A new study suggests that feeding your pup fresh food fit for a person might have an added welcome effect: smaller poops. The findings suggest that a fresh human-grade diet is more easily digestible for dogs than standard diets made of dry processed food, and it may also satisfy a dog’s appetite with fewer calories per meal.

Kelly Swanson, a nutrition scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has been studying dog and cat nutrition for about two decades. More recently, he and his team have been looking into pet diets primarily