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Cornell or not, I don't agree with that assessment. A healthy cat, even a long-haired cat, should be able to pass hair from stomach into intestines and from there into the stool. I also think a properly fed cat (species-appropriate balanced and complete raw food) will shed less meaning less hair to ingest. My Krista's coat rarely shed when she was on Rad Cat. Since then she's rejected every attempt to get her on homemade and she's developed an egg intolerance or allergy (or maybe had it all along and I was dealing with bigger symptoms first?) so most commercial options are off the menu even if I find them in proteins she can have. Fortunately, since I've been avoiding her triggers including (ironically) the egg yolk powder I was giving her previously, even though she still sheds a fair amount, the only time she brings up a hairball now is if we go too long between meals. My guess is that she always has a small amount of hair in the stomach from grooming in between meals, and that regular meals help flush this through. When she goes too long between meals, rather than waiting for food to help it flush through, she gets impatient (or acid stomach or...) and brings it up instead. When I stick to her meal schedule and avoid her allergens, we can go months now between hairballs. I also found that if her diet was too high in fat (like when I added salmon oil to her food), it could make it easier for the hairballs to form impassable clumps. Adding lecithin would help with this if my cat wasn't sensitive to egg. Now that I have been giving her Assisi Loop treatments for arthritis rather than relying on salmon oil, those hairballs have gone away too.A Hairy Dilemma
Hairballs are normal. What isn't normal is hairballs with other symptoms (lethargic or refusing to eat for example). My Mom's cats gets hairballs around this time of year because he grooms both himself and my cat frequently. I give him gel to help move things along but it still happens. Yes, pay attention so you learn normal habits. But hairballs are normal.