Processed food is bad for humans but we almost always feed cats processed food
Chemically processed food with a large number of ingredients and which is high in carbohydrates is recognized as not being an ideal food for humans. I believe that, nowadays, the general consensus is that processed foods are a major contributor to obesity and illness in people. They certainly contribute to obesity. It’s very hard to find processed foods for humans that don’t contain too much sugar and salt. To older people these ingredients contribute to obesity and high blood pressure and many other ancillary health issues.
Cat food is processed food
And yet 99.99% of cat owners only feed their cat processed foods. These are foods with about 40 ingredients. We don’t know what the list of ingredients means. The lists are very hard to understand and when you consider that the ideal cat food is a mouse containing 40% protein, 50% fat and 3% water with some vegetable content in the mouse’s stomach, 40 ingredients seems to be excessive. They are there for the wrong reasons.
Vegetables and grains in cat food or worrying as cats are carnivores. Adding fruits and vegetables simply dilutes the protein content with more carbohydrates. Cats obtain their fibre from fur and bones in the wild. Processed foods for cats are designed to be cheap and tasty which increases profit without focusing sufficiently on the animal’s health.
Ingredients to please buyer and for profit
Sometimes a list of ingredients is designed to please the consumer, namely the cat’s owner. It’s time to re-appraise and reposition the entire process food market for domestic cats. A lot of people these days would argue that the available cat food on the shelves of supermarkets are potentially, and sometimes actually, unhealthy to domestic cats. Feline diseases such as urinary tract infections (dry cat foods), obesity, diabetes (sugars in cat foods) and hyperthyroidism (soy in cat foods) can be sourced back to the processed food that cats eat or at least they contribute to these health problems.
It is unfair to say that all non-raw cat food is bad food? Why aren’t we all feeding our cats raw foods?
The only caveat is some are less processed than others and some have limited ingredients.
Going back to work and not being here to mop up put out and regulate their diet meant I had to find options. All of them enjoy access to high quality freeze dried left like kibble. I do remove what little may be left at the end of the day for disposal. Because my cats are all avid water drinkers especially since I started leaving a tap dripping all the time I have had no issues with not hydrating it. I am constantly looking for better foods that my cats will eat. Often when researching the next best thing I am disappointed to see the same crap ingredients I have done my best to eliminate.
I am also a vocal opponent of cat food shaming. I have seen it over and over on fB and blogs and forums. If you are giving a cat a home and all you can buy is a bag of friskies them bless you for taking in the homeless.
If you want to help a cat and an owner I suggest taking a reasonably priced bag or cans of grocery store type cat food to your senior center. This is most likely what the recipients of Meals on Wheels are already feeding their cats. The people here who deliver are very good about knowing who needs that extra bag of cat food to relieve the worry about not being able to feed their companion animal.