What is the cat food made of and which composition is better?

Have you ever thought about what to feed your pet? It's not about the brand of the product and not about the form, but about what composition should ideally be in food for a cat. Probably, not everyone had this thought: the majority of cat owners completely trust the food manufacturers. Not everyone reads the composition of the product, but in vain. Animal feed is a business where many manufacturers are trying to save money by investing less and getting more. Therefore, the good fellow is the owner who always reads the composition on the package, and knows which words on this list should please, and which ones should force you to switch to another pack.

Dry food for animals, according to many, appeared recently, literally thirty years ago. In the post-Soviet reality, the flow of fodder burst, in fact, not so long ago - in the 90s of the last century. But the same dry animal feed has been produced for 150 years! The cunning American James Spratt was the first to put this business on stream, although England, not the States, became the birthplace of such a business. The composition of animal food could be regarded as rather primitive: flour, ground meat, beef blood and some vegetables. All this was transformed into a cookie in the form of a bone.

Interestingly, dogs immediately liked such a product (yes, the first food was made not for cats, but for dogs). Experts were skeptical about such nutrition, but the mechanism of fast food for animals, and they sometimes called it that way, had already been launched.

The next stage is the 30s and 40s of the XX century. We can say that the era of dry food began at this time. In those years, there were only two dry product options: granules and balls. The granules were ready-made crackers or crumbs, and the balls were the ingredients that the breeder had to soak by hand. But it cannot be said that large companies supplying these products to the market made an industrial breakthrough for the benefit of our smaller brothers. Alas, the manufacturer just got rid of the production products very profitably.

And then the story turned even more interesting: Purin's company began using extrusion in the 50s, and Mark Morris invented veterinary nutrition. He managed to develop a medicinal food, which, at first, he twisted with his own hand into canned food with a special machine. Finally, Paul Yams made a huge breakthrough - he laid down the philosophy of feeding cats and dogs in a balanced way. Thanks to him, the truth was established: dogs and cats are carnivores, and their food should be based on high-quality high-quality protein.

Closer to the 80s, a clear gradation appears on the feed market: economy and premium feed, super-premium and veterinary diets are on sale. But there was often more marketing in this division: not all cat food corresponded to what was stated on the package. In the 90s, the holistic fashion came along - the idea of ​​healthy nutrition for animals began to deepen. High-quality nutrients, eco-products, instead of cereals, in the non-protein (meaning animal protein) part of the feed, vegetables, herbs and berries have become the basis of feed.

Now the market for animal feed is in a way overcrowded. The buyer, as statistics show, follows a choice based on advertising, price and visual appeal of the package.

The cat is a predator, carnivore. Its digestive tract is little adapted to digest food from a person's table. If you feed her salty, smoked, fried, spicy, the animal will quickly acquire diseases that will shorten its life.

Cat nutritionists insist on the following points.

• Quality products of animal origin are the basis of cat food. Animal nutrition consists mainly of meat and by-products, valuable for their proteins and essential amino acids. The pet definitely needs polyunsaturated fatty acids, which cannot be obtained without meat and fish food.
• Vegetables, grains, vegetable oils are also important. Retinol and niacin are those components without which a kitty cannot grow and develop normally, look healthy. And if you feed an animal from the "human table", it is very difficult to track how vitaminized its nutrition is.

In Russia, strict veterinary and sanitary standards are put forward for the composition of animal feed. It is allowed to produce cat food only from farm animals, from meat that is suitable for human consumption. Legally, not only the quality of the base is controlled, but also the organoleptic, biological indicators of the feed. It is very important what its texture, smell, color is - such an analysis is required.

Let's take a look at the main ingredients of the feed.

• Meat... The producer has the right to call meat veal, beef, pork, lamb, goat meat. It is good if the pack specifies what kind of meat is present in the composition. But not all manufacturers do this. If there is a rabbit in the feed, you should read this word on the package. But poultry (chicken) and fish cannot be called meat. It should be written like this: fish, chicken, turkey, etc.

• Bird... The skin and bones of a bird are called so. If a manufacturer grinds chicken bones together with meat, he is not a scammer - on the contrary, for a pet it is a good source of calcium.Therefore, if you read the inscription “bird” on a pack of food, keep in mind that in addition to the muscle part, there may be bone fragments there, which have been thoroughly ground.

• Meat by-products. These are the edible components of mammals that are not muscle. Kidneys or liver, for example. The udder and lungs, as you know, a person does not eat, but for domestic cats, these components are acceptable.

• Poultry offal. Legs, heads, intestines of a bird in a crushed state can also get into cat food.

• Meat flour. This is the name of the raw material that is made from mammalian tissue. Meat flour can contain both meat and offal. The law did not decide to oblige the manufacturer to indicate what exactly is in this flour and whose meat is used. If bones are added to this composition, "meat and bone meal" is written. There are also such options: "meal from animal by-products", "meal from poultry" or "meal from poultry by-products."

• Fats and oils. Animal and vegetable fats are used to make the food taste more attractive and to increase its energy value.

