The MMI Nutrition Guide, recently released by the Mark Morris Institute, helps veterinarians choose appropriate diets for dogs and cats with health conditions. The digital tool includes a product guide for therapeutic diets manufactured by Royal Canin, Nestlé Purina, Hill’s, and EmerAid. It also provides summaries of nutritional management recommendations for common conditions and allows users to compare nutrient profiles of different foods.
The tool can be used to:
- Choose a diet for a patient with a specific health condition: After a user selects the appropriate species, life stage, and health condition, results include a summary of nutritional considerations for managing the condition, written and reviewed by board-certified veterinary nutritionists, as well as a list of diets that meet the nutritional criteria for that condition.
- Limit specific nutrients: Filters can be added to limit results to diets with specific nutrient concentrations. Diets can also be sorted according to how much of a specific nutrient they contain.
- Calculate feeding amounts: Once a specific diet is chosen, patient information can be added to generate feeding directions based on maintenance energy requirements.
- Generate a feeding guide: The tool can also generate a customizable digital feeding guide that can be downloaded into the patient’s medical record or printed and given to the client.
- Search by specific nutrients: If certain nutrients are of interest instead of a specific health condition, custom parameters can be selected to generate results based on those nutrients.
- View nutrient profiles: Instead of searching by disease condition, users can search for a specific diet to review its nutrient profile.
According to Dr. Caitlin Heinze, board-certified veterinary nutritionist and chief academic officer and executive director of the Mark Morris Institute, over 2,600 veterinary professionals currently use the guide. “We’re planning exciting new upgrades for this summer, and we truly believe this tool should be available in every small animal clinic in the U.S.,” she said.
Guide information and nutrient profiles were provided directly from the pet food manufacturers or obtained from the most recent product guides made publicly available to veterinarians.
The guide is available for use by veterinarians and veterinary students in the U.S. To access the guide, potential users can register for an account at markmorrisinstitute.org/nutrition_guide/splash. The guide is free and contains no ads, and funding for ongoing use and updates is provided by the Mark Morris Institute.