What, me sweet? Not yesterday
So many people have so many different opinions about this. I like to eat organic fruits and vegetables in order to avoid eating pesticides. Anyway regarding the topic of pet food, I see pros and cons to a lot of brands. I see holistic brands that list large amounts of fruit which I feel is too much sugar for a cat. I also believe that it is unnatural to feed a cat only muscle meat and rice with vitamin and mineral supplements, rather than including nutrient rich organ meats for essential vitamins and ground bone or perhaps egg shells for calcium. Many of these no by-product foods, if you think about it, the only reason they thrive on these foods is because of the abundant addition of vitamins and minerals that must be added to the food because there are no natural sources of them in the food, such as liver for vitamin A. The main criticisms I have read for by-products is inconsistency of ingredients, plus many people do not like that a by-product is a mystery ingredient, although certain sources are quite nutritious.
There in lies the problem. You can MAKE your kid eat differently because being a human and of "complex" thinking a human will eat other foods. Some cats will out right REFUSE to eat certain things. I for one am not going to let my cat starve because I am determined to feed him a certain food. My cat so far eats basically anything, but has turned his nose up to two things. He started throwing up the Nature's Variety RAW that I was feeding him [the Venison Diet]. He then stopped eating it all together after about a day of him eating some and then throwing up over it. I bought the lamb diet instead, he wouldn't touch it. I mixed z/d with it and all he would do was lick the z/d off. He also refused to eat the cod pate I bought him. He loves the trout, but won't touch the salmon or cod. I originally didn't believe people when they told me their cats wouldn't eat certain foods, I thought surely if you left it out long enough and only fed that long enough the cat would eat it. No way. Napolean went for a week just licking z/d off the raw, and because the pate is so spendy I only wasted two packets on him. So it isn't even CLOSE to being like it is with people. Cats have no problems not eating what they don't like.
There again, you're wrong. If your pets body was unhealthy their fur would begin to lack luster, if something was going wrong your pet would not be feeling well period. Plus if your pet goes to the vet as directed, the vet can confirm your pet is healthy. My dog is 100% healthy on the t/d. I work in a vet clinic so I have access to drawing her blood as many times as I want and checking things out. There is no real placebo test support saying that your cat is going to get sick eating fancy feast his whole life. It's great that you don't believe in some foods, but there is no such thing as saying that someone's cat died because it was on Iams instead of RAW, or Pedigree instead of Canidae. There is no test saying your pet is going to live any longer than mine, or live any healthier. There again you repeat your statement because you have no way of knowing whether your pet is anymore, or any less healthy, just because the outside appears to be.
Comparing different cat foods to normal people food/organic food is nonsense. Two people can eat exactly the same diet when one buys 'regular' food and the other organic. If you take two cats however, one on a food which has a low meat/high grain percentage and another one on a food with a high meat percentage, that's an entirely different thing. Even more when you would compare between kibble or a decent brand of canned, or kibble and raw (100% meat)
Unless the cat isn't sick yet. I truly believe fluid intake is a big factor with struvite, and there is research which supports this. But most cats seem to do fine on a dry diet, on some will continue to do so for a long time, but others will get sick suddenly, and then it is too late, no matter how great the cat looked before.
From what I know about IAMS is refering to dogs, not sure if it's the same for cats. When a dog has been eating IAMS and is switched to any other brand of food it takes a very long time for their body to adjust. There is something in IAMS that has caused problems like what you've described in dogs too.
But there again, it can't be proven that the DIET caused the problem. The only diet that could really be diagnosed that you under nourished your pet would be if you were feeding RAW and only feeding Organ meat, your vet is going to say, yeah your cat has _____ because you only fed organ meat and that isn't complete. Or if you were feeding say strictly muscle meat and not supplementing taurine, your cat has heart failure because you haven't been supplementing his taurine intake.
How ... look at the labels and the break downs , at least in the last few years they are nearly identical cept for $$$....
Beautifully put...
