Why isn't feeding canned/wet food more commonly known?

When I adopted my first cat, I asked the vet's office about feeding and they said that if he will eat the dry, feed him an all dry diet, because it's better for him. So I didn't think much about wet versus dry, other than I did know that cats don't need soy/corn/wheat, etc. so I tried to buy a good quality dry food with minimal fillers. 

I didn't give feeding wet food much thought after that until I adopted/rescued an elderly cat with health problems. 

I researched and decided that switching to grain free wet food would be best for him. Fast forward to today (5+ months later) and my elderly cat is on 100% grain free wet food. The last time he was in front of a bowl of dry food, he literally just licked the kibble and left it there. 

His overall health is much better. He came to me quite obese and he has lost some needed weight. He was constipated and not using the litter box at all. Now he 100% uses the litterbox and has healthy bowel movements. His fur is shiny and he's just doing so much better on the wet food.

I just wonder why I didn't know that until I adopted a kitty with health problems. I wish that this information was more readily available. Knowing what I know now, I'm surprised that a vet told me that an all dry diet was healthiest. 

I've switched to a new vet and my new vet said that cats are carnivores so it's ideal to feed them as close as you can come to 100% meat.   

Some vets unfortunately don't keep up on what's new in veterinary science, would be my best explanation.  And some vets believe the idea that eating wet food is bad for pets' teeth and dry food is good for them.  Yeah, because eating crunchy cereal knocks off lots of plaque, but eating tuna fish puts it on.  Never made sense to me to begin with...dry food would need to have, like, metal bits in it to do much of anything to scrape off tartar or plaque.

Also, I think (personal belief not backed up by research) is that the reason we are seeing so many kitties with CKD and renal failure is that these are the cats who grew up on the generation of kibble-only.  They didn't get enough moisture (it IS known now that because our domestic kitties had desert ancestors, they don't have a high thirst drive for running water, they are made to get moisture from food) in their diet because a bowl of stale water is unappealing and the kibble was drier than dust.  A lifetime of that, combined with living longer because of improved environmental care (i.e. not outside getting hit by cars all the time) and more standard spay/neuters (not dying early from FIV in males and overbreeding in females)....and boom, sky-rocketing rates of CKD.

The younger vets I run into today almost all recommend feeding at least partially wet food, and supplementing water intake with a fountain if possible.  Lord knows my cats LOVE water fountains.  It's funny though, how vets can understand that cats are obligate carnivores and need as much meat as possible and still be against raw feeding....it's like, duh, that's what they're made to eat is RAW MEAT WITH BONE AND STOMACH CONTENTS.

Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me either, about dry food improving dental health. That would be a little like saying that humans have to eat dry pretzels to clean our teeth. What does help humans with dental health is chewing on stuff like raw carrots, so it makes logical sense to give cats bones to chew on.

When I was growing up, we fed our cats kibble of the cheapest form. Canned food was looked upon as "feline dessert" in those days. 

Crazy4Strays said:

 
I just wonder why I didn't know that until I adopted a kitty with health problems. I wish that this information was more readily available. Knowing what I know now, I'm surprised that a vet told me that an all dry diet was healthiest. 

I've switched to a new vet and my new vet said that cats are carnivores so it's ideal to feed them as close as you can come to 100% meat. 

 

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I wonder about this, too... we knew nothing about cat foods and nutrition when we adopted a cat back in 2001, and her vets didn't know much more than we did, recommending dry diet food when she got overweight. (I suspect the only reason she never got truly obese was that we added wet Fancy Feast to her diet, kind of as a whim...) I learned about healthier cat food the hard way, when she got sick with IBD and I completely overhauled her diet. When she was gone and we adopted new cats, we switched to a cat specialist who is like your new vet: feed them meat! Edwina and Ireland get a great diet of canned and raw foods, which is great, though I wish we'd known to feed Brooksie that way years ago, too.

Crazy4Strays said:

 
When I was growing up, we fed our cats kibble of the cheapest form. Canned food was looked upon as "feline dessert" in those days. 

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I think there's a lot to this, too!

When I stopped by the vet to pick up my kitty's meds, I talked to the vet tech about kitty dental health. She seemed to think that most kitties should eat dry food because "it's better for the teeth." *shrugs*

Crazy4Strays said:

When I stopped by the vet to pick up my kitty's meds, I talked to the vet tech about kitty dental health. She seemed to think that most kitties should eat dry food because "it's better for the teeth." *shrugs*

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When my vet asked me that question- I answered "she eats whole ribs!". That and the fact that her teeth is gleaming white stopped them from asking more questions.....  She ate high quality wet food before, but since staring all raw the change in her fur and body is unbelievable. I think that most vets simply don´t have enough knowledge of the nutritional needs of cats- and that most cats would be healthier on wet food. Some vets know, but they are to few...... 

Thankfully my new vet supports me in my choice of feeding all home made raw. 

