Grain-free not so good?

[galabean]

Hi guys, so I made a new account and I would like to get some opinions about cat nutrition now that is 2019, almost 2020! When we got our firstborn in 2015 - I had no clue about cat nutrition. Growing up my parents always fed our family cats meow mix, and it made them puke all the time, terrible coats, etc. My vet recommended a grain-free diet when we got Gala and explained that corn is bad for cats and they can't digest it properly because cats don't eat plants they eat meat. Makes sense, so I was convinced and we've gone through brands over the years but I've always stuck with grain-free over the years. In 2017 we adopted our second cat and I stuck with the same diet because I assumed that what I was told was true.

Flash forward to today and one of my friends shares this picture that shows dialated cardiomyopathy cases from dog food brands that are "grain-free". Now we don't have dogs but Natural Balance was on the lower end of the list, and that is the brand of cat food we feed our cats right now. So I reached out to her and she explained how cats aren't carnivores anymore, they've been bred down to household omnivores and that they need grains to get proper nutrition. I look it up for the first time in 4 years again and now there's no research showing that corn doesn't affect cats like we think it does, that 56% of pet parents aren't informed about it, etc. I was like "what?!?!" And that foods that are grain-free have to replace those grains with tapioca, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, lentils, etc which are high and carbs and can lead to kidney problems? I honestly had no idea and now I am wondering what a good high quality cat food truly is, and if anyone can help me out. She says that vets recommend Purina One, Royal Cabin, Hills Science Diet and Eukenuba? What do you guys think and for those who aren't on a grain-free diet and already knew this what are you feeding your cats?

 

[galabean]

Oops *new research, not no research. Typo!!

 

[KarenKat]

I feed grain free cat food after doing a ton of research the last few years. I also avoid peas, potatoes, and other starches for the same reasons your friend mentioned about carbs.

As for cats being omnivores, I’ve never heard that before. I’ve heard that about dogs, and also the grain-free being bad for dogs there is a lot of recent studies that do show a correlation. However nothin shows any correlation for cats from what I’ve seen.

Anecdotally, our old IBD kitty Trin was eating Purina dry food Indoor Cat Chow (mostly corn) and he ballooned to 18 lbs. We switched to Natural Balance LID Green Pea and Chicken (more meat, grain free but with potatoes) and suddenly he became more active, stopped binge eating and became playful. Even free feeding he lost 3 lbs naturally over 3 years. For him I think the corn and low meat protein really affected him negatively.

When I look for food, I go for wet food, high meat protein, free of grain/potato/peas, and no fillers, fruits or vegetables. I think it’s as healthy as we can get with commercial foods. I personally don’t like Hills, Purina or Science diet because of the fillers. I like Rawz, Fromm, Life’s Abundance, Tiki Cat, Caru ... they are more expensive but I think it’s worth it.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

~ From my learning I highly doubt there actually is "good high quality cat food " unless we make our own. However there is better and worse. I read ingredients and stay with big brand names as they produce & sell large volume, are inspected more often and have less problems with quality control.
Dry food in general is not so good for kitty. The ones with meat/poultry as first ingredients are best. I no longer use grain-free unless it's on sale cheap.
Welcome to The CatSite

 

[galabean]

I feed grain free cat food after doing a ton of research the last few years. I also avoid peas, potatoes, and other starches for the same reasons your friend mentioned about carbs.

As for cats being omnivores, I’ve never heard that before. I’ve heard that about dogs, and also the grain-free being bad for dogs there is a lot of recent studies that do show a correlation. However nothin shows any correlation for cats from what I’ve seen.

Anecdotally, our old IBD kitty Trin was eating Purina dry food Indoor Cat Chow (mostly corn) and he ballooned to 18 lbs. We switched to Natural Balance LID Green Pea and Chicken (more meat, grain free but with potatoes) and suddenly he became more active, stopped binge eating and became playful. Even free feeding he lost 3 lbs naturally over 3 years. For him I think the corn and low meat protein really affected him negatively.

When I look for food, I go for wet food, high meat protein, free of grain/potato/peas, and no fillers, fruits or vegetables. I think it’s as healthy as we can get with commercial foods. I personally don’t like Hills, Purina or Science diet because of the fillers. I like Rawz, Fromm, Life’s Abundance, Tiki Cat, Caru ... they are more expensive but I think it’s worth it.

