Is it OK to feed your dog once a day

By Isabella Storyclaire

last updated November 30, 2024

Contributions sourced from

Feeding Your Dog Once a Day: Is It Cruel?

This article has been reviewed in accordance with our editorial policy.

The information in this article is not a substitute for professional help.

When it comes to feeding dogs, the advice is bountiful, endless, and often confusing.

So when you might hear a suggestion of feeding your dog once a day, it might immediately come off as cruel. Turns out, once-a-day meals might actually have more health benefits than you originally thought.

Feeding your dog once a day is not cruel and might benefit them. For dogs that thrive on this diet, the signs of aging can be reversed, gastric upset can be remedied, and some dogs wont be forced to overeat. On the contrary, single feeding can cause medical issues in dogs that need more food, the food can be disproportionate, and an unhealthy relationship with food can form.

In this article, I will explore the positives and negatives of feeding your dog only once a day, so you can make an informed decision for your furry best friend.

Ready? Lets dive in!

Table of Contents

Traditionally, adult dogs are fed twice a day: once in the morning and once in the evening. If youre someone who free-feeds, it could even be more frequent than that. With this being the societal norm, it likely sounds like you are starving the poor dog if only one meal is fed daily.

Turns out, its actually not cruel at all.

The belief that one meal a day is starvation often comes from us naturally paralleling our life and behavior to that of our dog.

A person only eating once a day is usually seen as having some type of eating disorder, but animals dont function the same way. A dogs digestive track and nutritional needs differ tremendously from a humans, which is why they cant eat the same way as us!

As such, some dogs (dependent upon breed, age, and overall health) are actually very happy, only eating once a day. This is especially common in more primitive breeds, such as the rare African Azawakh and Yakutian Laika.

Feeding once a day is known as a form of intermittent fasting, which is what a dogs wild ancestry (wolves and primitive canids) would experience in the wild.

Other breeds that are quite far removed from wild ancestors may not be so inclined, such as the Golden Retriever or the Great Dane. Still, the general consensus states that your dogs eating preference is not cruel - whatever it may be.

According to a recent scientific study that was released in 2021, feeding your dog once a day does actually have health benefits. 47,000 dogs were studied, and the results were rather fascinating.

For starters, once-a-day feeding (intermittent fasting) yielded beneficial outcomes in the cardiac (heart), dental, and neurological (brain) health realm!

The study showed that the signs of aging could be reversed, which meant that the heart continued to beat in the correct rhythm, the teeth were in good condition, and the cognitive ability was maintained well. The decline of various bodily functions slowed significantly. The dogs memory and spatial awareness were very much improved in older canines.

As the study states, After controlling for age, sex and breed, the team found dogs that were only fed once per day, rather than multiple times, appeared to have lower scores of cognitive dysfunction, equivalent to the difference between a 7-year-old and 11-year-old dog. They were also less likely to have a range of health problems, including gastrointestinal, dental, bone, kidney, and liver disorders.

Another benefit is digestive health - intermittent fasting helps reset the bodys system and gives the digestive tract a bit of a break to reset. This also applied to humans, probably one of the only real comparables there. It can be a decent way to resolve types of gastric upset.

Some dogs dont need a lot of food - and owners will often pressure their dogs to eat more than they want or need to. For the dogs that prefer lighter meals, a single meal per day can work a lot better than forcing them to eat more than once. The pressure surrounding food can be detrimental to their mental health.

On a practical note, some may state that single feeding is easier on a working persons schedule (although a dogs diet should not depend on this!).

Keep in mind that not all dogs can thrive on one meal a day. Many factors are involved in whether or not single feedings are a successful diet plan for your pup.

Some dogs can actually get ill from once-a-day feeding.

This is because a dog that needs a larger calorie count tends to thrive better on multiple meals per day than just one very large meal. Dogs can begin to vomit, have blood pressure drops, and be very lethargic. This also applies to very active dogs who need to eat frequently to maintain their body type.

Feeding a dog once a day is also not a feasible option for certain medical conditions, such as dogs with diabetes.

There is also a con of human error involved in single feeding.

You have to properly calculate how much the dog needs to eat, and once-a-day feeding can (unintentionally) begin malnourishing the pup if you havent portioned everything correctly. It may be something that isnt noticed at first but becomes dangerous over time.

Equally, single feeding can potentially have the same cons as scheduled feedings. Because the dog is hungry and anticipating the meal, this can cause dogs to have their own version of an eating disorder, such as gobbling down food way too quickly.

Eating too fast, as mentioned before, can cause bloat, which can be fatal. Once-a-day feeding can also lead to food aggression and resource guarding.

If you find that your pup would do well on a single meal a day, you have to transition gracefully (or risk causing gastric upset!).

Before making any sort of dietary changes, it is advised to consult your dogs veterinarian or a licensed canine nutritionist, as changes in food can impact overall health. But if given the green light, this is how you make a positive transition:

For starters, you cant do single feeding with a puppy. Puppies need much more food than adult dogs to maintain their growing bodies!

