Can dogs eat chickpeas?

The detail

A chickpea is a pulse, not a vegetable in the everyday sense, and that changes what it brings to a dog's bowl. Plain cooked chickpeas are roughly a fifth protein by weight, carry a good amount of fibre, and have very little fat, which is why they turn up as a filler ingredient in some complete dog foods.

Raw, dried chickpeas are the version to avoid. They are dense and starchy and very difficult for a dog to break down, and they can swell once eaten, which is uncomfortable at best. Cooking softens the starch and makes the pulse digestible, so this is a food that needs a pan or a tin before it reaches the bowl.

What happens to the chickpea after cooking is the other half of the story. A plain tinned or home-cooked chickpea is a fair, low-risk treat. The same chickpea roasted in oil and salt, turned into a spiced snack, or blended into hummus with garlic and lemon is a different food carrying a different risk.

Tinned chickpeas vs dried and soaked

Tinned chickpeas are the easy, low-effort choice. The canning process cooks them thoroughly, so a rinsed spoonful from a tin is ready to share with none of the raw pulse's digestibility problem.

Dried chickpeas soaked and boiled at home work just as well, as long as they are cooked all the way through and served plain. Rinsing tinned chickpeas under the tap first cuts down on the brine salt clinging to them, which is worth doing even for an occasional spoonful.

Salted, spiced and wasabi-coated chickpea snacks

Roasted snack chickpeas sold as a crunchy bar snack are a different food from a plain cooked pulse. Most are fried or oven-roasted in oil and finished with a heavy coat of salt, chilli, or a spice mix, and the Pet Poison Helpline lists salt among the substances that can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, tremors and worse at high doses.

Wasabi-coated versions add a genuinely unpleasant irritant on top of the salt, since wasabi is a strong mustard-oil compound that causes mouth and gut irritation in dogs the way it does in people, only worse because dogs cannot spit it out. Keep the snack bowl out of reach rather than handing one over as a taster.

Can dogs eat hummus or falafel?

No, not as a rule. Hummus starts as chickpeas, tahini and olive oil, which are individually fine, but almost every recipe and every shop-bought tub adds garlic, and PDSA's guidance is clear that garlic and onion damage a dog's red blood cells and can cause anaemia, with symptoms sometimes taking a few days to appear.

Falafel carries the same garlic problem, usually with onion added too, plus the fact that it is deep fried. A dropped chip of falafel is unlikely to be an emergency, but do not spread hummus on a dog's dinner as a treat, and check any tub's ingredients before letting a dog anywhere near a dropped cracker.

Are chickpeas linked to heart disease in dogs?

This question comes from the FDA's investigation into grain-free pet food and dilated cardiomyopathy, which named peas, lentils, chickpeas and other pulses among the ingredients under review when they sit high on the ingredient list of a complete, grain-free diet fed for months or years.

That is a question about how a dog's whole daily diet is formulated, not about a dog having a spoonful of chickpeas as an occasional extra. If your dog eats a grain-free food built heavily around pulses, that is worth raising with your vet at a routine check-up rather than a reason to avoid chickpeas as a treat.

Chickpea flour, gram flour and chickpea pasta

Chickpea flour, also sold as gram flour or besan, is ground chickpeas and nothing else, so a small taste of something made plainly with it carries the same low-fat, high-fibre profile as the whole pulse. The problem, as usual, is what else went into the recipe.

Chickpea pasta is a reasonable occasional swap for a dog already having a small amount of pasta, but a sauce built on garlic, onion, cheese or a lot of oil turns a fine base ingredient into a different food. Serve any of these plain if you are sharing at all.