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

I think your diet choices and reasoning seem very reasonable. However, your post and others about diet issues and "research" on the Internet do trouble me. I probably have a somewhat different take than most of you on Internet "research," being a professor and research scientist, and having been on the 'net before it was "the Internet" or WWW. Unfortunately, while the Internet is a great source for factual information, it is an even better source of unsupported opinions expressed as fact---i.e., pure BS. Frankly I have found virtually no scientifically sound information on cat foods. What I find is lots of unproven and poorly supported opinions being touted as if they are proven fact by various self-appointed "experts." Since it is very difficult to do the kind of research necessary to draw broad and definitive conclusions, one of my rules of thumb in judging the reliability of a website's information is to look at the kinds of claims they are making. Broad and definitive claims, without any citations of large-scale studies, mark the site's information as inherently unreliable. Move along, no real knowledge to be gained there. Worth about what you are paying to get it.

As far as I can determine, there have been almost no truly useful studies comparing various diets in cats. The Winn Foundation did fund one, and an article on it can be found here:
Cat Fanciers' Association: Role of Diet

One of the most interesting aspects of this article is that it conclusively demonstrates the limits of personal observations of pets in drawing conclusions about the healthiness of their diets:

After one week in the study, the cats on the rabbit diet all had significant improvements in their stool quality based on a visual stool grading system (developed by the Nestlé-Purina PetCare Company). After one month, the cats on the rabbit diet all had formed hard stools, while the commercial diet cats had soft formed to liquid stools. These differences persisted to the end of the feeding trial. The cats that were fed the whole rabbit diet outwardly appeared to have better quality coats

(Note: the point of the study was to look at intestinal health, and the cats in the study were specifically selected from a breeding colony that was known to have a number of common intestinal pathogens--this is the reason for the focus on stool quality)

Although it appeared that the raw rabbit diet was significantly beneficial for the stool quality and appearance of health in the cats, the sudden and rapidly fatal illness of one of the cats that were fed the raw rabbit diet for 10 months was chilling and unexpected. The affected cat was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy due to a severe taurine deficiency. Moreover, 70% of the remaining raw rabbit diet fed cats, which appeared outwardly healthy, also had heart muscle changes compatible with taurine deficiency and could have developed heart failure if continued on our raw rabbit diet.

So the raw fed cats outwardly seemed "healthier" according to some measures--until they started dying from heart disease caused by this diet. Oops!! Guess the assessment of the animals health from stool and coat appearance wasn't too useful, was it? Unfortunately, this is really the only sort of assessment that any of us are in a position to make. So while sharing our various experiences is fine, don't take anyone's opinions too seriously, no matter how emphatically they espouse them. In fact, the more certain they are that they are right, the *less* you should probably trust them.

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!!!!

This is the first time my computer has stayed on line in the evening & let me have a good read of the postings. I find this feeding topic quite interesting,as someone said we all have our own ideas about feeding.I have worked at a vets for nearly forty years & then cats were fed on good old tinned meat & nothing else,we didn't have the amount of upset stomachs then or obese cats & that in turn meant we didn't have the diabetic cats that are about now & no dried biscuits also meant that there were not the amount of cats suffering from stones either,all things that seem to have become more evident now in the last few years.May be that more people are taking their animals to the vets now so you think these things are new but in fact were in the background all along.
I have stuck with feeding mine a middle priced tinned cat food,don't want to advertise,that is their main diet & they get a small amount of a well known brand biscuit as a treat.As I have mentioned in other threads the boys weigh up to 10kgs & one youngster is already topping the scales at over 9kg with more growing to do so obviuosly must be doing ok on this plain old diet,only had one problem when a very good more expensive tinned cat food was on a good offer,bargain,two days later we suffered,too rich for their tummies,rest will leave to everyones imagination....