we have a systemic problem, which I believe that GHG emissions is, than making it more painful to participate in that system is an effective way to stop people from accidentally participating. The entire point of this discussion is that the convenience and affordability of suburbia and sprawl is part of it's proliferation, and systematization (similar to consuming factory-farmed foods). It sensible for us, if we care about these issues, to want to change the convenience and affordability itself because they create path dependencies. You can very sensibly swap your automobiles' carbon footprint with a vegetarian lifestyle. The problem is that by being a stakeholder in the automobile-first system, it's important to be politically active in making that system less affordable and convenient to begin with. It's definitely possible to do, even with misaligned incentives (lord knows I've got some strange behaviors considering my views), but abstinence-only in a systemically broken system is merely a symbolic change. Edit: my girlfriend (who happens to be vegetarian) said "I would like to know more" about your vegetarian dog food. If you have a website or anything about it I will pass it along.
- nate_meurer 3y ago
  My recipe is in a spreadsheet, and I'm hesitant to publicize it before re-examining it in detail, because I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's health. But I can give the broad strokes. I have pages of my own notes, but here's a good resource, probably all you need to put together a good recipe: https://www.aafco.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Pet_Food_Report_2013_Midyear-Proposed_Revisions_to_AAFCO_Nutrient_Profiles.pdf https://www.aafco.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Pet_Food_Re... My recipe does NOT give you a complete dog food. It's more of a protein supplement. I also feed my dogs other stuff. They get a lot of scrambled eggs, and I give them soup that I make for us humans if it doesn't have too much garlic or onion in it. Otherwise, they eat no refined carbs or sugar, ever. Note there is no fat or oil in this recipe. I add the fat later at meal time. I did it this way because it's much much easier to deal with this stuff if it's not greasy. Without fat or oil, I don't even have to wash out the bucket in between batches; I just let the residue dry and it all just flakes off with a spatula. When I feed my dogs, I scoop out the servings with a stout measuring cup, and I smear it around the dog dish. If I don't smear, they'll just swallow the ball of food whole and then throw it up later. I then add some oil to give the dogs their fat. I keep two different mixtures of oil handy for cooking in repurposed Heinz ketchup squeezy bottles. One is a mixture of half coconut oil and half sunflower oil (or canola). I keep this in a cabinet, and it stays squeezable at room temps. I keep another bottle with olive oil and a little canola in the fridge. The canola keeps the olive oil liquid enough to squeeze in the fridge. Any oil will give the dogs their required fat, and I just grab whichever is handy and give each bowl a healthy shot. I also make a mineral supplement for them which is similar to a recipe I use for myself. It's mostly to supplement calcium and magnesium, since this food recipe is heavy on the phosphorus and a bit short of AAFCO recommendations for minerals. My mineral recipe is a whole other topic, but you can easily supplement this recipe with some calcium citrate and epsom based on the AAFCO guidelines. I buy all my supplements from bulksupplements.com, except epsom which I get at walmart. I also supplement with taurine and L-carnitine. Dogs require both and cannot synthesize them, and their deficit is theorized to be behind the recent cases of cardiomyopathy seen in dogs fed a legume-heavy diet. I also supplement with beta-alanine and a little creatine. And just for good measure I grind up a few Kirkland multivitamins for old people (no iron) that I take myself and add those. Like half a dozen. Everything ends up being well within the AAFCO recommendations. Recently I've been adding more salt to get the dogs to pee more. Retail dog foods generally use about 1% salt by dry weight, and that's what I'm aiming for. Dogs can handle a much wider range of salt than humans, and peeing enough is important for kidney health. Dogs don't drink more just because you tell them it's healthy. Here's the equipment I use: - 2 gallon plastic bucket. Home depot sells them. I got mine free from a walmart bakery. - Coffee grinder to grind flax seed - Waring Big Stick commercial immersion blender. These are expensive, but indispensible for my recipe. I got mine on Ebay for a hundred or so. - 8 gallon pressure cooker. Any cheap pressure cooker will do. Ingredients: - Beans, dry, 10 C (2 kg) - Yogurt, whole milk, unsweetened, 2 C - Flax Seeds, 2 C (336 g) - Tomato paste, 10 Tbsp - Protein isolate, soy, 1 packed C (120 g). I order this in