Grocery Store and Pet Food could be bad!!!

fuzzpawz

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I had seen an aritcle a little earlier re: grocery store brand pet food...more specifically...canned cat food. I would like to take this time to remind everyone to buy your pet at a veterinary hospital. Contrary to the belief that Hospitla food is more expensive than your cheapy brands, it's not. Reason: Because of the "nutrients" that is put into the "crap" foods. you are actually feeding more to the animal...whereas with diets from a hospital, you actually feed less. The reason for this is because higher quality diets sold in hospitals and by your DVM, use high quality nutrients, such as real meat etc. Thus the hospital diets are richer in ie: protein meaning it takes less of the "real" stuff to keep your animal satisfied, rather than feeding them "junk food" and lots of it to keep them satisfied.

I encourage you to please buy high quality food! Believe me, it's MUCH healthier for your pets!

just a note: Should a food contain a meat "by product", be warned this term is usually used to describe the bad parts of the animal. Protein enriched, possibly, but good, sufficient protein to sustain life..not at all! When you think about it, the hair on your head is made of protein, but you cannot simply live on eating hair, the protein content is insufficient and an unreliable source. Think of your pets as family....would you want to eat the hooves, noses, hair, even rectums of an animal in your food? Then why would you feed your pet that?
 

sharky

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welcome to TCS ... Oh and youll find many highly food educated individuals here...
 

ncarpi75

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Sharky is 100% accurate!!! This forum is full of very knowledgable, educated people!! They have helped me tremendously!!!
 

pat

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Actually I posted some time ago about finding onion salt listed in a grocery store's brand of canned foods...just stunned me. I sure wouldn't recommend feeding onion in any form to cats.

However...depending on the vet's practice, many carry only a line or two of foods plus their prescription foods. I can't agree that what I've seen carried in most is high quality. To me, high quality will not use bha/bht, animal digest, wheat, soy, corn, by-products or by-product meal...and some big name foods with big price tags do include some of these.

I would certainly encourage quality foods, but to me these include brand names such as Innova, Addiction canned, Active Life canned, Wysong Just Meat, Evangers, Natural Balance's green pea and venison to name just a few.
 

pat

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Originally Posted by sharky

thank you .. never heard of it...
What is wonderful about it is that so long as one isn't dealing with a cat allergic to peas (in both formulas I believe) or in venison (also present in the brushtail one I think), the brushtail and the unagi are two unique protein sources
Neat sounding foods
 

fatkitties

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The only thing my vet sells is Science Diet, and that won't happen to my pets in this lifetime. Plus, he charges MUCH more for the exact same food (Science Diet Adult, for example) as pet stores. I buy my flea and heartworm products at the vet, and nothing else.
There's lots of good food available at pet stores, you just have to be willing to spend the time to educate yourself on what the ingredients are, choose the foods that meet your standards, and then find which of those foods work best for your pets. What I feed, and works absolutely great for my pets, might not work the best for yours.

Amber
 

yosemite

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I'm afraid I have to disagree with Fuzzpawz. Most vets know little if nothing about nutrition and generally carry whatever they get free from the various companies. Unless your cat has been ill and is on a special diet I wouldn't recommend buying food from a vet.

You are far better to shop around for a good quality food as a poster above mentioned by reading up on ingredients and nutrition, checking labels and trying different good brands until you find one your kitties like.

I just fairly recently started Bijou and Mika on wet food. I was feeding only dry and Bijou was getting to be a "large" Siamese. I bought a can or 2 or every good quality brand and tried them and ours preferred Merricks. They now have more canned food than dry and their coats actually look nicer and feel better as well. They also drink more water but I think that is because of the PetMate.
 

fatkitties

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I tell ya, my vet is definitely making an effort to learn about food though. He's asked me questions about Nutro and always notices how nice and healthy they look, and has even asked me for recommendations before. Last time I was in the office they asked me for any booklets or info I might have handy to make available to thier customers. They said "We sell Science Diet but we know there's other, and better, foods than that out there and we want to make sure our clients know." Have I mentioned that I just love my vet office?
But I must agree with Yosemite that most vets know very little about nutrition. And what they DO know, they learned from Hill's. A friend of mine is in vet school and she said she was given a free bag of SD, a food bowl, etc. And she doesn't even have a dog!
And my cats are also much more active since I've been doing some canned. They don't get more canned than dry, yet, but just this morning, Gizmo (19 lb part Siamese) batted a piece of dog food around the kitchen for a good 15 minutes. She's never showed that kind of activity all on her own before. She looks like she's lost some weight, I need to get her to the vet to be weighed. But she has a "waist" now and she never has before.

Amber
 

yosemite

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Originally Posted by fatkitties

I tell ya, my vet is definitely making an effort to learn about food though. He's asked me questions about Nutro and always notices how nice and healthy they look, and has even asked me for recommendations before. Last time I was in the office they asked me for any booklets or info I might have handy to make available to thier customers. They said "We sell Science Diet but we know there's other, and better, foods than that out there and we want to make sure our clients know." Have I mentioned that I just love my vet office?
But I must agree with Yosemite that most vets know very little about nutrition. And what they DO know, they learned from Hill's. A friend of mine is in vet school and she said she was given a free bag of SD, a food bowl, etc. And she doesn't even have a dog!
And my cats are also much more active since I've been doing some canned. They don't get more canned than dry, yet, but just this morning, Gizmo (19 lb part Siamese) batted a piece of dog food around the kitchen for a good 15 minutes. She's never showed that kind of activity all on her own before. She looks like she's lost some weight, I need to get her to the vet to be weighed. But she has a "waist" now and she never has before.

Amber
Tell me about it! We've got a rather large (16 lb.) Siamese here too. He's getting more wet food now and seems to have "slimmed" a little. Their coats are certainly much softer and shinier since we've been feeding the Merricks. I just picked up 2 more cases tonight. My local pet store doesn't carry it but they order it in specially for me.
 

semiferal

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Hello and welcome!

You're right that grocery store cat food is rubbish. However, most vets who sell pet food sell Science Diet, Eukanuba, or Purina Pro Plan. If you look at the ingredients of these foods you'll see that they are not really any better than grocery store foods. Vets sell these because they are literally paid kickbacks by the food companies to do so, and because vets are not taught about nutrition in vet school.

You can buy many great types of cat food at small pet specialty stores as well as at "human" natural food stores such as Whole Foods and many others. These products have the best ingredients and offer the best nutrition.
 

booktigger

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My vet told me that she feeds her cats Hills dry and Whiskas for wet - I told her I wouldn't feed my cats either of those two. I know people who think that cos Hills is sold by the vets and says that it is Vetinary whatever, then it must be a really good food. The only bag I have seen had 10% tuna and it was the 6th ingredient. I have also had so many probs with Gingers coat matting - changed him to a food that had 32% meat content rather than 4%, and we haven't had any probs since, and even his tail looked shiny tonight!! And Tom has lost a kilo since being on wet food only - admittedly he has been fed Whiskas etc, cos I can't afford to feed him as well as my two, but when he is rehomed, I will play up the better foods. I can get some of the flavours mine like in the supermarket, but not the senior food Ginger has, so all my food and litter is now delivered from a local petshop - even they have to order it, and only one of the two suppliers sell that food!!
 
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