Yeah I'm kind of on the fence about what she was telling me because I fed the bland diet of hills when one of my cats was having tummy problems for less than a month and I hated the ingredients and it was so expensive. I feel like vets recommend the most expensive brands but the ingredients are terrible. We have fed many different grain free over the years and the only problems I've had were with taste of the wild and blue buffalo but right now we are on the natural balance limited ingredient diet in the tuna flavor and I'll have to check the ingredients but they really like it, their coats got much softer (one of my cats had a problem with knots on her behind and those went away) and I just really liked that they liked it. We were feeding wellness core right before that one but they stopped selling the protein we liked (turkey; I read that cats can get allergic to chicken and it didn't have chicken in it and I didn't wanna switch them to the chicken flavor and honestly they were burning through the bags really fast) and it was a bit pricey so we switched...

Anyway, I always read that corn was bad and that's why I came here first to ask around because when she shared that photo I knew it was referring to dogs so I knew that things can be different ingredients and dogs and cats are obviously different but seeing the brand we are on right now I was like uh oh...

 

[galabean]

~ From my learning I highly doubt there actually is "good high quality cat food " unless we make our own. However there is better and worse. I read ingredients and stay with big brand names as they produce & sell large volume, are inspected more often and have less problems with quality control.
Dry food in general is not so good for kitty. The ones with meat/poultry as first ingredients are best. I no longer use grain-free unless it's on sale cheap.
Welcome to The CatSite

Yes! I didn't mention but I do wet food as well, not as much as I should because I have a terrible memory and they always like the wet food when it's fresh open vs. in the fridge so I'm trying to figure out how to serve it soft again? Any tips is helpful on that as well!!

 

[Kieka]

Changes like nutritional needs changing from obligated carnivores to omnivores take thousands if not millions of years. Cats have only really been household pets for the last 300-400 years. Sure, they've been around humans for longer and have changed to smaller versions of the original wild relatives in the middle east. But in their domestication history they traditionally live along side humans and work for their food by hunting pests. A good portion of cats still exist as feral on the outskirts of human habitation and not in homes. Just because we don't see doesn't mean they dont exit. Cats are very much still obligated carnivores as evidenced by their bodies lack of amino acid production (like taurine), lack of production of specific vitamons they get from a meat diet, their bodies get glucose from protein, their digestive system can't break down vegetable matter and they can't process oils that herbivores or omnivores can.

There are a whole host of core biological reasons cats are carnivores and not omnivores. Maybe in a few thousand years and if the majority of cats become pets they will. But we are not there yet.

 

[Jem]

This is just my personal opinion...

First, "grain free" is a marketing gimmick, they are simply replacing the corn and grains with other starches and carbs. And some of them like peas and potatoes, cats can be sensitive to, so it's dammed if you do and dammed if you don't. I can't quote the exact brands, as I don't remember, but there were sometimes that I would be looking at foods and the "grain free", had peas as the second ingredient, where as the non grain free only had their grains listed at three or four. How is that any better? So not saying that grain free is bad in general, but you still have to look at the ingredients.

Corn is not good for cats, that holds true, and honestly it's not that great for humans ether, but that's a different topic.

Cats do much better on all animal/meat or at least mostly animal/meat foods, and wet foods in general, are better due to moisture content. Wet foods tend to also have less carbs and fillers.

I don't focus on the "grain free" aspect for my cat's food, so much as I look for foods that are high animal protein and low carb.

As for warming and softening wet food from the fridge. I let mine come to room temperature and mix in a bit of hot water (a teaspoon or so) to it to make it soft and warmer. Works for my kitties! You can also set the opened container in a bowl of warm water for a bit until the food warms, then serve.

 

[galabean]

Changes like nutritional needs changing from obligated carnivores to omnivores take thousands if not millions of years. Cats have only really been household pets for the last 300-400 years. Sure, they've been around humans for longer and have changed to smaller versions of the original wild relatives in the middle east. But in their domestication history they traditionally live along side humans and work for their food by hunting pests. A good portion of cats still exist as feral on the outskirts of human habitation and not in homes. Just because we don't see doesn't mean they dont exit. Cats are very much still obligated carnivores as evidenced by their bodies lack of amino acid production (like taurine), lack of production of specific vitamons they get from a meat diet, their bodies get glucose from protein, their digestive system can't break down vegetable matter and they can process oils that herbivores or omnivores can.

