The Truth About Grain-Free Cat Food (Explained by a Vet) 

Wow! That’s wonderful!

Yes! Raw diet even better. Maybe vets promote this prescription food because they get incentives from it?

@@khabibpogosyan2587 Unfortunately, I think that's true in some cases. Vets make a profit off of all the prescription food they sell. There's also the incentives that companies like Hill's offer veterinary scholarships to students and hold conferences that are probably nice experiences and very prescription-food centric. What I don't understand is why these prescription food makers don't just use appropriate ingredients (where diabetic cats are concerned, at least). The science is there; they know what they should be using. My cat would probably be on a prescription diet today if it were actually beneficial. That said (sorry this is so long), I used to have a cat with food allergies and a prescription diet was perfect for him.

Hi Laura, that's cool lower carbs have health benefits for people and cats! I learned something every day 😊

That's great to hear. Yes unfortunately Veterinarians only push their sponsored products (in food and medicine). I had the same last week, they gave me food with so much grains and only 14% meat. I returned the bag of knibbles.

Yeah, vets are pretty useless theae days, unless they need surgery.

@@Lisa-cn2uu . Nothing but raw ground meat and water.

My kitty is 15 and stopped eating her kibble and canned food. What kind of meat are you feeding your kitty and how do you prep it? Thank you!

My kitty is 15 and stopped eating her kibble and canned food. What kind of meat are you feeding your kitty and how do you prep it? Thank you!

It makes us fur parents feel so good when we can help our babies feel good. I started my boy ( 16) on Cosquin for arthritis 3 mos ago. He has the zoomies again. Yeah!

what's the name of the arthritis injections medicine? glad your cat felt better after the treatment! mine 8 yo is on the arthritis-kidney journey too

Need to add water in dry food, or in wet food too. Cats don’t drink enough water a lot of the time, leading to issues like renal failure.😢. I hope your baby is doing better . 🙏

@@richreitz5815 Thank you. 😻

@purrrpurpurpur8005 Solensia is the name of the drug that is injected. Sub-dural so no trauma administering.

Same. Thanks for sharing . My cat has stopped throwing up since I give her two cans of wet food a day and she doesn’t gorge in her nasty blue Buffalo hairball sensitive stomach . I think they change their recipe and my cat will pro of logs of that food so I’m on the search for something different.

@@smashleyabodeely1127I switched from Blue Buffalo to Wellness. They seem to be more reputable and have better quality ingredients. Have you picked a new brand yet?

@@Lisa-cn2uu Back then, I believe I was feeding Tiki Cat After Dark and Nulo Beef and Lamb. I have since learned they are high in calcium and phosphorus. I now feed mostly homemade food. For commercial food, I use Weruva Paw Lickin' Chicken. It is low in calcium and phosphorus. It comes in 10 oz. cans which makes it affordable with two cats. Weruva is available at Chewy, Petco and some local pet stores. Happy Sardine Sunday!

@@Lisa-cn2uu Weruva's website has detailed nutrition information for all of their food. Just click on the link for each of their recipes. Scroll down to the Dry Matter Basis chart. The level of calcium, phosphorus and sodium are the most important for cats.

Some of the fancy feast wet foods have great ingredients; a lot of people don’t realize that, you just have to check the labels. Another surprisingly good one that’s affordable and widely available are from Sheba. The little containers can be annoying to open though, but my cats like them the most of any wet food and it doesn’t break the bank!

I love that you're taking a proactive approach. I never expected my cat to get diabetes, but in truth, I wasn't targeting his diet toward preventing this outcome. I'm a lot more aware now that even healthy young cats should be fed quality diets. And yes, Fancy Feast pates are definitely part of my arsenal. Friskies pate is also grain free, but Fancy Feast has significantly more muscle meat making it a better choice.

@@randomanda OMG! I've yet to be able to open a Sheba tray without making a mess. I had to stop feeding it out of my own frustration.

I am in the same boat with my 18 pounder... So was it Grain-Free Weight Management food specifically, or just going to a Grain-Free wet or dry food that worked for your cat?

