Thread: My opinion on foods... (For what it's worth)

Before I post a bit more I thought I would set out a few 'facts'.

• I am by no means an expert on food composition and I have no carried out any scientific tests. I have spent the last week reading up on raw diets. Like NCarver, I have struggled to find a 'solid' test and I really doubt one will exist.
• I am intelligent enough to know that the internet is not full of 100% factual information and many websites, to their detriment imo, tend to use emotive language in order to bring you onto their side. Im talking both commericial and non commercial.
• I really dont care if someone proves what I think is right, to be wrong. If they do, woohoo! I learned something and my cats will be better off as a result.
• My interest stems from one of my own cats. Loki. Thread linked here: http://www.maine-coon-forum.info/hea...ll-formed.html

I went out on our weekly food shop yesterday with my wife. Whilst travelling past the pet food isle I thought I would pick up some commercial foods and read the ingredients. I had read on the internet that 'soandso food' was full of 80% moisture and 3% ash and 4% vegetable matter and... (where is the meat???)
I thought they were exagerated claims to be honest, but being someone who likes to do his own investigation I figured Id have a look.
Exagerated? Nope. I looked at about 8 or 9 of the well known cat foods (Whiskers etc) and read through their ingredient list. Didnt take much to convince me from that point on that there is signigicantly less 'goodness' in those cans than what I had previously thought.

Raw Fed Cats
Website uses quite emotive language which detracted me from the info, BUT it did provide a catalyst for my interest and I then went off looking at other pieces of information. On the basis of my experience with Loki and my research

Thanks NCarver for that website link. One thing pops into my mind though is that I cant believe that they only fed them on rabbit! I dont doubt they did, but why just one meat type?!! Im 100% astounded! Ive only been researching raw diets for a short while and I understand the important of variety. By doing that they were just asking for trouble. A big oops! indeed.
Taurine deficiency... again, Im giving my two kitten milk + 24/7 water. Kitten milk of course contains a fair degree of Taurine. Surely any balanced diet test should take these things into account.


My advice to anyone thinking / concerned about diet - Do you own research. Make up your own mind but dont be afraid to ask experts in any camp for their opinion.


Oh and as a side note: My trip to tesco ended up with one raw tuna steak, a large fillet of boneless pacific cod, and two big packets of raw chicken thighs. All for the cats

Definitely there is poor quality pet food available. Certainly there is a vast range of prices, and unless the more expensive foods are totally marketing BS, I would hope you are getting something. For example, there is dry cat food here that costs $5 for 25lbs and dry that costs $25 for 5lbs. They are not remotely similar in their ingredients. Thus, it is absurd to lump them together as "dry cat food" unless it is the dryness that you think is the sole critical attribute.

Thanks NCarver for that website link. One thing pops into my mind though is that I cant believe that they only fed them on rabbit! I dont doubt they did, but why just one meat type?!! Im 100% astounded! Ive only been researching raw diets for a short while and I understand the important of variety. By doing that they were just asking for trouble. A big oops! indeed.
Taurine deficiency... again, Im giving my two kitten milk + 24/7 water. Kitten milk of course contains a fair degree of Taurine. Surely any balanced diet test should take these things into account.

They had tested the rabbit diet and found it had sufficient nutrients on its own, but for some reason it did not provide it to the cats. That is one of the unanswered questions--why were the animals not getting sufficient taurine when there should have been enough in the raw meat? Shows that one must do actual feeding studies, not simply nutrient assays. Anyway, the point is not this particular diet as nobody is too likely to be feeding this. The point of interest for me is that the researchers at a major vet school thought from their observations and basic tests that the cats on one diet were healthier, while in reality their hearts were being destroyed. This shows that there is a significant limit to what can be determined from personal observation, so nobody is really "an expert" from trying a couple of alternatives in their own few cats. It is fine to consider others' opinions in arriving at your own decisions, but that is all they are: opinions. It is extremely unlikely that there is only one approach to raising healthy cats, and furthermore cats differ so that what works in some may not work well for others. You put your kitten with soft stools on raw and the stools are now fine. We gave our cat that occasionally had soft stools FortiFlora and she has not had soft stools since (> 2mos.). No single correct answer for all cats and all owners!

Interesting discussion and reading. Thank you all.

