Fat pets, fat owners.

After watching this adequately named programme on Sky 1, I was again shocked by the level society has sunk to. The programme showed how a group of overweight people had created overweight pets through a combination of a bad diet and a sedentary lifestyle. One lady took her dogs for a 'walk' in a trolley' as they were too fat to walk. I was amazed that the owners were able to change their lifestyle as I didn't think the cat owner ever could. She was full of excuses and someone who I would never train. However, I was more furious that this situation happened in the first place.

Mankind has an arrogance in which our thirst to progress, learn and survive brings with it cancer, disease and illness. Heart disease and type 2 diabetes are western diseases which can be prevented through diet. Yet we ignore statistics because we don't like wake up to the reality of our lifestyle choices. Imagine how animals would describe us on a nature programme?

"Welcome to our nature watch in which we look at human beings in their natural habit. They are a funny bunch. Despite major breakthroughs in science, they are a specie full of disease who have created synthetic foods which make them seriously overweight. To make matters worse, they are now inflicting their lifestyle on cats and dogs."

Agricultural advancements have overtaken the way our body has evolved. Whether we will ever get to a stage where we can tolerate heavily process foods is a separate debate. At the moment, all the evidence suggest that we aren't meant to eat a processed diet. The programme last week backed this up as there are now pet weight loss clinics. 40% of cats and dogs now have weight problems and weight related disease thanks to us. The participants on the show were unaware of the damage they were causing their pets by feeding them the rubbish they ate. We should be ashamed of ourselves need to admit that while we have the capacity to help the world, we do a good job in messing it up too.

Animals have evolved far less than humans so to expect them to live off our food is insane. I feel very strongly about over-domesticating animals and especially vegetarian pets. We have the capacity to make lifestyle decisions, animals don't. We need to be responsible by recreating some of the conditions they would live in. Cats don't have razor sharp teeth to eat vegetables with. Pets need exercise to simulate long treks, hunting and playing with other animals. They don't need toast, sweets and processed foods that cause us so many health problems.

Why the side step to animals? The programme highlighted the naivety that people have to food. It showed that we like to justify anything that suits us. "My cat is overweight but he is happy and I show him lots of love." We also need to realise that animals are not humans. It is bad enough that we are killing each other, let's not inflict our lifestyle on animals too.