We Are Feeding Cats Too Many Carbohydrates

Note:  I have stopped using the term “grain-free” since it has become somewhat meaningless.  Many companies (e.g., Blue Buffalo) tout that their products are “grain free” but then they just load up the food with high carbohydrate ingredients like potatoes and peas which are not grains but still contribute a significant carb load (and plant-based protein) to the food.  The “grain-free” descriptive has become very deceptive and misleading.

In their natural setting, cats—whose unique biology makes them true carnivores–would not consume the high level of carbohydrates (grains, potatoes, peas, etc.) that are in the dry foods (and some canned foods) that we routinely feed them. You would never see a wild cat chasing down a herd of biscuits running across the plains of Africa or dehydrating her mouse and topping it off with corn meal.

In the wild, your cat would be eating a high protein, high-moisture, meat/organ-based diet, with a moderate level of fat and with only  approximately 1-2 percent of her diet consisting of carbohydrates. The average dry food contains 35-50 percent carbohydrate calories.  Some of the cheaper dry foods contain even higher levels.

This is NOT the diet that Mother Nature intended for your cat to eat.

Many canned foods, on the other hand, contain approximately less than 10 percent carbohydrates.

Please note that not all canned foods are suitably low in carbohydrates.  For instance, most of the Hill’s Science Diet (over-the-counter) and the Hill’s ‘prescription’ diets are very high in carbohydrates and are not foods that I would ever choose to feed.

Cats have a physiological decrease in the ability to utilize carbohydrates due to the lack of specific enzymatic pathways that are present in other mammals, and they lack a salivary enzyme called amylase.

Cats have no dietary need for carbohydrates and, more worrisome is the fact that a diet that is high in carbohydrates can be detrimental to their health as explained below.

With this in mind, it is as illogical to feed a carnivore a steady diet of meat-flavored cereals as it would be to feed meat to a vegetarian like a horse or a cow, right?  

So why are we continuing to feed our carnivores like herbivores? 

Why are we feeding such a species-inappropriate diet?  

The answers are simple.  

Grains/potatoes are cheap.  

Dry food is convenient.  

Affordability and convenience sells. 

However, is a carbohydrate-laden, plant-based, water-depleted dry food the best diet for our cats?  Absolutely not.

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