There are a whole host of core biological reasons cats are carnivores and not omnivores. Maybe in a few thousand years and if the majority of cats become pets they will.

That's very true, see I'm just really confused on what she was saying because like I said I've done plenty of research and I've always seen that grain-free is the way to go. I can see people being scammed into buying the more expensive brands thinking it's better quality when they can get the same good quality for less, but I've never heard someone try to convince me that grain-free is bad. I'm sure for some cats it is but for my cats it seems great. And my family cats ate meow mix for 8 years and when I got my first cat I told my dad he can't be feeding her that garbage and they became really active but one of them got really sick for unrelated problems, maybe due to the meow mix for years? And I can't recall, I'll have to call my father and ask but I think she was on blue buffalo and I've read that healthy cats have died on that food as well, but anyways, I totally see what you're saying.

 

[Kieka]

That's very true, see I'm just really confused on what she was saying because like I said I've done plenty of research and I've always seen that grain-free is the way to go. I can see people being scammed into buying the more expensive brands thinking it's better quality when they can get the same good quality for less, but I've never heard someone try to convince me that grain-free is bad. I'm sure for some cats it is but for my cats it seems great. And my family cats ate meow mix for 8 years and when I got my first cat I told my dad he can't be feeding her that garbage and they became really active but one of them got really sick for unrelated problems, maybe due to the meow mix for years? And I can't recall, I'll have to call my father and ask but I think she was on blue buffalo and I've read that healthy cats have died on that food as well, but anyways, I totally see what you're saying.

Here's the thing, they dont have answers in the increased frequency of heart problems in primarily large breed dogs that are already breed inclined towards heart problems. They do know that a common correlation is that the dogs are fed grain free foods and primarily boutique type foods. So is the problem that the food is grain free or is the problem that the food is loaded with peas, potatoes, pea protein as alternatives to grains OR the gobs of vegetables they add to make it look more appealing to humans OR the higher levels of taurine they've added (which for cats would be a non issue since they only get it from food and pee out the excess while dogs also produce it in their bodies).

There is not an answer. What we do know is that grain heavy foods can cause diabetes and weight retention in the midsection. Peas and potatoes are an unknown from what I've read so far but maybe that's the culprit. But really the discussion of food should be separated when talking about dogs and cats. They have different needs and different digestive systems. Vets and the food industry tend to group them together because they just always have. There isn't a whole lot of research out there on pet food and even less on cat food. It's only the last 20-40 years that you see studies looking specifically at dogs and cats as separate. When you hear people talk about grain free being bad it is just in relation to dogs and it's a general statement. We dont know specifically why but large breed dogs eating grain free diets tend to have a higher frequency of heart problems; that's it. The FDA is narrowing it down and the list is based on that but it's not a done story.

When we are talking about cats. Grain free is a good label to help narrow down the best food. You should still want to limit plant matter because they just aren't designed for it. Pea protein on a label will raise the protein in the way we calculate it but cats can't use plant based protein as well as meat based. We dont know what impact peas and potatoes have on cats systems either but it might not be any better than corn and wheat. We do know cats evolved as a top ambush predator and have become obligated carnivores as a result. We do know that the more meat in their diet the better. We do know that they need high protein, moderate fat and low carb. Grain free labels on wet food can narrow down the search for a food with minimal carbs. On dry food it tends to not be as helpful, I look for limited ingredient labeling personally because those will usually have less fillers but ideally you want a low carb. The only two low carb drys I know off the top of my head are Dr Elseys and Young Again; a lot of our members do the Dr Elseys.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

~ I have yet to find a dry food that is primarily meat & poultry. There was a brand that is no longer - it contained meat, poultry, and other ingredients like bone meal, brewers yeast, fish oil, oats, etc.
I feed about 30% dry. My cats seem to like it too much ! I have to watch it. Sometimes I skip a few days and feed extra wet. Avoids many problems ...

 

[daftcat75]

Yes! I didn't mention but I do wet food as well, not as much as I should because I have a terrible memory and they always like the wet food when it's fresh open vs. in the fridge so I'm trying to figure out how to serve it soft again? Any tips is helpful on that as well!!

