http://endocrinevet.blogspot.com/2011/1 ... older.html[/url]
a high carb diet leads to insulin resistance in cats which leads to diabetes, this has been proven
A vegan cat food has to rely on high carb veggies and grains because the highest protein only comes from high carb veggies and grains.
I [s:3vp30shb]only[/s:3vp30shb] feed canned food, kibble has been shown to cause a lot of health problems for cats (ETA my old girl does get some small amnt of "grain free" kibble as a treat)
http://www.catinfo.org/
"Proteins derived from animal tissues have a complete amino acid profile. (Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. Think of them as pieces of a puzzle.) Plant-based proteins do not contain the full complement (puzzle pieces) of the critical amino acids required by an obligate carnivore. The quality and composition of a protein (are all of the puzzle pieces present?) is also referred to as its biological value.
Humans and dogs can take the pieces of the puzzle in the plant protein and, from those, make the missing pieces. Cats cannot do this. This is why humans and dogs can live on a vegetarian diet but cats cannot."
I wish there was better food for cats. I wish they could survive on just veggies and grains, but I've not read anything that would convince me it's possible. Sometimes I wonder why no one has tried to come up with a cat food made from their natural prey like mice, birds etc (not saying they should, but I wonder why they haven't) when was the last time you saw a cat take down a cow? some cats may eat fish, but aren't tuna deep sea fish? what cat can catch them? :lol: in fact, what cat would attack a chicken or a turkey or a duck or a deer or any of the other animals cat food is made from. Now it seems really odd to me that we've never seen mouse or vole or sparrow cat food.
but then I"ve been up all night and have had too much time to ruminate on this :laugh4:
my first cat LOVED corn, it was the first ingredient in cat chow and in most other cheap kibbles (and still is the main ingredient in many of the cheaper foods along with wheat gluten, corn meal, rice starches etc)
She loved corn the way most people like a high carb food, it's quickly converted to sugar and gives you that sugar high.
She would steal canned corn, and corn on the cob and pasta, too LOL
It also gives you that sugar low, which leads you to feel hungry and go in search of more food, which is one reason may cats fed cheaper dry foods are "always hungry" and will eat a lot. They often become obese and that only paves the way for diabetes, along with the work load put on their pancreas from all the carbs they were never meant to eat.
Just because they like it and eat it doesn't mean its good for them.
At Easter time one year, I ate nothing but half price jelly beans for like 3 days. Liked it, ate it, ate some more- and wondering why I was soooooooooo tired.
:laugh4:
I'm not kidding, it didnt' seem at all bad to me to eat just jelly beans. Clearly all that sugar had a detrimental effect on my thinking processes as well :laugh4:
Sugar highs and lows. This is from around the time when I found out I had fatty liver disease and I just assumed it was from eating too much fat- so I was like, woo hoo! I can still have sugar!! (amazing that I don't have trouble with my blood sugar- yet!) turns out that sugar is much worse for your liver than fat is. Much worse.
so, anyway, I'd need to see a lot of good research to convince me that a vegan diet is safe for cats. a LOT.
me and my many diabetic cat loving friends have been working for years, decades really- to help change the pet food industry to provide better ingredients for their foods and to reduce the amnt of high carb ingredients. they are now going grain free, but sadly are substituting many of the grains with cheap starchy veggies like peas, potatoes, carrots
Just found a site about the Amicat and I would never give this to a cat
These are the ingredients (it's a dry kibble so right off the bat its not good for a cat- they need their water WITH their meal)
Corn, Corn gluten, corn oil, rice, pea protein, pea fiber, Brewer's yeast, dicalcium phosphate, linseed, hydrolysed vegetable protein, potato protein, sodium chloride, calcium carbonate, rapeseed oil.
Corn corn and more corn- something you really want to avoid! I don't know what the full impact of the GMOs is going to be, but I think it's prudent to be very cautious about the stuff. the fact that the manufacturers are clamping down so hard on ppl who want to do independent research is a very bad sign that even they know it's problems.
GMO's are unavoidable to a degree, but just because you can't totally avoid it doesn't mean you should choose something that is primarily made with the stuff. Corn is bad in so many ways- just for the fact that its so high in sugar and can cause insulin resistance (this is already proven, please don't make me have to dig up all the tons of studies on it, all peer reviewed dble blind good studies- I got other stuff I need to do LOL)
the cat probably loves it because of the corn and the hydrolyzed plant protein, which is where MSG is often hidden ( I suspect my cats and many others love FF because it has MSG hidden in it, and they are not required to disclose that)
hydrolyzed plant protein is just awful awful awful!! (from what I"ve read so far, I'd need to look into this more deeply and will do so soonish)
"Hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP) is produced by boiling foods such as soy, corn, or wheat in hydrochloric acid and then neutralizing the solution with sodium hydroxide. The acid breaks down the protein in vegetables into their component amino acids."
for more:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/hydro ... d-1.944579
"Even though HVP may contain 10 to 30 per cent MSG, products that contain HVP do not have to be labelled as containing MSG. Product labels have to identify MSG as an ingredient only when it is directly added to food. It does not have to be identified as an ingredient when it is a byproduct of another process.
People who are sensitive to MSG should avoid foods containing ingredients or additives that include the word "hydrolyzed."
http://www.naturalnews.com/028323_Hydro ... n_HVP.html
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is no good for anyone, animal or human
http://www.naturalnews.com/028323_Hydro ... n_HVP.html
more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid-hydro ... le_protein
wheat gluten and corn gluten, etc have been shown to cause/aggravate IBD in cats
IBD is very serious and leads to intestinal lymphoma eventually
so um I know there's more but that's about all I can handle for now
everyone has to make their own decision based on the info they have on hand
If you can help provide good solid info that will help people make more informed choices
great
but sometimes people simply do not have the time nor the interest nor quite frankly, the money, to do all the research or to buy the very best thats' available
you do the best you can
if you want to be an advocate, you do it knowing that presenting the information without a lot of drama and scare tactics is the best way to get people to listen
and you dont' saturate all your efforts with one potential audience, you move on,
do different things in other places, and show by example if possible.
repeating the same message over and over again just turns people off and is more likely to offend them so much they'll never hear what you're trying to say.
