Wysong - Please Help Me Understand.....How is this not "Oversupplementing"?

[aprilprey]

I have been poking about the Wysong site because I was given some of their products to try (for free) and am also going to try their Call of the Wild supplement.  I came away a bit confused - so I emailed them, but that confused me more as the responses sounded very "party line corporate speak" ("We recommend a variety of foods, fresh and canned, dry, all can be supplemented with COTW").  So I emailed back: "So put COTW on everything?"  "Yep".  ????

I get why you'd add COTW to plain meat, or to a limited ingredient canned food like their Au Jus line.  In that case, the COTW supplement seems necessary.  From what I can tell, having had an email exchange with Wysong, COTW can be put on EVERYTHING, and they tell you to do so, even on canned food that clearly has already been supplemented!

I have here a can of their Beef Stew in Gravy - which appears to my eyes to be supplemented and nearly complete as it is - there is beef liver, tricalcium phosphate (calcium source I presume)....but no taurine - but zinc, copper, B vitamins etc....and you are supposed to add MORE supplements via COTW - duplicating some things such as liver (COTW has chicken liver), kelp, THREE more sources of calcium on top of what is already in the canned food?  Why are beef liver AND chicken liver necessary?

So why leave out taurine if you are already adding in supplements...forcing one to buy a separate item?

Why duplicate supplements?

And, finally, does the concept of "over supplementing" ever get raised?  In the case of water soluble vitamins/nutrients, the cat will simply pee excess stuff out.  No harm no foul but wasteful, I think.  Why waste - this can get pricy enough without supplements ending up in the litterbox?

And then there are the fat soluble ones that stay in the system - no concern there (vitamins A, D, E)?

Comments?  Enlighten me!  Because I can't get a straight answer from THEM other than "yes, add COTW to everything you feed your cat". 

 

[ldg]

Yeah, they seem like a bit of a squiffy company to me. I use CoTW for Lazlo with meat, but the ONLY reason I use it for him IS because of the anti-oxidants in there. As a cancer survivor, I think he benefits from all the plant-based stuff. It's also small amounts... AND on top of it, they use the synthetic vitamin K (menadione). What's up with that? :dk:

FYI, the only known cases of vitamin A toxicity in cats have been in cats fed a diet that was exclusively liver. And according to this research piece by JG Morris, cats have a very high tolerance for vitamin D: Idiosyncratic nutrient requirements of cats appear to be diet-induced evolutionary adaptations,

I don't have the research reference handy, but the same goes for E.

...but really, do we want to test it out? :lol3:

I'm surprised they say it can be used with already supplemented food. :dk: I know they have lines of food that aren't complete, but... :scratch:

 

[aprilprey]

OK, so I am not crazy!  I hate it when communication isn't clear.

I was pleasantly surprised to find on the bottle this: For long term freshness and preservation freeze or refrigerate.

I want to add this in to a batch of ground and freeze it - it will drive me nuts trying to keep track of which little servings out of the freezer need supplements vs. which ones don't.  Honestly, I just can't get that worked up about what freezing does to nutrients!