does the expensive cat food REALLY make difference?

It really depends on the cat. I don't think I've ever heard of someone switching from a higher quality food to a lower quality food and saying that their cat's coat was shiny and that the cat felt healthier overall, but that comment is frequently made when they "upgrade" their food choice. I think a big part of what make the more expensive foods "better" is the consistency in the ingredients, especially the protein. By-products are thought of as bad because we never know what they might include--only that it isn't the regular meat. Corn frequently causes allergies and digestive upset, so I steer clear of foods with corn in them. I don't know whether the better foods always cause a longer life. They do seem to improve coat condition, which is one of the easiest things for us to judge, since we can see it and feel it.

I would seriously recommend a food trial to anyone who honestly believes that you can feed your pets "anything" and they'll be perfectly fine.

For that, I would of course recommend switching up, but circumstances caused me to go the other way. For one month (long story, which I started typing out until I realized it irrelevant), she ate 9lives. Both before and after, she ate Iams. Now, Iams is in no way the best food out there, but between the two, there is a clear winner.

At the end of that month on 9lives, she stank, her coat was oily, and she seemed sort of lackluster. Mind you, she was not even six months old at the time, and lackluster is not a word you should be using to describe a kitten.

As soon as she started eating her old food again, she shed a bunch of gross, oily hair and grew in a nice soft, non-stinking coat. I'm serious, at all times in the time we've been together, she has smelled like nothing. Vaguely like cat, but really no smell. Then, she STANK. Three days on her old food, and she was scampering around and playing like before. This is not coincidence, my sister's two have this same gross smell, although they don't seem to have the same severity of problems as mine.

Now at the time, months before I joined TCS, to me this confirmed that her food was the best one you can get. I know that ain't true, but still, there is a serious difference and it's not a minor one.

Since they eat the same thing all the time, there isn't as much room for discrepancies as in a human diet. We can eat terribly one day, and make up for it the next with whole grains and fruits and such. Cats can't, so even a minor problem in their diet becomes a major one over the years.

People remark about how healthy Zissou seems. No, certainly feeding your cat a lower-quality type of cat food is certainly not abusive or anything of the sort. It's not comparable to the mothers on Maury Povich who feed their infant a 2-liter of Coke and a family meal from KFC... for breakfast. It's more akin to the difference between an average American diet and a healthy diet. And since cats don't have the ability to go to the store, read the labels, and decide for themselves, we have to do the best we can by them, including the healthiest food they will eat and we can afford. I do think sometimes the "dangers" of low-quality foods are exagerrated a little... but it also isn't something to be totally disregarded. Yes, the AAFCO standards are met, but I know the discrepancies between government-regulated minimums and what is actually healthy for our pets (or us). The minimum is what it takes to not have a vitamin/mineral deficiency which causes illness. Not the minimum for optimal health.

Originally Posted by katiemae1277

You should look into Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul, extremely reasonably priced, and IMO has better ingredients than most of your "expensive" brands

Chicken Soup
1. chicken
2. salmon
3. chicken meal
4. chicken fat
5. cracked pearl barley

no corn at all, and no by-products either! (in the whole ingedient list)

ETA: oh and I wanted to add, there's no guarantee that eating a healthy diet is going to make US live a longer, healthier life either, but I think my chances would be better if I did

Click to expand...

hey i checked out all the ingredients and that brand does look really good, i really like the ingredients and the price i found online is decent too, i found a store locator and there some right down the street from me. i had never bothered even looking at this brand before because i thought it was one of the super expensive ones.

Well I changed my cats food after chatting to someone who had done a feline nutrition course, and Gingers fur finally stopped clumping. It was that bad on normal food that when he had his yearly blood tests, I had to get the vet to do part of him - 2 of us had to hold him down while the vet got the clumps out (and this is a very docile cat) - 2 days later he had clumps again!! The week after, I changed to a wet food containing 20-30% meat, rahter than 4%, and his fur went lovely - if he pinches too much of Tom's Whiskas, i can tell cos he starts getting tiny clumps. So in his case, I think it is worth paying more.

Originally Posted by Plebayo

I should also say too, vets endorse foods like the Prescription Diets because they are medically proven to work.

Click to expand...