bulk wherever I find it, usually ADM brand. - Salt, 2 Tbsp (18-36 g). Lately I've been using more. The beans can be any beans, but avoid red beans because of the high lectin content. I use whatever I have handy, usually lentils, chickpeas, or black beans. I always soak the beans over night, and if I'm using chickpeas I'll go ahead and sprout them for a couple of days. It's not a lot more work, and I do it anyway when I make hummus for the humans. Soak them overnight, empty into a colander, and be sure to rinse several time a day or else they'll turn really nasty. They should stay smelling sweet and fresh like water. If they start smelling bready then you'll never get rid of the taste. This is more advice for hummus; dogs give a shit about bready beans. If it starts growing mold then throw it away. I don't fuck around with mold. I cook the beans for at least half an hour in the pressure cooker at full pressure. Boil with the top off at first, and skim the foam off the top before putting the lid on. This will help keep foam out of the valve. After the cooker depressurizes, transfer to a bucket, add the salt and tomato paste, and blend with an immersion blender. It's important to blend while hot; as the beans cool they will rapidly thicken and become unblendable. Let the stuff cool enough that it won't kill the yogurt. Wait till it's cool enough to stick your hand in. Grind the flax in a coffee grinder. Combine flax, soy protein, and any supplements you're using in a separate bowl. Add this and the yogurt to the bean mush, and knead thoroughly. There's no easy way through this part. You just to get in there with both hands and knead the shit out of it. Play some loud music and enjoy the forearm workout. A batch will feed my dogs (70 pounds of total dog weight) for about two weeks. But here's the coolest part: because of the yogurt, it doesn't have to be refrigerated. It will just ferment in place. I've been doing this for years and I've never refrigerated it. I take a bite myself now and then just to be satisfied that I'm not poisoning them. It's not what I'd call "good" but it's not nauseating either. Of course, if I had to keep a batch for longer than a couple weeks I'd probably refrigerate it. I should also note that I make my own yogurt, and that might contribute something to longevity out of the fridge. I use a 6-gallon insulated cooler with a Cobalt Aquatics Neo-Therm 50 watt aquarium heater set to 96 deg F. I cook two gallons at a time. It's the easiest thing in the world; I open a gallon of milk, pour in Lifeway brand kefir (which isn't real kefir but but makes fine yogurt) till it hits the very rim, put the cap back on, give it a few shakes and twirls at the end of my arm, and put the bottles in the cooler with a few inches of water in the bottom. Plug the heater in and cook for a couple of days. Makes some great sour yogurt. I make gallons of this stuff every week. I'm sorry about the dairy cows, but we rely on yogurt too much to abandon it. IMO, making your own dog food is only sustainable if you don't have to treat it like human food. Remember that dogs can and will happily eat feces without ill effects, so don't worry too much about hygiene or taste. If stuff falls on the floor or gets hair in it, don't worry about it. The dogs won't care. The only think I'm cautious about is mold; I won't feed them visible mold. Otherwise, treat the job like slopping pigs.

scoofy 3y ago

>I personally find factory animal farming to be the nearly the most repugnant, immoral thing that humans do. I certainly agree with you there. It's good to find some common ground. I think there are perfectly good reasons for you to hold moral views over my decisions. I do think that moralizing isn't effective, I just think that if we have a systemic problem, which I believe that GHG emissions is, than making it more painful to participate in that system is an effective way to stop people from accidentally participating. The entire point of this discussion is that the convenience and affordability of suburbia and sprawl is part of it's proliferation, and systematization (similar to consuming factory-farmed foods). It sensible for us, if we care about these issues, to want to change the convenience and affordability itself because they create path dependencies. You can very sensibly swap your automobiles' carbon footprint with a vegetarian lifestyle. The problem is that by being a stakeholder in the automobile-first system, it's important to be politically active in making that system less affordable and convenient to begin with. It's definitely possible to do, even with misaligned incentives (lord knows I've got some strange behaviors considering my views), but abstinence-only in a systemically broken system is merely a symbolic change. Edit: my girlfriend (who happens to be vegetarian) said "I would like to know more" about your vegetarian dog food. If you have a website or anything about it I will pass it along.

