10/01/2023
Demystifying the Cat Diet
Many times a day I hear the following question from my clients: What is the best food to feed my cat? My answer is always dependent on the age, body condition and health of the cat. However, for the average adult healthy cat, I recommend a canned diet with the following composition — greater than 50 percent of the calories ingested should be from protein, less than 10 percent daily calories from carbohydrates, and at least 30 percent of their daily calories from fat.
Why would I make this recommendation? It is for the following reasons.
Cats are obligate carnivores. They are designed to eat meat, not plants. An ideal diet for a cat would be five-to-six mice per day — for your information, mice are high in protein (48 percent), low in carbohydrates (5 percent) and approximately 48 kcal per mouse. Unlike omnivores, cats are unable to process and store carbohydrates well. Cats fed high carbohydrate diets have higher blood glucose levels compared to cats fed low carbohydrate diets due to their failure to convert excess glucose to glycogen (storage form of energy). Many cats recently diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus are placed on a high protein, low carbohydrate diet (like the diet composition I recommended above) and their diabetes has gone into remission. These cats no longer need insulin. In addition, it has been speculated that cats fed high carbohydrate diets may have a have a higher incidence of gastrointestinal disease (Inflammatory Bowel Disease) due to their poor management of carbohydrates ingested and resultant bacterial overgrowth in their gastrointestinal tract.
Not only is it important to check the pet food label to see the quantity of protein in the can but also look at where the protein is coming from. Cats have a fairly simple digestive tract and lack the ability to synthesize certain amino acids from their diet. There are four amino acids (taurine, arginine, methionine and cysteine) that must be provided in their diet and a