Canned food appears to be more expensive.  Plain and simple.  I think seeing $1.99 for a single 5.5 oz can (the grain free type) can be intimidating even though the cost per ounce is often cheaper. Though I remember when I was a kid my mom said we couldn't feed our cat too much wet food because it would make her fat.  So yeah, like kitty "dessert".  I wonder if that idea is still pervasive. 

And as for kibble for the teeth don't you think it could come from the fact in the wild when cats gnaw on the bones of their prey that's how they clean their teeth?  I don't know.  That's just my idea.

PicklesPepper said:

 
Canned food appears to be more expensive.  Plain and simple.  I think seeing $1.99 for a single 5.5 oz can (the grain free type) can be intimidating even though the cost per ounce is often cheaper. Though I remember when I was a kid my mom said we couldn't feed our cat too much wet food because it would make her fat.  So yeah, like kitty "dessert".  I wonder if that idea is still pervasive. 

And as for kibble for the teeth don't you think it could come from the fact in the wild when cats gnaw on the bones of their prey that's how they clean their teeth?  I don't know.  That's just my idea.

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I agree with the appears to be more expensive! I do not feed the grain free food as right now $1.99 a can is way out of what I can afford.. however I feed Friskies (I know that a lot of people think it's trash.. but yeah better than the dry food I was feeding) and I found that it is actually a lot cheaper for me. I used to put down a can and dry food (free fed) but have gone to all wet since she snubs the dry food now. 

My husband had grown up feeding his cats only wet. So when we finally got a cat together and I was feeding dry he was confused haha. When I told him I wanted to switch Poptart over to wet food he told me "Yeah thats fine, my cats only ate that." I always wondered why he didn't say anything ha. 

MeowKittyMeow said:

 
I agree with the appears to be more expensive! I do not feed the grain free food as right now $1.99 a can is way out of what I can afford.. however I feed Friskies (I know that a lot of people think it's trash.. but yeah better than the dry food I was feeding) and I found that it is actually a lot cheaper for me. I used to put down a can and dry food (free fed) but have gone to all wet since she snubs the dry food now. 

My husband had grown up feeding his cats only wet. So when we finally got a cat together and I was feeding dry he was confused haha. When I told him I wanted to switch Poptart over to wet food he told me "Yeah thats fine, my cats only ate that." I always wondered why he didn't say anything ha. 

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I'm glad to hear you've switched to just wet food, that's great!

You have to consider the education the vets are getting. Most of them have been taught based on a study done in the 60's that said dry food was good for animal's teeth. A better study done in 1996 found that it doesn't matter whether animals are fed wet or dry food since they don't chew any of it. (Dogs and cats have pointy teeth that aren't made for chewing, so they don't have the instinct for it. They'd rather swallow their food whole than chew it.) Then in 2007 they found that if you increase the kibble size until it's big enough to force the pets to chew, it does help with tartar, but most commercial kibbles are not that big. But vets who haven't kept up to date are still operating on old ideas from the 60's, thus the problem.

As for wet food being beneficial, you can see some studies where cats on wet food were significantly healthier, but it always ends up getting dismissed as 'unexplainable' because they refuse to believe that processing could have an impact on the healthiness of the food.

My vet actually told me not to switch to wet food because my cat would get fat. I just took her in for a visit recently after having her on wet food for a while. The vet complimented her weight and health and commented on how most cats he sees progressively get heavier, then after I told him she was only on wet food he told me he'd rather she were on dry.   I don't think I could get it through his head that I think there's a connection between his patients being overweight and his insistence on dry food...

KrazyKatJenn said:

My vet actually told me not to switch to wet food because my cat would get fat. I just took her in for a visit recently after having her on wet food for a while. The vet complimented her weight and health and commented on how most cats he sees progressively get heavier, then after I told him she was only on wet food he told me he'd rather she were on dry. 

 I don't think I could get it through his head that I think there's a connection between his patients being overweight and his insistence on dry food...

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That's just incredible! We switched to a cat specialist vet when we adopted our new cats and she was glad we were already planning to feed them grain-free wet foods once we weaned them off the foods they'd been getting at the shelter. She got to skip "the talk" about cat food with me. Her dental health recommendations are to brush cats' teeth and test them for the Bartonella bacterium if they have worse mouths than they should for their age: the combination of tooth brushing and Bartonella treatment has improved our cats' mouths tremendously! (They're Siamese mixes so prone to tooth and gum problems anyway.)

She's a wonderful vet and I wish we'd taken our previous cat to her instead of another local practice where their only diet advice was diet dry food.

Interesting about the Bartonella.  One of our Siamese mixes has pretty bad oral health and is still squirrelly about having her teeth brushed.  I'll put that on the list to ask the vet.

Kat Hamlin said:

 
Interesting about the Bartonella.  One of our Siamese mixes has pretty bad oral health and is still squirrelly about having her teeth brushed.  I'll put that on the list to ask the vet.

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Yes, definitely ask. The connection between Bartonella and oral health seems to be a little controversial but our vet says she sees improvement in a lot of cats after the antibiotics. I have fingers crossed that we can avoid yearly dental cleanings!