I am a multi pet care giver for all my live and based on my expirence I came to the following conclusion:

Either feed a top premium pet food - wet and dry as to clean teeth and for convinience when traveling or in show, wet as not to overly stress the kidneys and as a special treat. If possible bio. Once a week offer a raw treat like fish, chicken or meat, egg white or egg yolk (not toghter)

or

Follow Dr. Vet. Pitcairn's receipe and feeding ritual with BIO grade raw meat and food. (Too expensive for me here in Greece with so many animals that I have)

I belive very strongly that the argument of Pitcairn that our "human grade" SM meat full of hormones and antibiotics is NOT beneficial to our animals. Sebastian or the other "in home zone" cats will not it ground meat from the SM, but they scream their heads off for the butcher meat.
As for the "wider zone" strays I feed - those who are not under my direct care and need to be trapped if needed - I find that a feed like Royal Canin (super premium) will actully staisfy their hunger better AND keep them healthier, with less parasites and better coats - hence are cheaper than the "cheaper" pet foods such as Whiskas or Friskies for example. I stay away from these feeds also because of the sugar content and fear of diabetes (Dog owners beware) plus I found that the animals had a higher parasite infection (hence poor coat and loose stools).

Dr. Pitcairn adds Taurine powder and Salmon oil to his receipes if I am remember correctly.
As far as the Taurin goes, my old Vet told me that cats with an excisting health issue have a special need for suplementing their diets. This goes also for the auto-produced Vitamin C.

All my cats lived past 15 years of age. All of them had a form of cancer at the end, but one with renal failure, aged 20. All of them where wonderful, active animals, that after the neutering never went to the vet till to the last years or a routine check up.

Check out the site of Dr Pitcairn - I find him an interesting read Dr. Richard Pitcairn

NCarver,

If Im reading your post right, I completely agree with you. No accurate testing has been done (that you or I have found). ie: A test which removes all outside variables in a large enough number of cats to remove any anomalyies (sp)

If I fed any of my cats a specific diet based on "what people said" and one died purely down to that diet. I would be gutted & I would also have let down my cats by not doing a bit of research and making up my own mind.

Originally Posted by Tomiam

NCarver,

If Im reading your post right, I completely agree with you. No accurate testing has been done (that you or I have found). ie: A test which removes all outside variables in a large enough number of cats to remove any anomalyies (sp)

If I fed any of my cats a specific diet based on "what people said" and one died purely down to that diet. I would be gutted & I would also have let down my cats by not doing a bit of research and making up my own mind.

Right. My point was everyone needs to make up their own mind for their own situation, using a variety of sources of information, but not taking any source too seriously. There are no studies that definitively answer the question of what the best diet(s) are for cats. So, anybody that makes a claim to know the one and only best diet for cats--as many websites do--is simply wrong (and I would ignore their opinion). It seems likely to me that there is not a single right approach for all cats and all people.

Rereading your earlier post I see that you are probably offended by my comments about Internet "research," hence this: "I am intelligent enough to know that the internet is not full of 100% factual information...." Intelligence is not the issue, however. Everyone these days will tell you that they know that there is lots of untrue information on the Internet. Still, it can be very hard to resist falling for answers that fit with your preconceptions or being swayed by people that are very pursuasive writers or sites that provide technical sounding explanations, and few people are really trained to be able to evaluate the reliability of technical claims. We are researching migraine issues for my daughter right now. There are lots of web sites providing treatment info, of course. Many of them claim they have "the true answer" (that the entire medical establishment has overlooked), and many are even written by physicians that claim they are using their approaches to successfully treat people. Pretty hard to resist believing some of these claims. Yet virtually none cite any hard science to back up their claims (though many provide scientific sounding justifications). So you just have to force yourself to question every single claim, no matter how appealing it is to believe that you have found the answer that will help.

Heheh I can well imagine how many want to tell you they have a solution and in return they will make your wallet lighter and easier to carry..

Didnt take offence at anything you said, not at all btw. Im too old to believe that everyone will always agree and am definately not going to waste my time attempting to achieve a goal which isnt achievable So no, dont worry no offence taken at all

Completely agree on the question everything. Im managing director, for my sins.., and you wouldnt believe the amount of sales / promotional literature, emails, telephone calls I get all claiming to be the next big thing...

I wish you good luck finding a cure for your daughters migrane problem. Someone who worked for me a few years ago had a very bad problem with them and went to various people to see if there was anything they could do. She left some time ago so I have no clue if there was ever any solution found. :(

Didnt take offence at anything you said

Very glad to hear it!

I wish you good luck finding a cure for your daughters migrane problem.

Hers are not bad yet, but want to see if anything can be done. Not certain that any Internet gleaned info will end up being of use...looks pretty doubtful at this point.

Incidentally, even I was stunned by the stupidity of a cat food review site I came across while researching a particular brand of food today:

Natural Flavor. I always like the way pet food companies hide the use of manure in the ingredients. Natural flavor is made from the manure of the animal the pet food company wants the pet food to taste like. If natural flavor were an actual part of the ingredients and not an added ingredient the pet food company would not have to list natural flavor as a seperate ingredient.

I think we might have a winner here...for least intelligent cat food posting on the entire Internet!!! WooHoo!!!!