An Open Letter to Veterinary Professionals
Have you ever seen a barn cat barbecue and dehydrate its mouse dinner and top it off with a dessert of corn gluten meal soufflé? Or heard of a cat that went hunting for rice grains or oatmeal for breakfast? No? It would be illogical to feed an obligate carnivore a steady diet of meat-flavored cereal, right? Then why are we continuing to feed cats like they're herbivores? Hopefully, many of you read the "Timely Topics in Nutrition" article in the December 1st 2002 Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) titled
"The Carnivore Connection to Nutrition in Cats". After reading this, I wonder why anyone advocates feeding grain-packed commercially prepared dry food to a cat.
This lovely article details scientifically what those of us who have been feeding cats what Mother Nature intended for years already deduced from plain common sense: that cats are obligate (true) carnivores and that their metabolic distinctions mean that there are foods that support health and other foods that don't. If you do nothing else besides read this far into this letter, please go read that article. I'll wager that if logic prevails, you will never again prescribe or condone feeding a heavily grain-based dry food diet to your feline patients.
Every veterinarian sees
obese cats, cats in kidney failure, cats with painful cystitis, bladder stones, inflammatory bowel disease
(IBD),
diabetes, and cats with hepatic lipidosis. I submit to you that after you read that JAVMA article, you will see a connection between how we are feeding obligate carnivores and many of the diseases that afflict them.
How many times have you heard your clients say, "But Doctor, I only feed Fluffy a very small amount of the feline-maintenance light dry food and she's still fat!"? I would venture a guess that the inappropriately high carbohydrate level in these "light" foods is the main culprit.
"We have to stop feeding so many grains to carnivores. It's making them sick."
I'd like to see better nutritional counseling of clients by veterinarians. At the very least, their clients would be well served by having their vets counsel their clients to feed a high quality meat-based, high moisture content canned food instead of a carbohydrate-laden, low moisture content dry food. But this will require you to educate your clients on basic label reading. It would be terrific if, as a standard part of every first visit to a veterinarian, the doctor could give their client an easy-to-understand tutorial, accompanied perhaps with a
handout to take home, about the practical considerations related to the fact that their cat is a carnivore. And then teach them what to look for on the label in order to seek out, at a minimum, a food that is not dry, contains high-quality meat as a first ingredient, and is not front-loaded with grains, fillers or byproducts. The bulk of commercial cat foods out there today - most especially those that market heavily to veterinary offices - are crammed with carbohydrate-dense fillers that have no place in a proper diet for an obligate carnivore. We simply have to stop feeding so many grains to carnivores. It's making them sick.