What Can I Give My Dog on a Low-Fat Diet?

The thing nobody explains at the vet

Your vet said "low fat". Then you went home, opened a search tab, and found that roughly every treat on the internet also says "low fat".

Here is the gap. Your vet was thinking of a percentage of fat on a dry matter basis, which is a clinical number. The packet is using "low fat" as a marketing category, which is not a number at all. Nobody hands you the translation on the way out of the consult room. So here it is.

What does "low fat" actually mean in numbers?

Fat gets restricted because it stimulates pancreatic enzyme secretion, so for a dog whose plan is built around not provoking that, it is the obvious lever. Published guidance commonly places the target under 10% of dry matter, with 5% to 8% used for more severe or recurrent cases.

Worth knowing, though: the 2024 review in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association by Cridge, Parker and Kathrani notes that fat has historically been treated as the key nutrient, but energy density, digestibility, protein, carbohydrate and fibre all matter too. There is no single correct number. There is your dog's number, and your vet has it.

Why the packet number is not the number your vet means

This one catches everybody, and it is a labelling convention rather than your fault.

Guaranteed analysis panels are expressed "as fed", meaning the food is measured with its water still in. Two products can both say 8% fat and contain wildly different amounts of actual fat, because one is 75% water and the other is 8%. As VETgirl puts it, comparing as-fed figures is comparing apples to oranges.

The fix is one calculation. Dry matter is 100 minus the moisture percentage. Dry matter fat is the as-fed fat divided by that, times 100.

A wet food at 16% fat with 78% moisture has a dry matter of 22, so its real fat figure is 16 divided by 22: 72.7%. The label said 16.

The useful part for treats: air-dried and freeze-dried products have very little water left, so their as-fed figure sits close to their dry matter figure. It also means the fat that is there is
concentrated. Removing water does not remove fat, it moves the percentage up. A fatty treat does not become lean by being dried.

Do treats count towards the number?

Completely. Daily fat intake is the sum of everything that goes in the dog, and there is no separate allowance for the thing you handed over at the back door. This is where a carefully chosen prescription dinner gets quietly undone by three chews and a bit of cheese. The general guideline from WSAVA and AAHA is that treats stay under about 10% of daily calories, and on a fat-restricted plan the fat percentage of those calories matters as much as the count.

So what actually works?

Lean muscle meat from a lean animal, with nothing added. That is the whole category.

Kangaroo is the Australian standout; Food Standards Australia New Zealand analysis found kangaroo tail at 1.1% fat. Skinless poultry breast is also lean.

What tends not to be lean, whatever the packet says: anything with skin on it, most organ meats, anything with added oils, and anything soft and mouldable, because softness usually comes from fat.

Two questions do most of the work. What is the tested fat percentage, and is it as fed or dry matter? And how many ingredients are there, because one ingredient has one thing that can be wrong with it.

Where we come in

Everything we make is single ingredient, air-dried or freeze-dried in our own Bendigo kitchen from Australian-sourced proteins. Our kangaroo and game range is the leanest thing we produce. No oils, no coatings, no binders.

We publish the fat percentage and state whether it is as fed or dry matter, so you can check it against your vet's number rather than taking our word for it. What we will not tell you is that a treat is right for your dog; we have not met your dog and your vet has.

Low fat is not a vibe. It is a number, and you are allowed to ask for it.

General information, not veterinary advice. If your dog is on a fat-restricted diet, confirm any treat with your vet first.

Explore our low-fat collection here.