A lot of vets are contractually obligated to sell certain brands for pet issues. Unfortanately these foods aren't always as good quality as they're made out to be. Look at any of the big name/highly promoted pet foods out there and the ingredients will show you what I mean. Doing your own research and looking around at your options is the best way to find something that will help your pet. Super glad you found a food that works for you.

Grain free is always better for a cat. Always. They're not omnivores like dogs. They're not just carnivores, but obligate carnivores.

Which food did u use?

@@yoyoyo3439Farmina N&D prime grain free. I recommend.

@@user-pc8bl3qk5k thank you! Any specific one? I tried the urinary one before

@@yoyoyo3439 The best one that worked for me is the chicken pomegranate ( Neutered), their weight is healthy and they are very active. I 100% recommend

So my vet says they now have realized from studies it really does nothing to boost amunity in cats so useless but coast lots

Only some of my cats have tolerated a wet food diet, most of them will refuse to eat it exclusively, I tried for months. Cats really do like their crunchies, sometimes I wonder if it's instinctual. Though they don't really chew their food, I think when they do accidentally bite it, they must find biting down on dry food more pleasurable than biting down on the wet slop of canned food. I've wasted more wet food trying a wet food diet than I ever have with a dry food diet. One of these days I'm gonna get one of those fancy watering fountains though ♥️

@@jen2804 Sure, and most people would rather pig out on chips than eat broccoli!

@@jen2804 Get the Zeepet fountain. Best design I've found; I've been ordering and giving them away.

@@lynnmartz8739 will look into it! Thanks!

You are right. But our late cat refused to eat wet food. He died of kidney disease when he was 8. I never had a cat before that only ate dry food. Off course we gave him the best dry food possible and as extra's for moisture cat soup and cat milk.

:) Thank YOU!

Cats in the wild DO eat vegetables found in their prey's stomachs and intestines. As a matter of fact, that is what they usually eat first. A lion will tear into a deer's intestines and stomach and eat the grass, etc. found there.

Re chewing on plastic bags: As long as they don't swallow the plastic, I wouldn't worry about this behaviour. I've always viewed it as them sort of using it as dental floss!

Which Blue Buffalo is that?

I think your talking about their Blue wilderness line, the food I use that has no corn/wheat/soy is Purina beyond in which the carbohydrate source is oats

As a vet i and my colleagues dislike blue buffalo...just a hyper marketed brand..lots of urinary crystalluria ..dry skin..recalls..and all for a pricebthat you could buy a top notch prescription brand for.

@@pwood6532 LOL you’re not only completely wrong, as a Vet of course you will say to buy a prescription brand as they are the most expensive and benefit only the vets. Blue Buffalo is rated among the best on any reviews you search, your claim has no evidence to back it up. Don’t bother replying I won’t read it, instead spend the time to go back to Medical school.

@@EndoV2 What a hilarious comment!Why would I want to go to medical school...I dont want to be an MD.

You sound like a wonderful human. If everyone were only half decent as you, the world would have a chance! ❤

we can't digest fiber, but it's good for us, cats also can't digest grain, but food has it, the point is there's either food with grain or with vegetables, but non is only meat

@@ailidh-Bcn There are actually several cat foods that are only meat or 95%+ meat, the carbohydrate requirement is a kibble thing. Low-carb is more important than the carb source, as cats do not have the infrastructure to digest more than about 10-15% carbohydrate and naturally only get 2.8% of predigested carbohydrates in their diet

​@@elle7483 I know, but my cats only eat dry, and the 95% meat is too expensive, and very hard to find, since the common belief is that expensive brands like royal canin, iams and such are very healthy, the vets and stores make money our of advertising. and the grain free industry is also making money making people feel like bad pet owners if we don't feed them luxury all meat diet. saying that domestic cats have to feed like wild cats, when the average length of time a domestic cats lives, more than duplicates the life expectancy of wild cats, so people must not have been feeding domestics cats so bad. feed them the best you can, and don't feel bad if you can't afford the more expensive food, after all they already eat better than us.

