Aafco...calories/nutrition And Feeding Requirements...

[MissMolly08]

I don't know why this randomly crossed my mind today but I'm wondering... I know foods that are nutritionally complete generally say they meet AAFCO standards and such but I also know that most people say the recommendations for feeding amounts on cans/bags of food are usually a gross overestimate and tend to feed much less (myself included because my cat became overweight on the "Recommended" amount).

So, it got me thinking... if the AAFCO says a food must have X amount of say..Taurine. Well isn't the AAFCO and the food manufacturer basing that off assuming that cat will eat Y amount of food per lb of weight or whatever?

I'm not sure if that is making any sense...

I just wonder if a food says that a 10lb cat need to eat 3 cans a day and based on calorie calculations, that cat really only needs 1 can a day.... are they still getting all of the nutrients in the right amounts from only 1 can?

 

[Merlin77]

This is an excellent question.. not sure if I even know the answer. I think that there should be enough nutrients, technically speaking. Otherwise it wouldn't be safe. But maybe, this is why you see so many cats with health issues (coat quality, weight gain/loss); the nutrients aren't correct.


Of course, I am just hypothesizing here.

 

[Ardina]

Huh, that is a really good question. I'm throwing out a guess that they know that cats may eat less and thus grossly oversupplement. Over in the raw and homemade food forum, we often discuss supplementation and whether the commonly followed recipes meet the AAFCO standard. I think the consensus is that it may in fact be fine to supplement less than the standard because raw, unprocessed meat contains a lot more nutrients that aren't degraded like in canned/dry food. I suspect AAFCO requires oversupplementation because they don't regulate how processed the actual meat (or "meat substitute" in low quality foods) is. So to make sure that there's sufficient taurine, vitamins, etc., they just make the requirement excessive.

Edited to add: I personally supplement to the AAFCO standard in my homemade raw food anyways, just in case.