heart as muscle meat

The place where I buy the ingredients for my ground raw always talks about heart as being a muscle meat as opposed to an organ meat. Also, I called Primal (a maker of premade raw foods for cats and dogs) about the contents of their "grinds" products and they also say that heart is a muscle meat. They actually said it is the "most nutritious" muscle meat.

So, does that mean heart could be feed as the only muscle meat with none of what is more traditionally thought of as muscle meat? Seems odd to me. I know heart has more taurine than other muscle meats. Surely there are other differences in the nutritional profiles of the two.

What do you guys think?

As rich as heart is I would not use it as a sole muscle meat ... it is a different kind of muscle meat ( think the three kinds all mammels have)

I feed heart at least twice a week as their whole meal. When i feed something low in taurine such as chicken breast i add some chicken hearts. Mainly i feed it for the taurine in it, and the cat that mine love the more bloody stuff

Originally Posted by sharky

As rich as heart is I would not use it as a sole muscle meat ... it is a different kind of muscle meat ( think the three kinds all mammels have)

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What do you mean by "rich" and why would that make it unsuitable for use as the sole muscle meat?

Originally Posted by furryfriends50

I feed heart at least twice a week as their whole meal. When i feed something low in taurine such as chicken breast i add some chicken hearts. Mainly i feed it for the taurine in it, and the cat that mine love the more bloody stuff

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Yeah, I know it's good to give as a whole meal on occasion but what about giving it exclusively, meal after meal, as the only muscle meat?

Originally Posted by mschauer

What do you mean by "rich" and why would that make it unsuitable for use as the sole muscle meat?

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as in a full meal of it made 2 of 3 puke.. which the vet echoed when I asked ...

Originally Posted by sharky

as in a full meal of it made 2 of 3 puke.. which the vet echoed when I asked ...

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I've done a bit of poking around the 'net. How about this as a somewhat casual definition of "too rich":

"Very nutritious but somewhat difficult to digest. Eaten in large quantities may cause digestive upset such as vomiting and diarrhea in some individuals."

So as long as an individual cat can tolerate it, it is OK to use as a sole muscle meat. Right?

I will have to double check my books for sole use.... I would think it would be okay for those that could handle it provided that you balence the meal according to the % and vitamin and mineral content.. as muscle meat and heart are different ... IMHO I use 50% heart to 50% muscle without issues , when I can obtain the fresh heart and the butcher grinds it ... another formula is roughly 30% heart 50 muscle and 20 liver ( note this is a beef mix ) I have BEEF eaters

I try to write everything in easy to comprehend language...

I don't know of any reason you couldn't use heart the same way you'd use any other muscle meat.

That said, I would never feed a diet consisting of one type of meat. Variety is a key component to keeping the cats healthy. Why are you considering this?

I decided to stop being lazy and look on the USDA website. I looked up the nutrition information for a beef chuck roast vs beef heart. I'm surprised on how significant the differences are (per 100 g):

water : 51.56 vs 77 g
energy: 295 vs 112 kcal or
1235 vs 467 kJ
protein: 30.05 vs 17.72 g
fat: 18.5 vs 3.94 g

I'm surprised how low in protein heart is. I checked a couple of other beef cuts and the difference wasn't as great with some but heart is lower in protein than most. Not a good 1:1 substitute for "muscle meat" I'd say.

Originally Posted by Auntie Crazy

I don't know of any reason you couldn't use heart the same way you'd use any other muscle meat.

That said, I would never feed a diet consisting of one type of meat. Variety is a key component to keeping the cats healthy. Why are you considering this?

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I'm just asking because a couple of times I have asked at the place where I buy supplies about whether they have a particular meat and they have pointed me to a package that only has only heart. They have said that heart is "considered a muscle meat". They have said this when all they had was the heart so I was wondering if I could really use it as a substitute for the muscle meat in my recipe. After looking on the USDA website (see my post above), I think not.

Originally Posted by mschauer

I decided to stop being lazy and look on the USDA website. I looked up the nutrition information for a beef chuck roast vs beef heart. I'm surprised on how significant the differences are (per 100 g):

water : 51.56 vs 77 g
energy: 295 vs 112 kcal or
1235 vs 467 kJ
protein: 30.05 vs 17.72 g
fat: 18.5 vs 3.94 g

I'm surprised how low in protein heart is. I checked a couple of other beef cuts and the difference wasn't as great with some but heart is lower in protein than most. Not a good 1:1 substitute for "muscle meat" I'd say.

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Thank you for looking up... I am haveing technical issues with puter... and was going off memory