What is cat food made of and what is the best composition?

Have you ever thought about how to feed your pet? The point is not in the brand of the product and not in the form, but in what composition should ideally be in the food for the cat. Probably, not everyone visited this idea: most of the owners of cats completely trust the food producers. The composition of the product is not read by everyone, but in vain. The production of animal feed is a business where many manufacturers try to save money by investing less and getting more. Therefore, the fellow is the owner who always reads the composition on the package, and knows which words on this list should please, and which ones - make him move to another pack.

Dry food for animals, according to many, appeared recently, literally thirty years ago. In post-Soviet reality, the feed stream 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 first to put this business on stream was the cunning American James Spratt, although not the States, but England, 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 cookies in the form of stones.

It is interesting that literally immediately such a product was liked by dogs (yes, the first food was made not for cats, but for dogs). Experts were skeptical of such a diet, but the mechanism of fast food for animals, and sometimes called it that way, was already launched.

The next stage is the 30s and 40s of the 20th century. We can say that the era of dry feed began at this time. In those years there were only two varieties of dry product: granules and balls. The granules were ready-made crackers or crumbs, and the balls were the components that the breeder had to soak manually. But it is impossible to say that large companies supplying these products to the market made an industrial breakthrough for the benefit of our smaller brothers. Alas, the manufacturer simply very profitably got rid of production products.

And then the story spun even more interesting: Purin's company began using extrusion in the 50s, and Mark Morris invented veterinary nutrition. He managed to develop a medicinal feed, which, at first, he personally screwed a special machine into canned food. Finally, Paul Yam made a huge breakthrough - he laid the philosophy of balanced feeding of cats and dogs. Thanks to him, the truth was established: dogs and cats are carnivorous, and their food should be based on a complete high-quality protein.

Closer to the 80s, a clear gradation appears in the feed market: economy and premium feeds, super-premium and veterinary diets go on sale. But there was sometimes more marketing in this division: not all cat food corresponded to what was stated on the package. In the 90s, the fashion for holistic came - the idea of ​​a healthy diet for animals began to deepen. The basis of the feed was high-quality nutrients, eco-products, instead of cereals, in the non-protein (meaning animal protein) parts of the feed, vegetables, herbs and berries began to be used to a greater extent.

Now the animal feed market is, in a sense, crowded. The buyer, as statistics show, should choose based on advertising, price and the attractiveness of the packaging.

A cat is a predator, a carnivore. Digest food from a person’s table is little adapted to its digestive tract. If you feed it 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 offal, valuable for its proteins and essential amino acids. A pet needs polyunsaturated fatty acids, which cannot be obtained without meat and fish food.
• Vegetables, cereals, vegetable oils are also important. Retinol and niacin - those components without which the cat can not grow and develop normally, look healthy. And if you feed the animal from the “human table”, it is very difficult to track how fortified 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 and food purposes. Legally, not only the quality of the base is controlled, but also the organoleptic, biological indicators of the feed. It is very important what kind of texture, smell, color he has - such an analysis is required.

Consider the main ingredients of the feed.

• Meat. The manufacturer has the right to call meat veal, beef, pork, lamb, goat meat. It’s good if it is specified on the pack which 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 packaging. But the bird (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 that. If the manufacturer has ground the chicken bones with meat, it is not a schemer - 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 also be bone fragments that are ground finely.

• Meat offal. These are the edible components of mammals that are not muscular. Kidneys or liver, for example. The udder and the lungs, as you know, people do not eat, but for domestic cats these components are acceptable.

• Offal of poultry. The legs, heads, intestines of the bird in the crushed state can also get into cat food.

• Meat flour. So called raw materials, which are made from mammalian tissues. Meat flour can contain both meat and offal. The law did not decide to oblige the producer 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: “flour from animal offal”, “flour from poultry” or “flour from offal of poultry”.

• Fats and oils. Animal and vegetable fats are used to make the food more attractive in taste, so that its energy value increases.

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

• Vitamins and minerals. The minerals contained in the feed, the manufacturer can describe as follows: a simple listing or listing of specific substances containing minerals. 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 cat's body must synthesize this element itself, but in pets, a valuable substance is always in short supply. Cats that prey on rats and mice do not lack Taurine. The rest must receive it in the form of additives or, even easier, in the composition of the feed.

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

To say that we live at a time when cats can get perfect food from a beautiful package is to lie. A truly optimal power system is still a long way off. Alas, the shelves of pet stores are full of starch-rich feed. And our animals are forced to sit on a harmful “starchy diet”. And the point is not that the ideal food recipe has not been invented, but that the quality control of food for pets is poorly developed.

A huge part of the feed comes from the USA. For the control of pet products, a computer is responsible for the Center for Veterinary Medicine. But the main concern of the center is monitoring the quality of food additives and medicinal livestock feed. The most negative point: before entering the market, the feed producer should not receive a permit. It is enough to meet the requirements of the state where the feed is produced.

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

Additives that compensate for the composition of micro and macro elements are about 5%. About the same as meat, and often more. About 25% of the composition of cheap dry food is cereals. This is a source of carbohydrates for cats. The composition is nutritious, but far from the most useful for the animal. A young cat can handle it, but a sick, old animal doesn’t.

Dry premium feeds inspire more hope for a healthy diet for a cat, but there is a nuance. Many ingredients from such feeds lead to a rapid obesity of the cat, and if you do not organize frequent games and walks, the cat will get fat very quickly.

What should not be in wet food is cellulose, sugar, caramel, propylene glycol (the animal does not need to absorb sweeteners). Artificial dye E127 - a provocateur of cancer. There are usually a lot of offal in wet food, and they are not always attractive: it can be beef skin, for example. If the transcript of "meat" is, it is better than a generalization.

There are canned foods that a cat can consume every day, and there are those that are intended only for periodic nutrition. Kids love mousses and pastes, and adult cats like canned food with pieces of meat. The composition of this type of product is close to the composition of wet food. If you combine dry food and canned food in your pet’s diet, it is advisable that they be from the same product line.

Of course, the manufacturer wants, first of all, to earn money, and not to feed many cats. His task is to attract the animal to the bowl. And you can do this with the help of flavorings. So in the composition of the feed appears extract of chamomile, ginger, rosemary, fennel. And so that the food has an attractive appearance, and crispy crackers looked beautiful in a cat's bowl, emulsifiers and thickeners are added to the recipe.

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

Before you go to the pet store, think, maybe you can organize something more worthy for your pet than industrial feed? Read the book (or excerpts) of Enna Martin's Food Pets Die For, the pet food industry there is not shown in the most appealing way. But even without books, you can simply turn on critical thinking: coming to a regular hypermarket, a person in large quantities buys up “chemistry”, often without thinking about it. You should not believe that food for animals, put on a commercial stream, is more humane. However, if there is no alternative, you have to buy something.

Let's see what experts say on this subject.

• About a third of a cat's diet should be wet or canned foods, the rest is dry food. Better than natural food prepared from meat or fish, there is not 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 drinking, health problems will manifest very quickly. For the same reason, give your pet wet food or canned food several times a week.
• Holistic food is a top product for cats. The composition is balanced, there are no preservatives and dyes, allergens, too. But the cost of such a product is very high, and it is also not easy to find it in free sale.

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

See how to choose the best dry food in the next video.