Cats don't need carbohydrates, but all-meat diet would be bad
By Dr. Shawn Messonnier
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Q: I've read that cats don't really need carbohydrates in their diets. Yet, all the foods I've looked at have carbs in them, and some of the pet foods have a lot of carbs. Why is this? Is it OK to just feed my cat meat?
A: You're absolutely right. Unlike people and dogs, cats are true carnivores. They do not have a specific requirement for carbohydrates in their diets. They must, however, have large amounts of animal protein in the diet or they can suffer a number of fatal problems, such as heart disease and liver failure.
Carbohydrates are included in pet foods as an inexpensive source of energy. Digested carbs are used to provide fuel (blood glucose) for people and pets; if the energy is not needed immediately, then the carbs are stored as glycogen in the muscle or liver to be used later.
Dry food must contain more carbohydrates than canned food, because carbs help when processing it into pellets.
While dogs and people can use protein for energy, this is less efficient. But cats have evolved to use protein as their main source of energy. Even though your cat needs a lot of meat to obtain the amount of protein that he requires, feeding only meat is a bad idea.
Meat, as the sole food, is too low in calcium and other vitamins and minerals.
However, the ideal food for cats is based upon animal protein as long as it contains adequate amounts of fats, vitamins and minerals. Even though cats don't really need carbohydrates in their diet, I don't think feeding dry food is harmful to most cats as long as it's a natural diet.
Some of my holistic colleagues do, in fact, only recommend wet or canned food. I'm not quite that stringent.
However, there are some cats that I believe should probably not eat dry food as their sole diet. Cats with kidney disease, chronic bladder disease, diabetes, cancer, and heart and liver disease do better when eating a wet or canned food diet. Work with your veterinarian to determine what food is best.
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