They are proven to work for the medical problem they are designed for, but often that's at the expense of some other health aspect. Hills t/d sure will clean the teeth, but with cereal as the first ingredient it isn't, imo, a good food nutritionally. My vet doesn't stock any foods as a matter of course - they will order them in for you if needed - and I think that's the best way. That means they don't have any bias towards a particular brand. Many people put a lot of weight in vet endorsement and don't question the quality of the food.

The difficulty with proving that better quality foods are better for health is that it's virtually impossible to prove. Not only is the link between nutrition and health complicted, but getting a sufficient sample size for those being fed the better quality foods would be very difficult. And who would be willing for their cat to participate in a blind trial knowing that they may be feeding their cat the 'inferior' food for many years? And who would fund such a trial? Given the lack of proof, I can only go on what biology tells me is a more appropriate diet for my cat. Corn may not do them any harm at all, but it certainly isn't beneficial either so I'll play safe and avoid it if I can. I also choose wet over dry as the first I'll know my cat has a kidney problem will be when he has a blood test indicating this - and by then he will already have some damage so I'd rather try to prevent that by ensuring his water intake is adequate now.

Good quality and expensive aren't the same thing though, you don't have to pay the earth to get a decent food. I don't care what it costs, I just look at the ingredients and decide whether I think it's a good food. If I do I will then decide whether I can afford it. If I can afford it, the cats get to try it

My ragdoll is on Nutro Indoor Adult food and he ADORES it.

Im not a fan of Eukanuba or Iams after seeing an article of how they test their food on dogs.

Originally Posted by KaraBear

I have to agree with Bella713. In our case, one time we went to the vet, she asked us what we were feeding. When I said Felidae, she replied that she had never heard of it. I told her we shopped at the one quality pet food store in the city and she had never been there! I found the staff at our awesome little pet food store (Global Pet Foods) were more knowledgable about nutrition than the vet.

I found the big difference between cheap and quality food we have fed our cats is their coat. Now on Felidae, they have shiny beautiful fur. On the cheap stuff, it didn't seem to gleam as much.

Click to expand...

My ex-vet would basically say your cat would get sick and it wasn't his responsibility if you didn't feed the food he recommended which was science diet, before knowing much about cats, we agreed to it, and Bumpers sensitive tummy meant he threw it up every time and got pretty sick from not eating, because every time we went back to the vet he said just leave it out he will eat it.

Now we have a new vet (well two since then) each a lot better than the former. With our most recent vet, she did not recommend a brand at all, she gave us a lot of literature on what ingredients would suit our cats, taking into consideration that we would like to feed them all the same if possible, deal with Bumpers food issues and Scully's weight issues.

We had been feeding Innova Evo, after trying them on a wet only diet and it going worse than the SD food, but still wanting something higher protein than normal foods. Our vet had not heard of it, but wanted to learn and went to our local Global Foods for a lesson and they gave her lots of samples of foods she now does recommend due to ingredients, so when it comes to vets, they have little training in actual nutrition other than whatever company pays their school to let them come in.

I agree with whoever said that you do not prolong their life but increase the quality of their lives, mine have nice shiny coats, are more energetic and love their food (and the litter box is easier to deal with)

Originally Posted by jaycee

hey i checked out all the ingredients and that brand does look really good, i really like the ingredients and the price i found online is decent too, i found a store locator and there some right down the street from me. i had never bothered even looking at this brand before because i thought it was one of the super expensive ones.

Click to expand...

my cats eat it and they have gorgeous, soft and shiny fur and everyone really seems to like it too I was actually the opposite of what you thought, I thought because the price wasn't that expensive that it must not be one of the "better" foods, it wasn't until I came here and starting to learn about food, that I bothered to read the label and realized what a deal it was!! I would HIGHLY recommend Chicken Soup to anyone

I have started my kits on Meow Mix before trying different brands due to allergy issues. I currently feed them Inova Evo based on the recomendation of the proprietor of the local pet shop I go to. She took the time to go through all the food she carried and discuss the merits and drawbacks of each one. I didn't think I would see any outward difference with my kits but to my surprise I did. Aside from the decrease in deposits in the litterbox thier coats were shinier and the biggest surprise came from my Cornish Rex. Since my rex does not have alot of fur his ears always had brownish gook in them. I was cleaning them out every other day. I asked the vet and he said it was ear stuff. After one week on Inova his ears cleaned out. No more gook. It was amazing. So to me it just seems they are healthier on Inova.

