Lots of opinions, and lots of facts.

Royal Canin WAS a company founded by a veterinatian to be a holistic food. Due to corporate buyouts, RC is now nothing more than a subsidiary of Mars Candy Company, the same company that manufactures the nutritionally-abysmal Pedigree foods, among others.

Royal Canin WAS quality. Now it's nothing but marketing, and with every reformulation their quality gets lower and lower. Corn and/or wheat in all Royal Canin formulas these days... NOT a sign of a quality food.

So why do so many vets sell it? Two reasons. Reason one is simply that most vets know precisely jack squat about nutrition, and most of the little they DO know was provided them by the food companies. Reason two goes back to corporate buyouts and partnerships. For example, are you aware that Mars, the company that owns Royal Canin, also owns Banfield Veterinary Hospitals, the corporate clinics in most PetSmart pet stores?

True, Banfield is under the same Mars umbrella, but they also prescribe Hills Rx Diets to patients as well. As an ER vet technician I see first hand what a huge difference having a prescription diet makes for a patient with a chronic illness, like heart or kidney failure. I cant tell you how many times Ive seen patients suffering from vomitting and bloody diarrhea because owners insist on feeding their pets "Holistic Superfood" only to find that many pets cant tolerate the richness in their digestive systems (even with a gradual crossover from their old food). All this talk about Rx diets being pushed by idiot vets who had their education by paid by Hills or Royal Canin is just stupid, and shows nothing but a lack of understanding about the veterinary field.

Actually, I, too, am a veterinary technician. I, too, have worked ER Clinics... for much of my twenty-plus year career as a vet tech. And, I, too used to hold the same opinion you did... but experience and independent nutritional education has shown me that Hills Science Diet/Prescription Diet and Royal Canin (regular or prescription) aren't all they're cracked up to be. And of all the ER patients I see with severe gastric upset due to a food change, at least seventy percent of the cases were caused by owner error or unrelated dietary indescretion, not by the food itself. How can a super-premium, meat based food be "too rich" for a dog? It cannot. Dogs are carnivores. It's awfully difficult to give them a food that is "too rich." Some ingredients in a certain food may not agree with an individual dog, but I think saying that these foods are "too rich" oversimplifies things, and is just a line invented by the average to subpar food companies to justify using carbohydrate and fiber laden formulas.

And I never onece refered to veterinarians as idiotic. But ask your employers how much nutritional CE they've done that wasn't taught or sponsored by a food company. Unless you work for a veterinary nutritionist, the answer will be zero. Ask your employers, if they are more than a decade out of veterinary school, who taught them about companion nutrition. The answer will be Hills/Colgate Palmolive, Waltham/Mars, Nestle Purina CNM, or similar... until recently, food manufacturer reps provided nutrition classes in vet school curriculums. That's the facts. I'm not calling vets stupid or suggesting some vast collusion or conspiracy. That's simply the way it was. However, things are changing, and more and more vets are turning away from the status quo in pet nutrition and are using prescription diets more appropriately, as a short term fix while a long term solution is being investigated. Renal failure dogs don't NEED to be on Hills k/d for the rest of their lives, and cats experiencing struvite issues don't need a lifelong diet of Hills c/d.