@@ailidh-Bcn The point of my correction to your comment was to point out that carbohydrates aren't a required part of food and there are foods that are only meat, any excessive carbohydrate inclusion is not for the benefit of the cat. You insinuated that it's impossible to have food without carbohydrates. I corrected and pointed out that, while it is nearly impossible to find dry food without carbohydrates, it is not at all impossible to find cat food that is all meat or contains only a species-appropriate amount of carbohydrates. I also mentioned that the carb source and complete carb-freedom is not as important for cats as amount. That's why Fancy Feast flaked fish (which contains under 8% grains and is some of the cheapest wet food), would be considered more species-appropriate than the more expensive Weruva's Grandma's chicken soup flavor (which has 24% carbohydrates, despite none of it being grains) on their carbohydrate composition I wasn’t commenting on your, or anyone’s feeding practices. Just cat physiology and the food market. “Luxury” is a marketing term, but cat nutrition and digestion is a science. The science around cats and carbohydrates always concludes that cats can ”tolerate” carbohydrates and get calories from them, as well as indicates that cats have low ability to digest carbohydrates, carbohydrates mess with cat’s blood sugar regulation, and there is likely is an upper limit of tolerable carbohydrate inclusion. But there is no definitive research into what that limit is because the major food corporations aren’t funding that research (there are assumptions based on their physiology, enzyme distribution, and natural diet). Because of that, manufacturers can include whatever quantity of carbohydrates they want into the diet for no purpose other than cheap calories or a binding agent and call it “backed by science.” Domestic cats don’t have differing physiology to wild cats, so when we’re talking about what is biologically appropriate for them, it is going to be similar to feral cats and feral cats are relevant. Feral cats live shorter lives due to environmental factors like fights with other animals, food scarcity, parasites, infections, and lack of medical care, but none of that is the nutrition composition of their diet so we can’t consider lifespan as relevant to nutrition aside from food scarcity. However, domestic cats have a higher rate of nutrition-related diseases, such as diabetes, kidney disease, renal failure, and FLUTD than they did decades ago when more cats were indoor/outdoor and kibble was less popular. That is still correlational, but is relevant to nutritional composition beyond food availability. Kibble specifically is indicated by research to be harmful for cats, most notably in the fact that cats eating dry-only diets get 30-50% lower total water intake across multiple studies (which is chronic dehydration and raises their risk for all water-based illnesses and organ failure), but also in that the food looses substantial nutrient quality in the pressurization process and requires a carbohydrate binder which provides very little nutritional value, meaning that most of the nutrients cats need have to be added back synthetically at the end. Kibble should honestly never be used as an example for cat nutrition in the same way that comparing fast food meals shouldn’t be an example of human nutrition. Fast food exists and is popular and sometimes is all that a parent can feed their child (which is better than nothing), but we don’t talk about the whole of human nutrition while thinking about fast food. But, for some reason, we often talk about cat food with kibble as the default, which is a problem

Cats in the wild eat the digested vegetables found in their prey, such as grass eaten by deer, in their stomachs and intestines. The vegetables in canned food is cooked, so they can digest it. Same thing with humans. We can't digest some raw vegetables like potatoes or winter squash, but cooking it helps us digest it.

No, potatoes aren't a normal part of the feline diet.

@@AllAboutCatsYT I'm very happy with your response and feel honoured about I'm french and have the feeling we have lot of retard in everything about cat food, I feel guilty about my cat's renal desease cause we were told to food him just with kibbles till last years. I try to give him more grain free food with the Hill's KD and Royal Canin Renal, with German pet food grain free (they are more advanced then we are), but potatoes and even spinach (oxalate?!) seem not such a good choice to replace grains. Now, with your good advices, I learn and know better what it's good or not, but it is still hard to find real other choices, that you have in US. I thank you so much for your advices and presence on RU-vid, so I can ameliorate my behavior and maybe, I hope, my cat's health

IF calcium clogs arteries, calcium carbonate would be the safest to use as it’s not well absorbed. But that’s a big IF because they don’t understand well whether there is an actual link between calcium and cardiovascular disease, only that calcium appears in plaques. Apparently there was one single study a few years ago that caused a hubbub over calcium supplements but it’s still unknown and unproven. This is one you’ve definitely got to choose for yourself; there’s no clarity to it. Personally I think maybe some people are trying to sell more expensive supplements with “better” calcium- that could potentially be more dangerous! 🤷‍♀️

Maybe it’s the sugar he’s Addicted to?

