Dr. Lisa Pierson food chart and Weruva

I remember last time I checked her 2012 food chart Weruva was listed as very high carb. Last night when I looked for the chart it said the page you are looking for has been moved and after I was redirected to it I noticed that a lot of the Weruva flavors were low carb? Paw lickin chicken was listed at only 3% carbs. I was sure that was listed as high carb in the past. I'm curious if they changed their formulas. Or maybe Lisa tested it again? Has anyone heard anything about this?

I really love this food and if it really is low carb I will go back to feeding it a lot more.

Dr. Pierson doesn't do any testing. She relies on information from the manufacturers. A change in her chart would reflect a change in that information.

Most of the Weruva products are still shown as quite high in carbs. Are you sure there is difference?

Last time I swear all the chicken varieties were around 20% carbs. I remember being very surprised. I mostly just buy the chicken flavors. This time Paw lickin' chicken was only 3%  carbs.  A lot of the others were listed 9% instead of around 20%. This time only the pouches look really high.

I know there is no way to know for sure what exactly is in that can, but it would be awesome if it was low carb/high protein without fillers. Too good to be true ?

Well, like I said, she gets the information from the manufacturer. I doubt they would lie. I don't know why Dr. P would have updated the chart. Maybe there was a mistake previously or maybe she got updated information.  I'd be surprised if the Paw Lickin Chicken ingredients have changed. It was pretty simple before. I guess they could have decreased the potato starch to get the carbs down but 

She uses average nutritional info, provided by the manufacturers, not the guaranteed analysis. Weruva contested her information, and she had mentioned she was in discussions with them, and that she would update the chart if they proved to her satisfaction that the information they have is correct.

Apparently they did that.

She uses average nutritional info, provided by the manufacturers, not the guaranteed analysis. Weruva contested her information, and she had mentioned she was in discussions with them, and that she would update the chart if they proved to her satisfaction that the information they have is correct.

Apparently they did that.

LDG said:

She uses average nutritional info, provided by the manufacturers, not the guaranteed analysis. Weruva contested her information, and she had mentioned she was in discussions with them, and that she would update the chart if they proved to her satisfaction that the information they have is correct.

Apparently they did that.

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So did they initially give her incorrect information??? 

I have no idea, this is the first I've heard it was even updated. Perhaps contact her to ask? Though maybe she mentions it in the footnotes of the food list.

Before I knew about the high carbs, I fed my cat the Paw Lickin' Chicken, the full can, to compensate for the low calorie count. Even though the volume fed was higher, she was still acting more hungry than usual. After finding out about the carb content, I attributed it to high carb food.
 

It looks like it's low carb now? maybe, lol. I guess I'll go back to it. I do like all the real chicken and lack of fillers.

LDG said:

I have no idea, this is the first I've heard it was even updated. Perhaps contact her to ask? Though maybe she mentions it in the footnotes of the food list.

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Oh, I don't really care. 

I just thought it was strange that Weruva would contest what she had posted given that she says the called all the manufacturers to get the as fed values. Maybe Weruva was one of the manufacturers that initially refused to provide as fed values so she used the guaranteed analysis instead. Then when Weruva say how bad it made them look they relented and provided here with the as fed values.

That's a lot of speculation of source! 

mschauer said:

Oh, I don't really care. 

I just thought it was strange that Weruva would contest what she had posted given that she says the called all the manufacturers to get the as fed values. Maybe Weruva was one of the manufacturers that initially refused to provide as fed values so she used the guaranteed analysis instead. Then when Weruva say how bad it made them look they relented and provided here with the as fed values.

That's a lot of speculation of source! 

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Actually, from the guaranteed analysis, you come up with low carb numbers - which is part of what was so surprising on the food chart to many of us.

LDG said:

Actually, from the guaranteed analysis, you come up with low carb numbers - which is part of what was so surprising on the food chart to many of us.

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Generally you should come up with higher numbers for carbs when you use the GA because the protein and fat are given as minimums and using them as "as fed" results in a larger remainder that is assumed to be carbs.

Well, I don't know what the average nutritional content looked like.... but when analyzing the food on the GA, it came up as very low carb. :dk:

OK - going to have to modify that. When I looked at the paw lickin' chicken, it was 12.7% carbs on a DMB basis from the GA.

Well, think about it. Protein and fat are given as minimums in the GA. That means protein and fat in the as fed will be either the same as or higher than the GA. If higher, that leaves less to be carbs. Unless of course the moisture, which is given as a maximum in the GA, is actually lower in the as fed in which case the carbs could be the same as what was calculated from the GA.

Moral of the story: The GA is kinda useless for determining carbs. 

Oh I get it - but now her chart says says Paw Lickin' Chicken has 4% carbs on DMB basis. The GA (which might have been updated since I calculated it this time last year) was 12.7% on DMB basis, and her prior food chart, from Fall of 2012, listed it as 31%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I'd saved the PDF at the time, so have it to compare).

So the current numbers make sense - but that the old chart from a typical nutritional content basis was 31% - much higher than the GA - is what seemed very off.

That's why I was wondering why Weruva was contesting what she had posted. If they had given her the as fed what did they have to complain about? If on the other hand they refused to give her the as fed values and she used the GA instead she could have come up with a higher number. I seem to recall at one time I was looking at the Paw Lickin Chicken carb content based on the GA and wondering how they could call it low carb. I'm sure the GA I looked at implied carb content much higher than 12%.

BTW, do you realize that a food could have 0% carbs no matter what the GA says? (Edit: That is, looking only at the GA and not at the ingredients you can't tell whether or not the food contains carbs.)

BTW2 - Weruva now has as fed values on their web site.

mschauer said:

That's why I was wondering why Weruva was contesting what she had posted. If they had given her the as fed what did they have to complain about? If on the other hand they refused to give her the as fed values and she used the GA instead she could have come up with a higher number. I seem to recall at one time I was looking at the Paw Lickin Chicken carb content based on the GA and wondering how they could call it low carb. I'm sure the GA I looked at implied carb content much higher than 12%.

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Well, when I put together this chart, the numbers were 12.7%: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Canned-Raw-Table-1.pdf

mschauer said:

BTW, do you realize that a food could have 0% carbs no matter what the GA says? 

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Yes, I do. I don't know if others do or not. :lol3:

mschauer said:

BTW2 - Weruva now has as fed values on their web site.

Click to expand...

Interesting! Thanks for the heads-up (for those that care. :lol3: ).

The carb numbers on her phosphorous chart don't match the ones on the protein/fat/carbs chart--for example, Weruva on the Cat Wok is listed as 5% carbs on the P/F/C chart, but on the phosphorous chart it's listed as 25% carbs. Both are supposed to be dry matter basis.