All phosphates make my cats sick & almost all cat foods have them.

[Lucky&KittenBear]

Tummy upset? Beware of phosphates in cat food.
It turns out that any food with tricalcium phosphate, dicalcium phosphate, dipotassium phosphate, or L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate or other phosphates makes my cats ill. My 16 year old male reacts with loose stools and vomiting and loss of appetite after just one meal with these additives. My 10 year old cat loses his appetite and throws up after having a few meals with it.

They used to do better with it (used to feed Lotus just juicy venison which has phosphates) but the cats' reaction to it has gotten worse over time.

Unfortunately even the priciest "human grade" and "natural" cat foods have these ingredients. I think they are mainly using it for texture, but also for phosphorus. As some other posts mentioned it is not necessarily a beneficial source of phosphorus either.

I now believe that it is making a lot of cats sick.

I have given up on all the canned cat foods and dry foods except for Koha rabbit pate, feline natural lamb and chicken (many of the other feline natural flavors do include phosphates), and tiki cat sardine and mackerel, and sardines in calamari consomme. I have used wellness core, turkey, chicken, and chicken liver smooth pate (not the "indoor" version or kitten version) as the main food for one cat. But Wellness just changed the for that! It now has tricalcium phosphate. I don't know why all these pet food companies are adding phosphates. Oh, and I just started using Kiwi kitchen beef and Ziwi peak venison.

When I search "side effects of tricalcium phosphate" I find that it causes nausea, diarrhea and other digestive problems. And some of the "di-...phosphates" have even worse side effects listed, and these may also be contributing to kidney issues. I don't know how to do anything about this. I remember the uproar over carrageenan and then all the companies suddenly became "carrageenan free". I have written to a couple of companies, but it doesn't go anywhere. Any thoughts?

p.s. One of my cats now reacts to chicken (sneezing, etc) so that limits the choices as well.

 

[GenCat]

I have one sensitive tummy boy that I switched to raw + meat completer because he vomits quite often with even “high quality” canned foods. In his case it’s not the phosphates causing the issues though since the meat completer also uses them, but there are options that don’t so that’s something to look into.

It is interesting to me that both your cats seem to have this reaction, I feel like it’s kind of rare for more than one cat to have the same sensitivity to something in so many different cat foods. Might be worth speaking with a ACVN certified nutritionist to see if you can narrow down what exactly the issue is.