Would you please tell us what the wet food is? My kitty has the same issues. He is on Hill's prescription d/d dry food. He won't eat the wet.

@@elizabethmeadows6469 We're currently using Wellness complete kitten pate chicken entree. No grains, no egg, no fish protein. Little bit of fish oil but it seems to be ok since it's the protein that causes the allergies.

@@elizabethmeadows6469 Both of our cats are still under 1 year old so we're trying to stick with kitten version for the wet. Once they get over a year old and we go to transition them to adult wet food, we'll be switching to the adult version of the Wellness Complete Health Pate Chicken Entree. Ingredient-wise, it's pretty much the same as the kitten version, just in different formulation for adult nutritional needs. For dry, we are using the Wellness Complete Health Grain-Free Indoor Chicken Recipe. That's an adult kibble, but we only supplement with it as snacks so it's not their primary source of nutrition. Overall, Wellness is not cheap, but we find it to be more affordable than Science Diet, and with a better ingredient panel overall. I hope this helps and good luck with your poor little allergic baby.

@@ladykilgore2337 Thank you so much!

You can cook cat food at home.

Origen, Acana, Bravery, Wellfed canned food is what I get.

Wet food. Grain-free wet food is usually low-carb wet food and therefor doesn't have these issues. This issue is pretty unique to kibble, which requires a binder

That’s happening to my cat too! He has licked off the fur on his belly & inner thighs too! We can’t figure out what’s going on 😔

Freeze your cats dry food for at least 24 hours (and thaw slowly to prevent mold) to get rid of all the mites! Helped my baby with her allergies, she's not itching nearly as much.

@kathyriley9276 yes she does her inner thighs too. So far the allergy shots r not helping but we're still trying. Please post if u find a solution

@@LoveHardFightHard we've been doing that since Oct. Keep her extra food in the freezer & her working food in the fridge. So far, no improvement

@@sunsetatshabooms4558 I took him off of chicken it’s been almost two months, so we will wait to see. Poultry free diet is what we are hoping to be the cure

Hi, Mallory here. Unfortunately, Dr. Sarah can't respond to comments on the channel at this time, and as a non-vet, I can't give you the kind of expert advice you deserve. If you create a post about your issue in the AAC community forum, one of our vet moderators should be able to give you a detailed answer. allaboutcats.com/community

@@AllAboutCatsYT Thank you so much dear Mallory!!!

The AllaboutCats team as a whole is a proponent of cat food needing to contain an appropriate water amount. Every study I've read that looks at hydration has found that dry-only cats get 30-50% lower total water intake (despite drinking more water orally). Which is in line with cats evolving as desert animals and having poor water drinking physiology That puts all kibble in a subpar position

Thank you for summarizing this for us, Elle. As long as it's rehydrated, freeze-dried cat food is generally the best option out of all of them, offering excellent species-appropriate, meat-based nutrition that's highly bioavailable.

The core point is that grain-free diets tend to be a bit gimmicky and don't offer what you might assume they would; the premise of grain sensitivities is flawed to begin with. But grain-free diets aren't necessarily bad, either.

@@AllAboutCatsYT thanks for clarifying! I think I’ll stick with a grain inclusive diet as my new vet recommended. 😊

Our vet also strongly advised including grain in the diet (possibly due to kidney issues) so I've been having the same confusion seeing all the hype about grain-free options. It's also been similarly difficult finding any alternatives to hills science diet (which seems to do fine but it would be nice to see if she prefers any other brands) since almost everything is grain free, especially the high end stuff with well documented ingredient origins.

@@StephenSmith304 my vet sold me hills science diet at our visit. I took a closer look at the bag once I got home and realized I wasn’t too happy with some of the ingredients…I finished the bag cuz I didn’t want to waste it and figured I’d search for a different brand while my cat was eating the hills food. I searched high and low for a high quality grain inclusive food and came up with literally a couple of brands. I settled on “Wellness complete health.” I think wellness is a good mid tier brand and the ingredients seem better than hills ingredients. I really wish some of the higher end brands offered grain inclusive food cuz for me, budget isn’t an issue but they simply don’t offer it unfortunately. I do recommend wellness though as it seems like the better option over hills! I think the whole “grain free” is just marketing

@@mirandaduffy4367 Good to know! I think the hills science wet food might be alright if you only tried the dry option, our cat needs wet food and the hills science diet cans look alright, at least it has way more meat in the top 5 ingredients compared to the dry food. I also found firstmate which looks to be almost entirely salmon and rice with no other fillers but I have yet to get it to try.

