Variety vs. Stress

Just back from the vet. He told me there's a scientific study that says a monotonous diet is best for the cat because if you switch around cat food, it is stressful for the cat. On this forum people pretty much recommend a variety of cat food to reduce finickiness and the chance that certain brands of food or formulas will become unavailable.

Has anybody heard of the monotonous diet argument and if it is true or not? One time some cat food representative told me that I should only have one brand of food, but I assumed that was because they could then have a continuous income stream.

Yeah I don't think that is true. Since a lot of vets only get nutrition advice from pet food companies that may be the where your vet picked this information up. I would like to see this study. Was it peered reviewed? Was it paid for by pet food companies?

Cats eat a variety in the wild. Plus with all the food recalls it is dangerous to have a cat used to only eating one thing.

That being said I think with some picky older eaters like my Frank changing food too often can be stressful. Frank gets sick if I give him too many different wet foods in a week. He also will throw up if I put even a tiny bit of raw. With my new kitten I am giving her a variety of wet foods and raw foods, which my vet said was good. As she gets older I want her on mostly raw but since frank never eats all of his wet food she will probably get what he doesn't eat.

As Franksmom suggested, ask the vet for the study.  And then when (if!) you get the study, look at the fine print to see who sponsored and/or conducted the study:  maybe it was a pet food company.

I have never heard of a monotonomous diet; while it is true that changing food too quickly may cause a tummy upset in predisposed cats, feeding (IMO) cats one brand/one flavor of food can lead to much more serious malnutrition over a relatively short period of time.  Cats and people need variety in their diet to make sure they get all the nutrition/micro-nutrients they need.

The vet said he found the study online, but was unable to locate it again while I was in the office. He did specify it was a scientific study, but I know a lot of the "scientific" studies are funded by pet food companies.

To me there seems to be a lot of reasons to have a variety of foods, while the only reason from the study (or at least from what the vet said about the study), was stress reduction. I tried feeding Poppy raw once, and I made the mistake of only feeding chicken. After a while she wouldn't eat the chicken and wanted duck. At the same time, though, when I switch foods on Poppy often she'll make the pawing motion before she eats it, or she'll paw and then reject.
 

Hmm well your vet needs to brush up on academic publishing. Anything can be published online and labeled  "scientific", but for something to be taken seriously it needs to be peer reviewed from a reputable journal. Even then you need to look at the perimeters of the study how many cats were studied over how long? and who funded the study?

I wonder if this study was in reference to kibble?  We all know that switching up kibble can cause digestive issues, so maybe that's it? 

Otherwise, I think it's a bunch of malarky