Food intolerance includes pharmacological, metabolic and idiosyncratic adverse reactions to the current diet. The treatment is to change the diet to one the animal will tolerate. Diets similar to the one presented in Table 2 are also recommended for adjunctive therapy of other diseases causing chronic small bowel diarrhea for reasons discussed above for acute diarrhea. Large intestine Provision of increased amounts of dietary fiber is one therapy that has become popular in recent years for chronic large bowel diarrhea in dogs and cats . Although insufficient scientific information is available concerning the effects of dietary fiber on large bowel diarrheal diseases in small animals, the combined knowledge obtained from research on humans and animals, and veterinary clinical experience, suggests that some dietary fibers may be useful in the management of some small animal diarrheas.
Dietary fiber is plant material that is resistant to animal digestive enzymes.
Processing of fiber during food production also influences its effects on the intestinal tract. Insoluble fibers also occur in vegetables, and in the seed coats of some cereal grains, such as wheat. Although some degradation of cellulose occurs in the colon by bacterial fermentation, lignin, a complex polymer that forms the skeleton of grasses, is resistant to fermentation. Nonfermentable fibers predominantly influence intestinal transit time. Hemicelluloses are a diverse group of polysaccharides grouped together because all are analyzed by similar methods.