I believe she was basically saying common allergies are caused by proteins. Like beef chicken soy etc not that they can’t have allergies to grains

Yes humans shouldn’t eat grains but basically this vet offered expaination as to why they must add them or than substitute sweet potatoes or tapacoica they must be added as a thickener cats are able to put up with that.

They can be triggered by grains, vets just tend to say that it's rare for grains to be an allergy source, as it's more commonly an animal protein that would cause an issue. That is true, but we don't have good data on grain allergies because they are significantly less reported on, as well as less likely to result in a vet visit. So, it's possible the actual occurrence of them is much higher than the data indicates

When metals were in short supply during the world war, we needed to put food in bags and popularized kibble. It's all been downhill for cats since then

The problem this argument is that feeding your cat dead mice is probably not a feasible sustainable petfood model.also the chances are high that they would eventually get toxoplasmosis.chicken is an excellent natural source of taurine and most cats tolerate it and like it.

@@pwood6532 Raw ground mice are available to purchase as petfood from Hare Today and there is also mouse based canned cat food called Mouser. Raw, canned, and fresh cat food can be made from rabbit, quail, game hens, etc. There is absolutely no need for cat food manufacturers to include starches like corn, wheat, soy, etc in cat foods. They can easily replace peas and carrots with more nutritionally dense greens and grasses.

Hi friend, I used to work at a boutique pet food store so I'm going to throw my two cents into the ring. Blue Buffalo makes high quality food, but their brand has a history of food recalls. Personally, I avoid that brand for that reason alone. I am very picky. I use a similar brand that has never had any recalls. I use Nulo but there are lots of other great options. Sometimes it's all about what is available and comfortable for you as the pet parent :)

Any wet food you can get into them is best. Fancy Feast is a good cheap option that most cats will go for (just check the labels, some lines are better than others - classic pate and gourmet naturals pates are both food, and creamy delights is pretty good). For dry food, focus more on the analytical composition than any bag labels to make sure that the carbohydrate content is as low as possible. The diabetic cat should be on a food with under 5-8% carbohydrate. The only dry food I know that fits that criteria is Dr. Elsey's

@@elle7483 thank you for the information! Fancy feast pate is the only food the girls like. I’ve tried Weruva and Reveal, they don’t like them . Seriously the food seems to just be incredibly expensive tiny cans of plain chicken and tuna! I wonder if I could just give them roast chicken (they like that!) Years ago I looked into making my cats food. But all the info said that you had to include a lot of special additives and it was dangerous to their health. But now the commercial trend seems to be limited ingredients or just meat. Reveal’s tuna is just that, tuna.