You can put the leftover portion from the fridge into a baggie and warm it under luke warm water to reheat it without destroying nutrients, evaporating moisture, or markedly changing the texture like the microwave would do.

 

[LTS3]

There are some TCS threads that discuss grain free diets causing heart issues in dogs if you want to read up on the issue more:

Fda: 16 Dog-food Brands With Potential Link To Heart Disease - Could This Apply To Our Kitties Too?

While the article refers to dogs and a specific type of heart issue, this has been a hot topic for a long time among cat caretakers too. Many of the vets I've spoken with don't advocate grain-free diets unless the cat has a proven allergy towards it. FYI My kitties eat wet grain-free. One has...

thecatsite.com

Beg Diets & Dcm

Some of you may know that the FDA is investigating links between boutique, exotic, and grain-free diets and dilated cardiomyopathy, particularly in dogs. It's not so much the fact that the diets contain exotic proteins or that they have no grains... it's more about the fact that many of these...

thecatsite.com

Worried Sick That I May Be Killing My Cats

It has been all over the news this morning about an FDA warning that links certain "high-end" grain-free dry foods to heart disease in dogs--specifically ones that contain ingredients like potatoes, peas, and lentils. Granted, this warning only applies to dogs as of now, but it does worry me...

thecatsite.com

There are links in the above threads to reputable veterinary web sites and others with more information.

 

[Kieka]

I was looking around for newer explanations of what is happening on the grain free and this one stood out, Taurine, Dog Food, and Heart Disease in Dogs. Now it is from a pet food company/store so it could be biased but they present a rather interesting summary of what's happening.

This one from a dog journal, Diet, Dogs, and DCM - Whole Dog Journal, also is a good summary level of everything from more recently.

The bottom line that I keep seeing though is right now this is considered a dog centric item.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

~ Here is something from a popular pet food company :
Corn Ingredients and Their Use in IAMS Cat Foods

 

[Azazel]

To sum it up:

Cats are 100% without a doubt obligate carnivores. They shouldn’t be eating corn, rice, or wheat based foods and they also shouldn’t be eating grain-free legume or potato based foods.

 

[lisahe]

To sum it up:

Cats are 100% without a doubt obligate carnivores. They shouldn’t be eating corn, rice, or wheat based foods and they also shouldn’t be eating grain-free legume or potato based foods.

Exactly. On a practical level, this means I look for grain-free and then also make sure the food is low-carb, without ingredients like potatoes, peas, or other legumes. This is simply because that is what cats are built to eat. (And one of our cats gets barfy and gassy if she eats potato! Which, as our vet says, just shouldn't be in cat food to begin with.)

Beyond that, though, some of the FDA information on heart disease and pet food seemed to be implicating potatoes and legumes. Yet another reason to avoid them.

There are lots of good wet foods to choose from that are grain-free and lack carby vegetable matter more generally, starting with Fancy Feast Classics, right at the grocery store, to Rawz, which is more expensive and available at independent stores. There is also plenty in between!

 

[kittenmittens84]

Potatoes, peas, and legumes definitely do give some cats digestive problems, so if your cat is having poop issues that could be the culprit!

 

[lisahe]

Potatoes, peas, and legumes definitely do give some cats digestive problems, so if your cat is having poop issues that could be the culprit!

Indeed! I know that others on the site have mentioned their cats having symptoms similar to Edwina's from foods with potato. And there have been others who have noticed soft stools, for example, when their cats eat foods with legumes. None of those ingredients are part of a cat's natural diet to begin with.

 

[jen]

I didn't read through all the comments because it is late and I am tired.

But I want to point out that the big issue that there is with "grain free" is that it means squat for cats. Cats are obligate carnivores. They need meat/protein, followed by fats, and carbs in very minimal percentage. The issue is carbs not necessarily grains. When they take out the grains (which are made up of carbs, which turn to sugars in the body, just like in people) they are just replacing it with peas, potatoes, legumes, etc which are all things cats do not need (other forms of carbs/sugars). Bottom line is IT IS ALL CARBS it doesn't matter what you call it.

Too much sugar leads to obesity, diabetes and organ failure. These carbs are heavily found in dry food but also in canned food and "grain free" food.

You really need to do your research when you look for low carb cat foods because it isn't readily advertised.