Trends to Watch in 2025, Part 5: Personalized Nutrition & Preventive Care

of our Top Trends to Watch in: 2025

How personalized can we really get without encroaching on sustainability? Or the fact that our animals are, well, animals, and not, in fact, small humans. In today's episode, we'll explore breed-specific formulations, debate the scalability of truly customized diets, and take a look at some exciting innovations in preventive pet care.

You'll hear from an expert panel of BSM Partners’ veterinarians and food scientists. And some of what they have to say might surprise you. So, without further ado, let's explore the expanding world of personalized nutrition for pets.

Welcome to Barking Mad, a podcast by BSM Partners. I'm your host, Jordan Tyler.

The topic of personalized pet nutrition is broad and encompasses everything from tailor-made diets that feature your pet's name on the package to breed-specific formulations designed to cater to the needs of specific canine and feline varieties. According to Dr. Blaire Aldridge, a PhD nutritionist and Vice President of Nutrition Services at BSM Partners, some companies are even going so far as to measure an individual pet's gut microbiome to determine what they would benefit from nutritionally on a microscopic level.

Blaire Aldridge: I think there are lots of ways to have personalized pet nutrition. I know some companies have been doing microbiome testing and other species; they've done that and then adjusting the formula based on those results to see if they can make some changes. And so that's even one more step further. That's very exciting for everybody with a cat or dog, or horse.

Jordan Tyler: Today, most personalized pet diets are sold online, direct to consumer, or on a subscription basis. And many of the brands that offer these kinds of diets ask pet owners to take a quiz to answer questions about their pet's age, breed, lifestyle, dietary preferences, restrictions, health concerns, etc.

In order to craft a custom formula that meets that pet's individual needs. But when it comes to truly tailor-made diets. There are some points to consider critically here, like, realistically, how scalable or sustainable is this approach? Are brands playing in this space, asking the right questions to prompt personalized formulation properly?

We discuss all the time how there are countless factors that play into the health and well-being of our pets, and we know diet is an influential factor, to be sure. So, getting it right is a really, really important piece of the total wellness puzzle for our pets. And while we may not have all the answers today, there are some very exciting ramifications of a more personalized pet food market.

For example, Dr. Renee Streeter, Board-Certified Veterinary Nutritionist, spoke about the ability to formulate diets that protect pets against certain predispositions.

Renee Streeter: Again, every dog is an individual, and even within a breed, they're going to be individual variations, but it's one step closer to having an individualized diet for that dog or that breed.

So, I do think it is possible to take the typical concerns for that breed and put them into a dog food, especially if there are genetic predispositions, or maybe it's as simple as they're prone to obesity; maybe they're prone to dental disease. And these are things that we can incorporate into the food for that specific breed.

There are some companies that focus as well on the way different breeds eat, whether it's a long-snouted breed or a flat-faced breed, because they're going to pick up and chew the kibble differently. And so, making that easier for them is pretty cool, too. So, there are things that you can do. I think it's valid.

Blaire Aldridge: There have been breed-specific diets around for quite some time. And just having that picture of your dog makes you identify and, “Oh, this one is perfect for my dog. I'm going to buy it.” That may or may not be the perfect diet for your dog. I mean, you might have a pointer who sits on the couch all day versus a pointer who actually goes out and works for a living.

So those are two very different diets that I would feed those dogs, even though we could generalize for the generic pointer, but really, they do deserve two different diets. Other than that, I'd say from a breed-specific standpoint, companies are often adding supplements, and so, oh, well, my breed is prone to this joint disease; so, therefore, I'm going to add this joint supplement.

So, there's that aspect where the owner also gets some control in helping their dog, and it's a very emotional mindset and makes an owner feel like they're doing all that they can for their beloved pet.

Jordan Tyler: Now, Dr. Aldrich alludes to an interesting point here in that adjusting nutrients to get a therapeutic benefit really is an extension of another shift we're seeing in the market toward preventive pet care.

Now, historically, pet owners will perceive a problem and then address it on a prescriptive basis. So, you see the problem, you treat the problem, the problem goes away. Whereas today, more and more pet owners are purchasing custom diets and special supplements that target their pet's unique health concerns.

Symptoms aren't yet apparent. Dr. Bradley Quest, veterinarian and principal of veterinary services at BSM Partners, had a prime example to share along these lines.

Bradley Quest: You used the example of a dental diet. I mean, that's what you're doing there. You're trying to help the preventive care, because unfortunately, we know most pet parents don't, including myself. I'll admit I'm not good at brushing my dog's teeth.

I'm not saying I'm not good at it, I'm not committed to it, if you will. There you go, I said it out loud. But if we use a dental diet that's been tested and proven, then that's going to help my dog's oral health because it's been tested.

Jordan Tyler: Testing is definitely the keyword here. We often say, if a company isn't conducting pre-market testing on their products, they're using your dogs and cats, and your guinea pigs, for that matter, as guinea pigs.

Which, I'm sure we can all agree, is a little shady. Anyway, let's continue along the vein of preventive care because there's one exciting innovation meeting this demand for pets that I'd like to discuss today, and that is wearable technology. This is a huge trend and has been for a while in the human space.

Like, think back to the rapid rise of Fitbit. Like, they have not gone away, and a number of products like it have entered the market since. Now, today, we're seeing technology companies start to develop wearable tech just for pets that can monitor a whole range of health and wellness parameters, all in the service of preventive care.