​@@cebundy The Fancy Feast classic pate is a great option for them to eat! So if they're eating that I'd say stick with it. The biggest thing for cats is to eat a primarily wet food (at least 50% of bodyweight using 1lb = 1oz daily), low-carb, animal-based, complete and balanced diet. 100% wet food is actually what cats need, but if you can't afford it you can use any amount above 50% (the bare minimum) and add as much extra water to the wet food as the cat will tolerate. Avoid fish flavors, as fish may be linked to thyroid problems. BPA is also linked, but I believe Purina cans are BPA free (but the lowest BPA risk is pouched food, all cans have a slight risk). These links are speculative though, so we don't know much about it. Depending on how severe the kidney issues are you might need to check phosphorus levels. Water is the most important thing for kidney issues, but phosphorus is the most important nutrient and you want it to be low, especially if it's being fed in its inorganic source (which is what's in most commercial food). The tricky part is that phosphorus tends to be linked to protein, so sometimes kidney cats need more of the food to be made up of fat instead of protein, which can be difficult to find in today's market. Weruva actually has some of the lowest phosphorus foods, despite being high protein, so it sucks that your cats don't like it The price of the other foods is usually due to more care in the ingredient quality, sourcing, and manufacturing process (Purina can offset this in FF by having other high-carb foods and dry foods be overpriced, but smaller brands can't do that). The meat tends to be raised with more care and is more specific in its role in the formulation (for example, Fancy Feast tends to use things like "meat by-products," which means they can source any organ from any animal for the formula and it'll count under that label - AKA they can use whatever is most easily available on a given day - but Weruva foods will always specify something like "chicken liver" or "beef lung," which means they can *only* use that specific animal part). That also plays into the sourcing of the meat, as the more expensive brands will tend to use more ethically raised meat (which costs more). Of course, all of this is not always the case and every brand has their own reasons (and sometimes things *are* just overpriced), but that's the general market tendency with the meat-only or meat-primary foods You can give them roast chicken as a small portion of their diet, but not too much of it. Since cats naturally eat raw whole prey (fur, blood, organs, bones - all of it), cooking just the muscle meat doesn't have the full nutrient profile. The simplest way to home feed a cat would actually be to give them a varied assortment of euthanized small birds and mice, plus some trace algae. But whole prey is a big jump from commercial cat food. Most people might do a cooked chicken meal, which isn't similar enough to the small prey animals and anything water-soluble gets cooked out of the meat, so therefor you have to add in extra supplements and other organ meats. Raw homecooked food gets closer to whole prey because the nutrients aren't being cooked out and you can get closer to the natural small prey animals but you still have to balance the muscle-organ-bone ratio. And then whole prey would be basically no extra work The danger to cat's health is primarily from people who attempt to feed homemade food without properly researching cat nutrition to understand these nutrients, therefor resulting in deficiencies that cause the cat to get sick. The safest thing to do is work with a certified veterinary nutritionist or experienced feline nutritionist to formulate complete meals. Canned cat food also has to add a bunch of supplements if they don't use enough muscle meat, organ meats, and bone (that's what all the extra ingredients on the label are). There's also a lot of talk about potential bacterial contamination in raw food, but cats are extremely efficient at processing raw meat (due to the short digestive tract) and don't tend to actually get sick. And where you source the meat makes a big difference in the risk of contamination (is it just from the grocery store? a butcher? is it expected to be fed raw or cooked by the person selling it?). The concern there is more to the humans in the house handling the meat and feces of the cat, but practicing proper hygiene procedures (which people should be doing with any food, especially meat!) drastically reduce that risk. Feline-Nutrition, CatInfo, and BalanceIT are websites run by qualified professionals experienced homemade diets, if you want more information The biggest takeaway is stick to low-carb wet food and do a lot of research into nutrition and food safety if you're thinking about homemade

Interesting question and conversation! I'm not sure what sort of infections you're thinking of, but they won't get infections simply from lying on cold ground. Of course, any open wounds could get infected if they're contacting dirt, but cold ground alone won't cause infection.

In my opinion, I think grain free wet cat food is definitely better than cat food full of grains. Unlike dry food, the carbs don't make up for the food. Cats, no matter how you look at it, are obligate carnivores so the added grains and vegetables aren't necessary. If anyone reading this comment is feeding their cat wet food with grains and it's working well for them and it always has been, good for you. Stick to it since cats can become picky. I'm not vet this is just based off the research I have done

Grain-free wet food is significantly more likely to be low-carb, so it's usually good. They can still add other vegetables or starches if they want (so check the label to see if it's like 2% as a thickner or 20%), but wet food doesn't have to be bound with carbs like kibble does so they're already usually lower carb in the first place. Wet food is more species-appropriate by default just due to the water content, but the ability to have higher meat content and no actual requirement for carbohydrates in the formula bolsters that even more

When your hungry and starving you will eat anything thrown at you regardless if it’s good for you or not. Similar to getting a taste for something new, whether it’s good for you or not like when kids first get introduced to candy. Many people can eat junk food their whole life and not gain a pound or have health issues, but it’s not common for the majority. Like humans, all animals are different but it’s the majority that one considers. Not everyone/animal is as lucky. Playing it safe is better than not is the point I guess. :)

@@lsehyeah, but what I meant, is we have gone from the cats are animals you feed them your left overs to the cats can't digest this, can't digest that, like they are very delicate beings. always saying they eat worse because they don't eat like wild cats, when domestics cats now a days have an average life estimate of 18 years, and wild cats live a lot less, pet nutrition is still on dippers, so we should feed our pets the best we can and not obsess about it, feeling we are bad pet owners for giving them food that is not perfect.