nate_meurer 3y ago
My recipe is in a spreadsheet, and I'm hesitant to publicize it before re-examining it in detail, because I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's health. But I can give the broad strokes. I have pages of my own notes, but here's a good resource, probably all you need to put together a good recipe: https://www.aafco.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Pet_Food_Report_2013_Midyear-Proposed_Revisions_to_AAFCO_Nutrient_Profiles.pdf https://www.aafco.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Pet_Food_Re... My recipe does NOT give you a complete dog food. It's more of a protein supplement. I also feed my dogs other stuff. They get a lot of scrambled eggs, and I give them soup that I make for us humans if it doesn't have too much garlic or onion in it. Otherwise, they eat no refined carbs or sugar, ever. Note there is no fat or oil in this recipe. I add the fat later at meal time. I did it this way because it's much much easier to deal with this stuff if it's not greasy. Without fat or oil, I don't even have to wash out the bucket in between batches; I just let the residue dry and it all just flakes off with a spatula. When I feed my dogs, I scoop out the servings with a stout measuring cup, and I smear it around the dog dish. If I don't smear, they'll just swallow the ball of food whole and then throw it up later. I then add some oil to give the dogs their fat. I keep two different mixtures of oil handy for cooking in repurposed Heinz ketchup squeezy bottles. One is a mixture of half coconut oil and half sunflower oil (or canola). I keep this in a cabinet, and it stays squeezable at room temps. I keep another bottle with olive oil and a little canola in the fridge. The canola keeps the olive oil liquid enough to squeeze in the fridge. Any oil will give the dogs their required fat, and I just grab whichever is handy and give each bowl a healthy shot. I also make a mineral supplement for them which is similar to a recipe I use for myself. It's mostly to supplement calcium and magnesium, since this food recipe is heavy on the phosphorus and a bit short of AAFCO recommendations for minerals. My mineral recipe is a whole other topic, but you can easily supplement this recipe with some calcium citrate and epsom based on the AAFCO guidelines. I buy all my supplements from bulksupplements.com, except epsom which I get at walmart. I also supplement with taurine and L-carnitine. Dogs require both and cannot synthesize them, and their deficit is theorized to be behind the recent cases of cardiomyopathy seen in dogs fed a legume-heavy diet. I also supplement with beta-alanine and a little creatine. And just for good measure I grind up a few Kirkland multivitamins for old people (no iron) that I take myself and add those. Like half a dozen. Everything ends up being well within the AAFCO recommendations. Recently I've been adding more salt to get the dogs to pee more. Retail dog foods generally use about 1% salt by dry weight, and that's what I'm aiming for. Dogs can handle a much wider range of salt than humans, and peeing enough is important for kidney health. Dogs don't drink more just because you tell them it's healthy. Here's the equipment I use: - 2 gallon plastic bucket. Home depot sells them. I got mine free from a walmart bakery. - Coffee grinder to grind flax seed - Waring Big Stick commercial immersion blender. These are expensive, but indispensible for my recipe. I got mine on Ebay for a hundred or so. - 8 gallon pressure cooker. Any cheap pressure cooker will do. Ingredients: - Beans, dry, 10 C (2 kg) - Yogurt, whole milk, unsweetened, 2 C - Flax Seeds, 2 C (336 g) - Tomato paste, 10 Tbsp - Protein isolate, soy, 1 packed C (120 g). I order this in bulk wherever I find it, usually ADM brand. - Salt, 2 Tbsp (18-36 g). Lately I've been using more. The beans can be any beans, but avoid red beans because of the high lectin content. I use whatever I have handy, usually lentils, chickpeas, or black beans. I always soak the beans over night, and if I'm using chickpeas I'll go ahead and sprout them for a couple of days. It's not a lot more work, and I do it anyway when I make hummus for the humans. Soak them overnight, empty into a colander, and be sure to rinse several time a day or else they'll turn really nasty. They should stay smelling sweet and fresh like water. If they start smelling bready then you'll never get rid of the taste. This is more advice for hummus; dogs give a shit about bready beans. If it starts growing mold then throw it away. I don't fuck around with mold. I cook the beans for at least half an hour in the pressure cooker at full pressure. Boil with the top off at first, and skim the foam off the top before putting the lid on. This will help keep foam out of the valve. After the cooker depressurizes, transfer to a bucket, add the salt and tomato paste, and blend with an immersion blender. It's important to blend while hot; as the beans cool they will rapidly thicken and become unblendable. Let the stuff cool enough that it won't kill the yogurt. Wait till it's cool enough to stick your hand in. Grind the flax in a coffee grinder. Combine flax, soy protein, and any supplements you're using in a separate bowl. Add this and the yogurt to the bean mush, and knead thoroughly. There's no easy way through this part. You just to get in there with both hands and knead the shit out of it. Play some loud music and enjoy the forearm workout. A batch will feed my dogs (70 pounds of total dog weight) for about two weeks. But here's the coolest part: because of the yogurt, it doesn't have to be refrigerated. It will just ferment in place. I've been doing this for years and I've never refrigerated it. I take a bite myself now and then just to be satisfied that I'm not poisoning them. It's not what I'd call "good" but it's not nauseating either. Of course, if I had to keep a batch for longer than a couple weeks I'd probably refrigerate it. I should also note that I make my own yogurt, and that might contribute something to longevity out of the fridge. I use a 6-gallon insulated cooler with a Cobalt Aquatics Neo-Therm 50 watt aquarium heater set to 96 deg F. I cook two gallons at a time. It's the easiest thing in the world; I open a gallon of milk, pour in Lifeway brand kefir (which isn't real kefir but but makes fine yogurt) till it hits the very rim, put the cap back on, give it a few shakes and twirls at the end of my arm, and put the bottles in the cooler with a few inches of water in the bottom. Plug the heater in and cook for a couple of days. Makes some great sour yogurt. I make gallons of this stuff every week. I'm sorry about the dairy cows, but we rely on yogurt too much to abandon it. IMO, making your own dog food is only sustainable if you don't have to treat it like human food. Remember that dogs can and will happily eat feces without ill effects, so don't worry too much about hygiene or taste. If stuff falls on the floor or gets hair in it, don't worry about it. The dogs won't care. The only think I'm cautious about is mold; I won't feed them visible mold. Otherwise, treat the job like slopping pigs.