Tricia

They are proven to work for the medical problem they are designed for, but often that's at the expense of some other health aspect. Hills t/d sure will clean the teeth, but with cereal as the first ingredient it isn't, imo, a good food nutritionally.

Click to expand...

There again, there's no proof that says feeding a grain over a meat is "better" obviously if feeding either raw there is, but if the grain/filler in k/d was so bad, why do cats live longer on it than cats on a regular food with kidney problems?

Prescription diets do exactly what people want them to, they extend the life of the animal, whether ingredients are ideal or not. People don't want "natural" because in real life a cat living in the wild either wouldn't live long enough to develop kidney failure, or the pet would be killed. I understand where you're coming from but there is no such study that says corn is going to cause problems.

Cats are carnivores so I do agree it's best to feed them a food high in protein that is mostly meat and a good quality [rather than cheap] protein. Dogs on the other hand are omnivores and coyotes go out and steal corn around here all the time. I'm not saying it's good to feed a corn filled food, but again many people have animals who do fine on foods mostly made up of grains. You can't say your pet is any healthier than mine based on what you feed. There's no proof.

We feed the foods we feed for OUR sake. To make us feel that we are doing all we can. Not saying it's a bad thing, but if you look at it, pet food is really made with people in mind.

I don't think any decent vet would actually want a animal to be sick for the sake of making money. I would say that if someone is in that field it is because they love animals. I'm pretty happy with my new vet, they don't seem to push certain foods, and they don't have a display of hills or anything. They also never brought up declawing my younger kids. My old vet did have a hills display, though they never outright suggested I feed it, we did get a few free samples.

Price do at the very best tell you something about the quality of the food (the amount of meat and the quality on the ingredients) but unfortunately it's not just to check the price tag that's needed in order to tell if the food is good or not. The most expensive catfood found in Sweden contains:

Cereals, vegetable protein extract, egg and egg derivatives, fish and fish derivatives, powdered cellulose, oils and fats, minerals, hydrolysed chicken protein, plantago psyllium husk

Yep, that's right. It doesn't even contain meat (except from a very small amount of "purified" chicken protein)! And the worst thing is that this food is sold through veterinaries ONLY making cat owners believe it's the very best food you can give your cat.

I really don't care if it's been proven that corn hurts the cat or not. It's been proven to be an inferior source of protein when compared to various meat meals so what excuse, except from saving money, is there to feed cats food that contain lots of corn gluten meal? I mean, the general public don't know of it, but vets should if they decide to sell catfood.

And why drag prescription diets into the discussion? Those diets are meant for sick animals and can't be used as a norm. That kind of food should be considered as medicine.

I talked with our NC State vet students about how much nutrition info they get. In the 4 year program they get one 6-8 hour day of nutrition for small animals. Then whatever else they get on nutrition comes from vendor presentations during lunch-time.

Originally Posted by katiemae1277

my cats eat it and they have gorgeous, soft and shiny fur and everyone really seems to like it too

I was actually the opposite of what you thought, I thought because the price wasn't that expensive that it must not be one of the "better" foods, it wasn't until I came here and starting to learn about food, that I bothered to read the label

and realized what a deal it was!! I would HIGHLY recommend Chicken Soup to anyone

Click to expand...

Where do you get the Chicken Soup brand?

Edit: Nevermind I found a retailer listing. A lot of feed/garden stores have it.

Originally Posted by SolarityBengals

Where do you get the Chicken Soup brand?

Edit: Nevermind I found a retailer listing. A lot of feed/garden stores have it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, they don't sell it at Petsmart and I haven't ever been to Petco, I get mine at Pets Supplies Plus, what seems to be a midwest chain, They have great prices... I might check out my local feed store though, they might be cheaper and that is always a good thing

Originally Posted by katiemae1277

Yeah, they don't sell it at Petsmart

and I haven't ever been to Petco, I get mine at Pets Supplies Plus, what seems to be a midwest chain, They have great prices... I might check out my local feed store though, they might be cheaper

and that is always a good thing

Click to expand...

Check their web site for a retailer locator. I was surprised by the locations..

Originally Posted by SolarityBengals

Check their web site for a retailer locator. I was surprised by the locations..

Click to expand...

i was very happy to find out its sold right down the street from me, and the price!!! i cant wait to get some but i hafta wait until this bag of food i have gets low.

I just looked too and they sell it a couple feed store around me, so I'm going to call to see what their prices are on the large bags of kitten formula