@@ailidh-Bcn I agree. My cats eat PurinaOne with the dried meat bits in with kibble because they refused to eat anything else. I’ve tried to get them back on taste of the wild but they do not eat it. The ate it when they were kittens but since they had a sample of the Purina one they have not gone back. Lol I would like them to go back to taste of the wild but it’s never going to happen.

Our vet told us at our first kitten appointment that our 7m old kitten’s gums were red indicating a gum disease (forget the name) and wanted us to do X-rays and and teeth cleaning. I took her considering but as we left I told my hubby let’s go get toothpaste/toothbrush (which I was already planning to do but hadn’t yet) and I got the greenie dental treats, a bunch of chew toys (all recommendations from vet ortho website), etc. On her next check up our vet says oh her gums look better, maybe she was just teething 🤦‍♀️😤 … I said to my husband as we left… “excuse me? Just teething!? We went from a disease to teething!?” She also wasn’t happy we were on a grain-free diet and highly encouraged us to buy their food as it’s the best- Purina, Royal Canin, Hill’s (oh and that she should only be on a dry food diet, wet wasn’t needed). This coming from a highly recommended vet hospital by the community. Anyways, my rant took a detour lmao… my point was we have been brushing her teeth to avoid any cleaning as I don’t want to put her under for any procedures that we don’t really need to do. Have you tried brushing your cats teeth and doing dental treats!? I read that if the kibble isn’t big enough to force them to chew it won’t be beneficial as cats don’t tend to chew their food. The rip (if needed) & swallow. From my understanding most dental kibble is too small so they don’t chew. The greenies are big enough that our cat has to chew.

@@lseh Good foods, for cleaning a cat's teeth are uncooked chicken or turkey gizzards or necks. Small, uncooked chicken bones, such as a wing. There is a product called Silvervines. All are better than dry cat food. Hills website says that corn is good for cats. Absolutely not. Cats can't process corn. Sounds like you are doing right by your cat

If it's one of the clinical dental kibbles, chances are it will, because they have to be coated in a plaque reducing agent that's approved by the VOCH. That's also what stops the carbohydrate plaque from forming that would happen with any other kibble (since cats lack amylase to break it down in their mouths). The nutrition of those foods are still poor for cats, they're just basically also coated in toothpaste The best balance of proper nutrition and teeth cleaning is probably from giving the cat a little of the kibble 15-30 minutes after each meal The best dental cleaning, however, is teeth brushing with a VOCH approved toothpaste. If your cat will tolerate that, it's the best solution (and what the VOCH gives as the 'gold standard')

@@lseh oh wow!! I took my 7 month old kitten to the vet a few days ago and was told THE EXACT SAME THING! I.e., that I should be feeding one of the “top 3” brands, either Purina, Hills Science or Royal Canin, and that I should be feeding Kibble, not wet, as “Wet Food promotes obesity.” WHAT????? Are these vets being paid by the “Big 3” brands???

@@oliveoil4380 it’s frustrating. We’ve stuck with them for a year and I still don’t like going even though we have seen a few different vets there. Thinking of switching for her next appointment.

The legumes may be inhibiting taurine absorption. Taurine is not considered an essential nutrient for dogs (because they are opportunistic carnivores, capable of synthesizing it) so the amount in the food wasn’t enough to offset the legume issue. Over 90% of the foods with a DCM correlation in the investigation had high quantities of legumes Cats can only get taurine directly from their food and AAFCO actually didn’t have accurate taurine amounts back in the 80s, which caused massive cat deaths, after which taurine was considered much more important by food manufacturers (and the minimum amount increased by AAFCO). Since cats aren’t synthesizing taurine themselves and have more of it in their food blends, that’s probably a large part of why the DCM issue has not been seen in cats

You're welcome. 😻