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Home » Diets that Work » Feeding Your Cat: Know the Basics of Feline Nutrition …

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Feeding Your Cat - Short version - 4 pages (updated November 2013)

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Diet is the brick and mortar of health. This web page lays out some often-ignored principles of feline nutrition and explains why cats have a better chance at optimal health if they are fed canned food (or a balanced homemade diet) instead of dry kibble.

Putting a little thought into what you feed your cat(s) can pay big dividends over their lifetime and very possibly help them avoid serious, painful, and costly illnesses. An increasing number of nutrition-savvy veterinarians, including board-certified veterinary internists, are now strongly recommending the feeding of canned food instead of dry kibble.

The three key negative issues associated with dry food are:

1) water content is too low

2) carbohydrate load is too high

3) type of protein - too high in plant-based versus animal-based proteins

In addition, dry food is very heavily processed which includes being subjected to high temperatures for a long time resulting in alteration and destruction of nutrients.

Dry food is also often contaminated with bacteria, fungal mycotoxins, storage mites/cockroaches and their feces, etc.

Most people who are concerned about their own nutrition have heard nutritionists say "shop the perimeter of the grocery store." This statement refers to the push to get humans to focus on fresh food - not overly processed food found in boxes and cans.

Where do you think kibble would reside in this scenario? Definitely not in the "perimeter"! There is nothing fresh about this source of food and it certainly does not come close to resembling a bird or a mouse.

Also keep in mind that dry foods are not refrigerated and they sit in warm warehouses, on pet store shelves, and in your cupboards for weeks or months before your pets consume them. Fats can easily become rancid, and bacteria will proliferate, in this type of environment.

There is no doubt that dry food is responsible for far more intestinal problems, and other diseases, than most veterinarians and cat owners realize.

Please click on the links below to read more about optimal nutrition for cats.

But my cat is "fine" on dry food!

The importance of animal proteins, versus plant proteins

Fresh vs highly processed with synthetic supplements

Problems with carbohydrates in dry cat foods

Cats need water with their food

Reading a pet food ingredient label

Marketing labels

'Prescription/therapeutic' diets

Common medical problems associated with dry food

The safety of dry food

Tips for Transitioning - Getting dry food addicts to eat canned food

Home prepared raw/semi-cooked and commercial raw meat diets

What I feed to my cats

Some final thoughts

Robbie

My Cat is Doing Just "Fine" on Dry Food!

Every living creature is fine until outward signs of a disease process are exhibited. That may sound like a very obvious and basic statement but if you think about it

Every cat with a blocked urinary tract was fine until they started to strain to urinate and either died from a ruptured bladder or had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency catheterization.

Every cat on the Feline Diabetes Message Board was fine until their owners started to recognize the signs of diabetes.

Every cat with an inflamed bladder (cystitis) was fine until they ended up in severe pain, started passing blood in their urine, and began to refuse to use their litter box because they associated it with their pain.

Every cat was "fine" until the feeding of species-inappropriate, hyperallergenic ingredients caught up with him and he started to show signs of food intolerance/IBD (inflammatory bowel disease).

Every cat was "fine" until that kidney or bladder stone got big enough to cause clinical signs.

Every cancer patient was fine until their tumor grew large enough or spread far enough so that clinical signs were observed by the patient.

The point is that diseases 'brew' long before being noticed by the living being.

This is why the statement but my cat is healthy/fine on dry food means very little to me because I believe in preventative nutrition - not locking the barn door after the horse is gone. I dont want to end up saying oopsI guess he is not so fine now!!" when a patient presents to me with a medical problem that could have been avoided if he would have been feed a species-appropriate diet to begin with.

Of course, in order to be on board with the preventative nutrition argument, a person has to understand the following facts:

1) All urinary tract systems are much healthier with an appropriate amount of water flowing through them.

Dietary water and urinary tract health

2) Carbohydrates can wreak havoc on cats' blood sugar/insulin balance.

Postprandial glycemia

3)Cats inherently have a low thirst drive and need to consume water *with* their food. (A cat's normal prey is ~70 - 75% water - not the very low 5-10% found in dry food.)

4) Cats are strict carnivores which means they are designed to get their protein from meat/organs not plants.

The Carnivore Connection to Nutrition in Cats

Cats Need Animal-Based Protein

Cats are obligate (strict) carnivores and are very different from dogs in their nutritional needs. What does it mean to be an obligate carnivore? It means that your cat was built by Mother Nature to get her nutritional needs met by the consumption of a large amount of animal-based proteins (meat/organs) and derives much less nutritional support from plant-based proteins (grains/vegetables). It means that cats lack specific metabolic (enzymatic) pathways and cannot utilize plant proteins as efficiently as animal proteins.

It is very important to remember that not all proteins are created equal.

Proteins derived from animal tissues have a complete amino acid profile. (Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Think of them as pieces of a puzzle.) Plant-based proteins do not contain the full complement (puzzle pieces) of the critical amino acids required by an obligate carnivore. The quality and composition of a protein (are all of the puzzle pieces present?) is also referred to as its biological value.

Humans and dogs can take the pieces of the puzzle in the plant protein and, from those, make the missing pieces. Cats cannot do this. This is why humans and dogs can live on a vegetarian diet but cats cannot. (Note that I do not recommend vegetarian diets for dogs.)

Taurine is one of the most important nutrients present in meat but it is missing from plants. Taurine deficiency will cause blindness and heart problems in cats.

The protein in dry food, which is often heavily plant-based, is not equal in quality to the protein in canned food, which is meat-based. The protein in dry food, therefore, earns a lower biological value score.

Because plant proteins are cheaper than meat proteins, pet food companies will have a higher profit margin when using corn, wheat, soy, rice, etc.

