Your Thoughts On Cat Food Allergy or Intolerance Test Kits

[artsycatmama]

I was wondering if any of you have tried using a cat food allergy or intorence test kit that uses hair and saliva such as:

Nutriscan ($300)
http://www.nutriscan.org

or

Glcier Peak Holistics ($85)
http://www.glacierpeakholistics.com/alternative-allergy-testing-for-dogs.html


My 3 month old kitten does not have a severe allergy (no vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, severe health issues, etc) however she does have periodic soft stools that get on her long hair on the back of her legs, occasional gas and/or stinky poo, and some occational itching on her head. I'm mainly concerned about the soft stools because the butt baths are becoming a pain! I have even had the hair back there shaved a bit. I think she squats too low and the poo when soft just sticks to her fur.

I feed her a combination of dry and wet (both paté and chunky) in a variety of flavors in an effort to raise a non finicky adult cat. I try to buy quality foods (Orijen dry kitten, Earthborn Holistic wet chunky, and Nulo wet paté) so I don't think her symptoms are due to low quality ingredients in her food. However, there are so many different ingredients in her food (even in a single bag/can) that I have no clue whether or not she has an intolernce and if she does, what it/they might be. Just thinking a relatively inexpensive allergy test could maybe shed some light and save a lot of time and money in my trial and error efforts.

Any advice or experience with a testing kit like the ones above would be much appreciated!

 

[missmimz]

Seems like a waste of money, to me. Even the tests the vet's do for allergies aren't that accurate. The best way to rule out a food allergy is to feed the purest food you can with little to no fillers, ideally this is raw or homecooked. You're not feeding bad food, but the foods you're feeding have a lot of things in them, so there are lots of things that could be causing the soft stool. You'd be better off putting that money towards really high quality canned food like Feline Naturals, or Ziwipeak, or raw, like Rad Cat. 

 

[artsycatmama]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and your advice! I haven't tried the foods you suggested. I have been trying to only feed foods that are specifically labeled for kittens. It's a good suggestion that the money would be better spent on higher quality foods. If she had a serious allergy I would definitely spend the extra money and take the time and to do an elimination diet with single ingredient foods. I was just curious if anyone had success with a food allergy test kit and if they thought it was worth it. Maybe with a more serious allergy situation it would be if they were accurate. I hadn't heard that even the tests done by vets aren't accurate. I am assuming you are referring to a blood test.

 

[missmimz]

Thanks for taking the time to reply and your advice! I haven't tried the foods you suggested. I have been trying to only feed foods that are specifically labeled for kittens. It's a good suggestion that the money would be better spent on higher quality foods. If she had a serious allergy I would definitely spend the extra money and take the time and to do an elimination diet with single ingredient foods. I was just curious if anyone had success with a food allergy test kit and if they thought it was worth it. Maybe with a more serious allergy situation it would be if they were accurate. I hadn't heard that even the tests done by vets aren't accurate. I am assuming you are referring to a blood test.

Theses tests, unfortunately, aren't very accurate in cats. Yes you can do testing in your vet's office for both food and environmental allergies, but the food tests in particular are very low in accuracy. There are no studies that suggest these tests are accurate at all. Food allergies are best ruled out with high quality diets.