• Vegetable components. As a rule, barley, corn, peas, rice, potatoes are added to the feed. They serve as a link for other ingredients, only secondarily can they be called a source of carbohydrates.

• Vitamins and minerals. The minerals contained in the feed can be described by the manufacturer as follows: a simple listing or enumeration of specific substances with a mineral content. Minerals are always synthetic additives, vitamins are also artificial substances.

• Taurine... This is one of the substances that can be called laboratory-synthesized amino acids. The body of a cat must synthesize this element itself, but in domestic animals this valuable substance is always in short supply. Cats that hunt rats and mice do not lack taurine. The rest must necessarily receive it in the form of supplements or, which is even simpler, as part of the feed.

• Ash... Almost all cat owners who buy food for the first time believe that ash is an alimentary supplement. But in fact, this is the name for the measure of the content of minerals in cat food. According to this indicator, it is assessed whether the amount of calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium and other minerals is balanced at the root. For example, there is more ash in the muscle tissues of an animal (that is, in meat) than in bones.

To say that we live in a time when cats can get perfect nutrition from beautiful packaging is a lie. There is still a long way to go to a truly optimal power system. Alas, pet store shelves are overflowing with starchy foods. And our animals are forced to sit on a "starchy diet" that is unhealthy for themselves. And the point is not that the ideal feed recipe has not been invented, but that quality control of pet food is poorly developed.

A huge portion of the feed comes from the United States. The CVM (veterinary medicine center) is responsible for the control of products for pets. But the main concern of the center is tracking the quality of food additives and medicated feed for livestock. The most negative point: before entering the market, the feed manufacturer does not need to receive a permit. It is enough to meet the requirements of the state where the feed is produced.

Let us analyze such a composition using the example of the most popular economy class products. Usually, the packaging of such food contains beef, lamb or chicken, but not more than 7%. Seven percent protein for a carnivore - do you think it is enough? Rather, in such a food, the meat serves as a flavoring agent that attracts the animal to food, but certainly not a protein source. But by-products in this feed are about 60%. There are very few vitamins and minerals in it, but fats are present.

Additives that compensate for the composition of micro- and macroelements, about 5%. About the same as meat, and often more. About 25% of the composition of cheap dry food is cereals. It is a source of carbohydrates for your cat. The composition is nutritious, but far from the most useful for the animal. A young cat can cope with it, but a sick, old animal cannot.

Dry premium food inspires more hope for a healthy diet for a cat, but there is also a nuance here. Many of the ingredients in these feeds lead to the rapid obesity of the cat, and if you do not organize frequent games and walks, the animal will get fat very quickly.

What shouldn't be in wet food is cellulose, sugar, caramel, propylene glycol (the animal doesn't need to absorb sweeteners). Artificial dye E127 is a provocateur of oncological diseases. There are usually a lot of offal in wet food, and they are not always attractive: it can be beef skin, for example. If there is a decoding of "meat", it is better than a generalization.

There are canned food that a cat can eat every day, and there are those that are intended only for occasional meals. Kids love mousses and pates, and adult cats love canned food with pieces of meat. The composition of this type of food is close to the composition of wet food. If you combine dry food and canned food in your pet's diet, it is desirable that they are from the same product line.

Of course, the producer wants, first of all, to earn money, and not to feed many cats. Its task is to attract the animal to the bowl. And this can be done with the help of flavors. This is how the extract of chamomile, ginger, rosemary, fennel appears in the feed. And so that the food has an attractive appearance and crispy crackers look beautiful in a cat's bowl, emulsifiers and thickeners are added to the recipe.

But there are some really good inclusions among the additional ingredients. For example, components that bind bile acids: statins, sequestrants.

Before you go to the pet store, think, maybe you can organize something more worthy for your pet than industrial food? Check out the book (or excerpts) Food Pets Die For by Anne Martin, the pet food industry is not shown in the most attractive way. But even without books, one can simply turn on critical thinking: when entering a regular hypermarket, a person buys a huge amount of "chemistry", often without thinking about it. Nor is it worth believing that commercial animal food is more humane. However, if there is no alternative, you will have to buy something.

Let's see what the experts say on this score.

• About a third of a cat's diet should be wet or canned food, the rest should be dry food. Better natural food, prepared from meat or fish, there is no and cannot be.
• A dry product is always a plentiful drink for a cat. If she lives on dry food, and she does not have enough drink, health problems will appear very quickly. For the same reason, feed your pet wet food or canned food several times a week.
• Holistic food is a top food for cats. The composition is balanced, there are no preservatives and dyes, no allergens. But the cost of such a product is very high, and it is also not easy to find it on free sale.

The best feeds are premium, premium, holistic formulations. Remember that if you buy an economy class product, even the most advertised brand does not improve its quality. Everything is trite: cheap food cannot be good.Therefore, getting a pet is a responsible business, and first make sure that you are fully prepared for this.

For information on how to choose the best dry food, see the next video.