What is a good fat content?

The food that I am currently feeding my cats has a 12% fat content. This is a little higher than the 10% food I recently switched from. What is the typical fat content in most cat food? Is more or less better? Is 12% reasonable, too much or not enough? My skinny kitty that has lost some weight could probably use some more fat, but I am not sure about my 8 month old kitten that seems to be bulking up every week. The vet said it's okay that he is still gaining weight though. Anyway, what fat content do you think is good for a four year old cat that could probably stand to gain a little weight (without going to the other extreme) and and an 8 month old kitten that is gaining weekly?

Cat's need a good amount of fat diet for their skin and coat.  Their natural prey food is mainly muscle (protein) and fat, with only a slight amount of grain that might be in their stomachs (birds, mice etc.).  Unfortunately, most commercial cat food is high CARB because of the grains in it.  You should do some research and then make a point of reading labels.  If you are talking about DRY cat food, the ideal ratio of protein to fat is 3:2, and most dry foods have too little fat.  In fact, the main ingredient in many commercial dry foods today is GROUND YELLOW CORN, which isfine for a cow but not for a cat.  Don't worry about feeding your cat too much fat, but look into feeding him the proper balance of protein to fat and keeping grains to a minimum.

Tabbysia said:

The food that I am currently feeding my cats has a 12% fat content. This is a little higher than the 10% food I recently switched from. What is the typical fat content in most cat food? Is more or less better? Is 12% reasonable, too much or not enough? My skinny kitty that has lost some weight could probably use some more fat, but I am not sure about my 8 month old kitten that seems to be bulking up every week. The vet said it's okay that he is still gaining weight though. Anyway, what fat content do you think is good for a four year old cat that could probably stand to gain a little weight (without going to the other extreme) and and an 8 month old kitten that is gaining weekly?

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The numbers you are providing are "as fed," and these are meaningless, because they include the water content.

Example:

I have 0.5 ounces of protein powder. I add 8 ounces of water to it, for a total of 8.5 ounces. The "guaranteed analysis" of this "food" is 6% protein, 94% moisture.

I have 0.5 ounces of protein powder. I add 16 ounces of water to it, for a total of 16.5 ounces. The "guaranteed analysis" of this "food" is 3% protein, 97% moisture.

Yet each food has the exact same amount of protein in it.

We need the entire guaranteed analysis in order to be able to convert it to a dry matter basis. The water must be mathematically removed, so all you're left with is the nutrients in the food.

You're either talking about a high fat canned food or a low fat dry food, but without more information, there's no way to know.

The natural diet of a feral cat with very limited access to human food or garbage (less than 5% of the diet) is 63% protein, 23% fat, 12% minerals, and 2% carbs - on a dry matter basis. Eating prey, they will have a much higher mineral intake due to eating whole bones. A commercial food should have either a higher protein component or a higher fat component to offset the lower minerals (the total must add up to 100%).

...and the moisture content would be between 70% and 75%.

The stomach contents of prey is a very, very small component of the diet, and unlike the carbs in cat food, those carbs would be pre-digested.

The food that I am giving them (Blue Buffalo Basics grain-free) does not have any corn or grains of any kind in it. I have to avoid corn, all grains, wheat, and soy due to food intolerances (vomiting with one and loose stools with the other until I switched foods). I have been told by the vet to avoid dairy, eggs, and chicken as well, but I am pretty sure that corn and rice were the culprits. The food, although it is grain-free, does contain carbs in the form of potatoes and other assorted vegetables, grasses (?), and fruits. I know I should give them some canned, but the vet seems to be against it and says they don't need it. I am not sure how to figure out the protein to fat ratio like you mentioned. The food has 30% protein. The first several ingredients are deboned turkey, turkey meal, pea starch, pea protein, potatoes, pea fiber, canola oil, peas, natural turkey flavor, flaxseed, whole carrots, cranberries, blueberries, barley grass, dried parsley, alfalfa meal, dried kelp, yucca schidigera extract, etc. It then goes on to list other assorted ingredients and vitamins.

The food has a label on it called the "guaranteed analysis." From that, we can calculate the dry matter basis for you.

Here's the guaranteed analysis on the bag:

Crude protein. 30% min.
Crude fat. 12% min.
Crude fiber. 7% max.
Moisture. 10% max.
Magnesium. .08% min.
Taurine. .15% min.
Omega 3 fatty acids .6% min.
Omega 6 fatty acids 2.5% min.

http://bluebuffalo.com/cat-food/basics-turkey?pf=1&brand=basics&animal=cat

From the webpage:



The moisture content is 10%. So 100% - 10% = 90% dry matter.

We then take each component of the food and divide that into 90%:

Protein: 30% ÷ 90% = 33.3%
Fat: 12% ÷ 90% = 13.3%
Fiber 3.5% ÷ 90% = 3.9%
Ash (not listed). In dry foods, it is a safe assumption that ash is 8%. In wet foods, 2.5% is a good assumption for ash content. 8% ÷ 90% = 8.9%

As the food must total 100%, to determine the level of carbohydrates, we just subtract it all from 100%:

100%
- 33.3% protein
- 13.3% fat
- 3.9% fiber
- 8.9% ash
= 40.6 carbohydrates

So it's low fat, very high carb. Do you feed him a measured amount of food or do you let him free feed? When a cat food is high carb, cats will often eat too much of it in order to get the fat and protein they need, so they overeat, and eat too many calories. In fact, while you have to monitor intake of high fat foods, they leave cats feeling satisfied, so it's much easier to feed less and get them the appropriate amount of calories without them feeling hungry. Not necessarily true for high carb foods.