Andy - 18 years ago as a kitten

He still enjoys his meat!

Veterinary nutritionists and pet food company representatives will argue that they are smart enough to know *exactly* what is missing from a plant in terms of nutrient forms and amounts - nutrients that would otherwise be in a meat-based diet. They will then claim that these missing elements are added to their diets to make it complete and balanced to sustain life in an obligate carnivore.

Does anyone really think that humans are that smart?

This is the kind of arrogance that has led to fatal errors in the past. Not all that long ago (1980s) cats were going blind and dying from heart problems due to this arrogance. It was discovered in the late 1980s that cats are exquisitely sensitive to taurine deficiency and our cats were paying dearly for Man straying so far from nature in order to increase the profit margin of the pet food manufacturers.

There are several situations that can lead to a diet being deficient in taurine but one of them is using a diet that relies heavily on plants (grains, etc.) as its source of protein. Instead of lowering their profit margin and going back to nature by adding more meat to the diets, the pet food companies simple started supplementing their diets with synthetic taurine.

This may be all well and good for this particular problem, but how do we know that Man is not blindly going along unaware of other critical nutrients that are missing from a plant-based diet?

Why are nutritionists so arrogant to think that we can safely stray so far from what a cat is designed by nature to eat?

Also note that synthetic taurine is manufactured from a chemical reaction and all taurine (at least that I know of) comes out of China. Given that country's horrible track record with regard to food safety, I certainly would not want to depend on taurine from China's chemical synthesis to meet my cats' taurine needs.

With regard to the overall protein amounts contained in dry versus canned food, do not be confused by the listing of the protein percentages on the packaging. At first glance, it might appear that the dry food has a higher amount of protein than the canned foodbut this is not true on a dry matter basis which considers the food minus the water. Most canned foods, when figured on a dry matter basis, have more protein than dry food. And remember, even if this was not the case, the percentage numbers do not tell the whole story. It is the proteins biological value that is critical.

Let's ask ourselves the following question: How many cats become ill or die from these species-inappropriate diets yet the patient's diet is never even questioned as a possible cause of the illness or death? We cannot answer that question definitively but I have no doubt that the answer would be "many".

Do cats survive on these heavily (synthetically) supplemented plant-based diets? Yes, many of them do.

Do cats thrive on these diets? No, they do not.

Please pay special attention to the words *survive* versus *thrive* as there is a very big difference between the two states of health.

Robbie - hunting his dinner

Fresh vs Highly Processed with Synthetic Supplements

There are two basic ways to meet our nutrient needs:

Eat fresh food with a short ingredient list - or at least one that does not resemble a science experiment full of long names that are hard to pronounce.

Eat highly processed foods that have had much of their nutrient content destroyed or altered, with food chemists 'fixing' the deficit with synthetic supplements. This type of unhealthy diet is consumed under the assumption that humans know exactly what was destroyed or altered during processing and what needs to be added back and in what form and amount.

Again, Man is simply not that smart.

While canned food is not 'fresh', per se, dry food undergoes a harsher processing. It has been cooked at very high temperatures for a long period of time. The extensive cooking required to remove most of the water from the food (70% moisture reduced to 5-10% moisture) significantly alters the biological value of the protein sources and damages other vital nutrients.

Humans then have to guess which nutrients in what form and amounts were destroyed by this cooking process and then try to add them back into the diet. Occasionally 'real food' is used instead of synthetic supplements but those long and hard-to-pronounce names on the ingredient list describe chemically synthesized nutrients.

Given that Man will never be as smart as nature we will never know every detail of a cats normal prey - it is obvious that there is a risk when greed cause humans to stray so far from a cats natural diet.

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Note: I have stopped using the term "grain-free" since it has become somewhat meaningless. Many companies (e.g., Blue Buffalo) tout that their products are "grain free" but then they just load up the food with high carbohydrate ingredients like potatoes and peas which are not grains but still contribute a significant carb load (and plant-based protein) to the food. The "grain-free" descriptive has become very misleading.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In their natural setting, catswhose unique biology makes them true carnivores--would not consume the high level of carbohydrates (grains, potatoes, peas, etc.) that are in the dry foods (and some canned foods) that we routinely feed them. You would never see a wild cat chasing down a herd of biscuits running across the plains of Africa or dehydrating her mouse and topping it off with corn meal.

In the wild, your cat would be eating a high protein, high-moisture, meat/organ-based diet, with a moderate level of fat and with only approximately 1-2 percent of her diet consisting of carbohydrates. The average dry food contains 35-50 percent carbohydrate calories. Some of the cheaper dry foods contain even higher levels.

This is NOT the diet that Mother Nature intended for your cat to eat.

Many canned foods, on the other hand, contain approximately less than 10 percent carbohydrates.

Please note that not all canned foods are suitably low in carbohydrates. For instance, most of the Hill's Science Diet (over-the-counter) and the Hill's 'prescription' diets are very high in carbohydrates and are not foods that I would ever choose to feed.

Cats have a physiological decrease in the ability to utilize carbohydrates due to the lack of specific enzymatic pathways that are present in other mammals, and they lack a salivary enzyme called amylase.

Cats have no dietary need for carbohydrates and, more worrisome is the fact that a diet that is high in carbohydrates can be detrimental to their health as is explained below.

With this in mind, it is as illogical to feed a carnivore a steady diet of meat-flavored cereals as it would be to feed meat to a vegetarian like a horse or a cow, right? So why are we continuing to feed our carnivores like herbivores? Why are we feeding such a species-inappropriate diet? The answers are simple. Grains/potatoes are cheap. Dry food is convenient. Affordability and convenience sells.

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Feeding Your Cat: Know the Basics of Feline Nutrition ...

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