Renee Streeter: It's really great for understanding the effectiveness of a preventative diet or a therapeutic diet that might be used for a diet trial to test for allergies, for instance, right? Because they can track itching behaviors. So, we can really get objective measurements about how well one of those diets worked, and it's a great way to couple nutrition with medicine.

n of Pet Obesity Prevention's: 2023

Now, despite these staggering statistics, only 28% of cat owners and 17% of dog owners actually acknowledge their pets less than less-than-ideal body condition. This highlights a concerning gap between reality. And there remains a huge opportunity to help pet parents learn how to properly identify this health concern and then address it.

Now, according to Dr. Streeter, integrating wearable technology is yet another fabulous opportunity for mitigating the pet obesity epidemic.

Renee Streeter: You know how much I love making fat dogs skinny, but that's another really great thing to utilize. I really do. It's so satisfying because you can track their activity level, and the owners can really begin to see, Oh my gosh, they lost 1% of their body weight, but they moved.

I'm making something up right now, but 10% more. You can't really appreciate when your dog just loses that teeny tiny amount of weight, but to see how it affects their mobility, that is motivating to stay on track. It's very exciting.

Blaire Aldridge: Especially in cats, we've really focused on dogs in all of our examples. So, the cats are lurking at night and monitoring their activity. One could be funny, but also, we often don't think about cats having joint issues, but they do. And so, you can start to track that a little bit better.

Bradley Quest: You know, Dr. Aldridge is right. We talk a lot about dogs, but weight loss and the wearable technology for cats are just as important, litter box usage frequency, and all of that.

It all ties in. I think that's probably going to get more and more popular as time goes on. And technology gets better, just like everything else. When it gets better, it gets cheaper, which is actually really good because most of the time those things don't always go hand-in-hand.

y from our Trends to Watch in: 2025

A global need for concerted sustainability efforts is driving a trend toward alternative proteins and more sustainable raw materials. While at the same time, the quest for preventive care is leading pet parents to seek personalized nutritional options that deliver functional benefits to not only extend the dog or cat's lifespan, but their health span.

And then this really all comes full circle when we start to think about sustainability, not only in terms of extending the viability of the planet but also extending the well-being of ourselves and our pets. Now, before we wrap up today, I wanted to share a couple of final sound bites from a few BSM Partners’ experts who have big ambitions for the future of pet care and some advice for how we can get there together.

For Emilie Mesnier, vice president of European operations at BSM Partners, solving the sustainability puzzle in the United States will be crucial for the industry's future.

Emilie Mesnier: The key to unlocking the sustainability paradox in the U.S. lies in finding ways to make sustainability aspirational, desirable, and affordable. And that's very complex. But just like the electric car was not exactly considered a sexy car not that long ago. And of course, that paradigm has shifted very fast in the last 10 years. We need to find that key for pet food sustainability and sustainability in general.

Jordan Tyler: For Dr. Renee Streeter, personalized nutrition is no longer a matter of what and why, but how and when.

Renee Streeter: I think any sort of more individualized nutrition is going to happen. This could range between the microbiome, like Dr. Aldridge was talking about, where we can assess the microbes of the gut and their populations, and try to determine if a shift would be beneficial and feed the bacteria that we want. The other thing is genomics, right, and trying to determine how to feed a pet based on its genome and what it may be at risk for in the future.

Currently, we don't know if feeding something in a preventative manner will help prevent the disease or not. We think it will, but having more research in that area, I'll give an example. Like, if we give a dog that's prone to heart disease extra taurine and carnitine when it's a puppy, is it less likely to develop the disease?

Those are really long-term studies that nobody's done, but I think it will happen, and I think that will really be a big thing, those pets.

Jordan Tyler: And for Dr. Bradley Quest, none of this would be possible without collaborative efforts across the industry to, again, do the research.

Bradley Quest: We touched on the long-term research, and obviously, long-term means it takes a lot of time to do that.

You know, we're not talking weeks or months. We're talking, you know, in a lot of cases, years to try to get answers for things, whether it's efficacy, safety, nutritional value, whatever that is, but probably more than that, I know we've touched on this in other. Episodes we've done, but you know, the industry needs to commit to supporting this research and then sharing it with the rest of the industry.

And so, I hope that's a trend that we see. Again, it's not a product, it's not an ingredient, but I hope it's a trend that we see improve not just this year, but in the foreseeable future.

Jordan Tyler: It's kind of like the saying, a rising tide lifts all ships. The more research we do as an industry, the more collaborative and science-driven that research is.

family members. As we look at: 2025

But progress doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's up to all of us as pet parents, industry professionals, and advocates to ask the tough questions, support research, and push for transparency and accountability. The teams behind BSM Partners and Barking Mad are your go-to source for thought leadership in pet care.

We're here to help you navigate trends and fads so you can make informed decisions about the pet nutrition and care products you buy. To our listeners, thank you for joining us on this journey. Whether you're exploring new diets for your furry family member, curious about sustainability, or just want to stay ahead of the curve, we're we hope today's insights help you make informed decisions for your pets.

If you'd like to learn more about BSM Partners, please visit our website at www.bsmpartners.net. Don't forget to subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a fellow pet lover and leave us a review. Lastly, be sure to stay tuned for future episodes about pet care innovation, sustainability, and other hard-hitting topics you won't want to miss.

We'd like to thank our dedicated team in support of this episode: Ada-Miette Thomas, Neeley Bowden, Kait Wright, and Dr. Katy Miller. A special thanks to Lee Ann Hagerty and Michael Johnson. Happy New Year and see you next time!

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