Low fat cat food?

[susiell]

Turns out my otherwise healthy-looking 8yo neutered male has super high triglycerides and needs to go on a low fat diet. I've been feeding him both homemade raw (using TCFeline premix) and Primal freeze dried rabbit. Vet is recommending going off a raw diet. Since he hasn't eaten anything but raw in years, I'm not sure where to start to find a low fat diet. It has to be grain free and species appropriate. Any suggestions?

 

[maggie101]

Most cats love weruva. Low carb,high protein

 

[Kflowers]

CHewy.com gives nutrition information for each pet food they sell. Pick out the product, scroll down to nutrition (or ingredients). There will be list of ingredients, then or to the side a break down of protein, fat etc. Once you know what the fat content of the food you've been feeding him, you will be able to compare what they have.

I'm sort of surprised I always thought raw was fairly low fat, unless you were heavy into feeding duck.

 

[maggie101]

CatFoodDB - Weruva Cat Food Reviews

Weruva cat food reviews from CatFoodDB -- Includes nutritional analysis, ingredient lists, allergen alerts and more.

catfooddb.com

 

[susiell]

Most cats love weruva. Low carb,high protein

Yes, whenever he does his finicky thing (about one every 18 months) I put both my cats on Weruva cats in the kitchen chicken and duck. It's the only flavor they like, and they love it. I was thinking about going back to that as it looks like it's super low in fat (despite the duck!).

But the problem I'm facing is how to interpret the nutritional info. Chicken breast, which he currently eats in the homemade food, are already low in fat. It must be the primal rabbit, which now that i look at the nutritional info, is 25% fat! Okay, we are cutting out the primal!

 

[FeebysOwner]

If you are feeding your cat a raw diet, you should be able to determine the fat content of the foods your cat is eating. Of course, you can compare those with the general fat content in commercial food just to see if your concoctions are high in fat or not. If you don't find a relatively significant difference, ask your vet what that might mean. I believe there are additional testing that can be done to further evaluate the triglycerides. If your cat's cholesterol is not also elevated, ask the vet about that as well.

If your cat did not fast properly that can raise the triglyceride level (as well as cholesterol, usually) which may mean re-doing the test after 12 hours of fasting to see if the numbers change.

 

[susiell]

If you are feeding your cat a raw diet, you should be able to determine the fat content of the foods your cat is eating. Of course, you can compare those with the general fat content in commercial food just to see if your concoctions are high in fat or not. If you don't find a relatively significant difference, ask your vet what that might mean. I believe there are additional testing that can be done to further evaluate the triglycerides. If your cat's cholesterol is not also elevated, ask the vet about that as well.

If your cat did not fast properly that can raise the triglyceride level (as well as cholesterol, usually) which may mean re-doing the test after 12 hours of fasting to see if the numbers change.

Yes, good point, however he said they were super elevated, like way above what you would normally expect, but I will clarify with him about the fasting vs not fasting numbers. He did say all the lipids were high, but the triglycerides were severely elevated.

As I said in my second post, it seems the Primal rabbit that they have been happily eating for years is very high in fat, so that is leaving their rotation as of today. At the very least, that will help.

Their raw food is all chicken, mostly breast with some thigh, neither of which are very high in fat. No higher than what I'm seeing in most commercial foods, so I'm convinced it's the Primal.

 

[maggie101]

Yes, good point, however he said they were super elevated, like way above what you would normally expect, but I will clarify with him about the fasting vs not fasting numbers. He did say all the lipids were high, but the triglycerides were severely elevated.

As I said in my second post, it seems the Primal rabbit that they have been happily eating for years is very high in fat, so that is leaving their rotation as of today. At the very least, that will help.

Their raw food is all chicken, mostly breast with some thigh, neither of which are very high in fat. No higher than what I'm seeing in most commercial foods, so I'm convinced it's the Primal.
[/QUOTE
Thigh and liver are high in fat and triglycerides if I understand right from an article I just read, the freeze dried is high cal

 

[susiell]

Yes, I'm going to start limiting their home made raw to just chicken breast, and find a new food as a sub for the Primal rabbit, after closely studying fat content.

 

[mrsgreenjeens]

Vital Essentials has freeze dried raw rabbit that is 15% fat on a Guarantee Analysis, and probably a lot of that fat is from herring oil, which is a good type of oil (Omega 3) If you want to give them a little variety, you might try that. I'm totally shocked because rabbit is a low fat protein.

 

[susiell]

Trying to figure out percentages from the guaranteed analysis is super confusing.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Trying to figure out percentages from the guaranteed analysis is super confusing.

There is an equation for transferring guaranteed analysis to dry matter basis, if that is your issue. It can be found on the web site link below, but you can also ask any company for their dry matter basis as well by contacting them. This link is not specific to your issues, but rather a general guideline.
Tanya's Comprehensive Guide to Feline Chronic Kidney Disease - How to Use the Cat Food Data Tables (felinecrf.org) -

Calculating Dry Matter Analysis Yourself
You shouldn't often need to calculate dry matter yourself because I've already done it for many foods. If you do want to do it yourself, you need to know the amount of moisture in the food and the amount of whatever you are measuring (often this will be phosphorus), and then you need to crunch the numbers a little.

Let's assume you have a food with a moisture content of 76% and a phosphorus content of 0.2% on an As Fed basis. This is the formula:

• The dry matter in a food is always 100 - (% moisture in the food). So in this example, with 76% moisture, 100-76% leaves 24% dry matter.
• You then have to divide the phosphorus content by the dry matter. In this case, you would divide 0.2% phosphorus by 24% dry matter, which gives 0.833% phosphorus content of this food on a Dry Matter Analysis basis.

Remember, using the data from cans of food in the USA for this exercise is often unreliable because the data on the cans tend to be maximums or minimums rather than actual data.

Scheyder Web Design has a DMA calculator.

PawDiet has a DMA calculator.

Catcentric has a DMA calculator.

The US Food & Drug Administration also explains about dry matter analysis (scroll down to Guaranteed Analysis).

Hope this can be of some help.

 

[susiell]

Thanks so much. I went down a rabbit hole figuring out fat percentages, using that formula, which actually ended up steering me to some canned varietys of Stella and Chewy's. Was going to start out slow, but both cats devoured it right away. I have never seen any cat take to new food like that, least of all mine!

It's been a super stressful week, because in addition to the little cat with the high triglycerides, my now senior dog had protein in his urine, so I had to find a lower protein food for him.

All 3 of my fur babies have been eating raw for years, and now they are not. It's going to take some getting used to.

 

[FeebysOwner]

I hope this new approach pans out for you for your kitties!!!

Also, are they going to do any other testing on your dog? There can be numerous causes for high urine protein.
Excess Protein In Dogs' Urine: Symptoms, Causes, & Treatments - DogTime