Its why puppies are fed three times per day, and adult dogs are not. Not giving a puppy enough meals throughout the day can stifle their growth and cause medical issues later down the line.

As such, ensure your dog is an adult and fully developed before considering single feeding. Dogs reach full maturity between two and three years of age but consult your veterinarian first.

Before switching your dog to this eating style, you should have all of your ducks in a row.

As such, make sure you understand how to portion the meals correctly. Consult your local specialist on how much your dog needs to eat per day based on their breed, weight, body type, and activity level.

Once you have the portions correct, it is suggested to meal prep for the week (that just makes it easier!).

Next, decide when the single feeding will occur.

You can choose from morning to mid-day, to evening. The best choice really depends on what your dog is like. I would suggest picking a time based on when your dog tends to be the most active and hungry.

For some dogs, morning is the best because it sets their day off right. Midday is perfect for those who like to sleep in and take it easy. Nighttime feeding is best for others who cant go to sleep on an empty stomach.

Like any diet change, you cant do it cold turkey overnight! A dogs stomach wont be able to handle it.

It is best to do so gradually - try single feeding only a day or two per week. Then gradually increase the number of days you do single feeding based on how your dogs stomach reacts.

If your dogs bowel movements are normal, your dog is not vomiting, and your dog isnt too lethargic, then you can definitely proceed forward. Eventually, you will come to a point where your dog is used to single feeding!

Dogs Fed Once Per Day Appear to Have Better Health and Cognitive Function, Study Finds

Dogs that are fed one meal per day appear to have better cognitive function and health than those fed multiple times.

By examining data from 47,000 pet dogs, researchers have discovered a link between health and meal consumption, indicating that calorie restriction can slow or reverse aspects of aging.

Emily Bray, from the University of Arizona's Canine Cognition Center, and her team were looking to see if a diet restricted to one meal per day had any influence on canine health.

Previous research in rodents has shown intermittent fasting results in better memory and spatial learning.

"Our initial hypothesis was that going a longer time between meals would be similarly associated with preservation of cognitive function in older dogs, and we could look at this by capitalizing on the fact that some dogs are fed once per day while others are fed more frequently," she told Newsweek.

Bray and her colleagues used data from The Dog Aging Project, which aims to better understand how genes, lifestyle and environment impact canine aging. The goal is to help dogs live healthier lives for longer.

The latest research appears on the pre-print website bioRxiv. The article has not yet been peer reviewed or published in a journal, so the findings should be taken with a level of caution.

In the paper, the team looked at associations between feeding frequency, cognitive function and nine categories of health. Owners were asked to fill out a survey of their dog's cognitive health.

After controlling for age, sex and breed, the team found dogs that were only fed once per day, rather than multiple times, appeared to have lower scores of cognitive disfunction, equivalent to the difference between a 7-year-old and 11-year-old dog.

They were also less likely to have a range of health problems, including gastrointestinal, dental, bone, kidney and liver disorders.

"While the results were in the direction that we would predict based on studies in rodents, it was still surprising because this is the first study that has asked this question for thousands of dogs living in the natural environment, and we saw the effects on multiple health systems," Bray said.

Stock photo of dogs begging for food. Researchers have found a link between feeding dogs once per day and better cognitive function and health. Stock photo of dogs begging for food. Researchers have found a link between feeding dogs once per day and better cognitive function and health. Getty Images

In lab experiments on rodents, she said, intermittent fasting appears to provide benefits on a cellular level by modulating the biology of aging. The research on dogs was purely observational, so why fasting appears to provide health benefits is unknown.

"We have found strong evidence of an association between feeding frequency and health, but we have not shown that less frequent feeding causes better health outcomes," Bray said.

"There are various reasons why dogs with worse health might be fed more frequently. For example, dogs on prescription medication might need to be fed more frequently in order to get their medication in their food."

The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) recommends feeding all dogs twice per day. Owners are advised to divide the amount of food their dogs require into two. Each meal should be between eight and 12 hours apart.

The American Kennel Club also says dogs should be fed two meals per day, as does the animal hospital chain VCA.

Bray also said owners should not start feeding their dogs once per day: "This paper is not meant to be treated as veterinary advice. We think this study is an intriguing first step to studying aspects of diet in dogs, who are our beloved companions and who share our environments, but it's just the tip of the iceberg ... Even if we do eventually find that eating once per day as opposed to more frequently is playing a causal role in these beneficial health outcomes, there are obviously other considerations that might come into play for any individual dog, including their preference, expectations, and quality of life."

Rosalind Arden, who studies canine intelligence at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and was not involved in Bray's study, told Newsweek it was "really interesting, well executed study."

"They found an association between once a day feeding and lower scores on a test that captures some features of a canine dementia, where high scores mean more impairment. The authors don't assert that feeding style causes impairment, but I would consider trying that feeding style on a dogwhile keeping an eye out for how it seems to be going.

"As with any new results, confidence in the findings will grow if other studies find similar results. [It is] important to note that the dog dementia scale is owner-report, not a psychometric testwhich would have been hard to achieve in such a large dataset.

"Considering benefits from caloric restriction or interval feeding is an intriguing context for the work."