This is why it's best to feed wet food (which is almost always lower carb), and why your vet clearly knows very little about cat nutrition and their needs. Would you like links to sites by vets that do know about cat nutrition?

I know this one has been provided before. But here it is again: http://www.catinfo.org

If you want more than just Dr. Lisa Pierson, here is a discussion by Dr. Mark Peterson, one of the top veterinary endocrinologists in the country, discussing why cats need high protein, low carbohydrate diets:

http://endocrinevet.blogspot.no/2011/12/can-increasing-amount-of-fat-or.html
http://endocrinevet.blogspot.no/2012/07/cats-and-nutrition-some-key-nutritional.html
http://endocrinevet.blogspot.no/2012/08/high-protein-low-carb-diets-key-to_7.html

Dr. Karen Becker:

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/02/17/dry-food-wrong-for-cats.aspx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-karen-becker/healtthy-cat-diet_b_865604.html

Dr. Jean Hofve:

http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/why-dry-food-is-bad-for-cats-and-dogs/


Many people feed a partial dry diet due to cost. But wet food is a very important component of feline nutrition, because most cats do not drink enough water. And "enough" is 1 cup a day, if you feed only dry food. That's how much water your cat needs to drink to equal the amount of water in a 5.5 ounce can of wet food. Without this, kitties become mildly chronically dehydrated, and this is likely a cause of kidney failure in older cats.

Sorry, I was composing the post while you posted that.

So it changes the numbers very slightly that the food you are feeding is higher fiber:

Protein 33.3%
Fat 13.3%
Fiber 7.8%
Ash: 8.9%

Carbohydrates: 36.7%

Still very high carb content; medium level of protein, and low fat. High fiber (for a cat).

The totals may be a little different than what you calculated because of the fiber content. I think you were looking at the regular Blue Basics Turkey and Potato. I am feeding the grain-free version which does contain 7% fiber, as opposed to 3.5% in the regular. I'm not sure if that makes the carb count higher or lower though. I do free feed the cats. With me being gone from home all day at work, I don't want them to be without food.

As far as the vet not knowing much about nutrition, I tend to agree. When my four year old cat kept vomiting every kind of food (Iams and then two different vet prescribed ones), I am the one that figured out that it could be the food (most likely corn). The vet told me that she was just eating too fast. She then jumped on board, however, after I changed food and it worked. She then told me to not feed her chicken (not sure about that one), corn, wheat, soy, or eggs because they were all common allergens. All of these these things were in the two different foods that she prescribed. Go figure! When the little one had chronic loose stools for months (pretty much since birth) and the "vet food" and various medications did not work, I did some research and found out that grains (namely rice--found in all of his previous foods) could be an issue. I brought this to her attention. She did not believe that diet was an issue and insisted that it was just the residual effects of the coccidia parasites from months before. She said I could try grain-free if I wanted to though. Lo and behold, a few days after switching to grain-free, he had normal stools! It has been almost two months and still normal. I think I have said all of this on another thread. Sorry for being so redundant. I don't want to bad mouth my vet too much. I have been taking cats to her for 20 years, and she has always taken good care of them. She may just be a little behind the times on nutrition. As far as the wet food, she said that I could give them just a little bit as a treat if I want. I think that she is afraid, as am I, to change anything in their diet right now because I finally have them on a food where no one is puking or having loose stools. With them being so (apparently) sensitive , I don't want to upset their digestive systems by changing food again. I would like to gradually add some canned, but I'm not sure where to begin. Every kind of canned food seems to contain something that one of them can't have or shouldn't have. A lot of foods that don't have the off-limit ingredients have carrageenan, which apparently causes cancer.

Oops, disregard what I said about the fiber. It looks like you already addressed that. It seems that I had the same problem of composing a post while you were posting!

By the way, the higher fiber could be better for the kitten that had the "loose poop" issues. Maybe the higher fiber could be part of the reason that he got better. Or maybe not. I'm not sure.

Yes, the high fiber may be helping him. :nod: But once his system has stabilized, he may no longer need it - or as much of it.

I don't know how long it's been since things have settled down. It's always a good idea to let things stabilize - give their systems time to heal as best they can from what they've been through. But after a few months have passed, IMO, it would be time to consider SLOWLY adding some canned food to their diet, see how things go - and consider an all wet diet longer term.

In the meantime, as they're on dry food, here are tips to ensure they're getting enough water (and "enough" is 1/2 a cup a day, minimum (per cat), with one cup a day of water intake being ideal). http://www.thecatsite.com/a/tips-to-increase-your-cat-s-water-intake

With people and any animal, it isn't a race. But incorporating healthier foods will always benefit long term health. :rub:

It has only been since October 18 that things have returned to normal. Actually, this is the first time that things have ever been "normal." I have been researching canned foods that both of my cats can tolerate. I started a thread called "Puzzle to solve." Maybe you can help!