best diabetic food in the UK?

Hello, I'm interested in finding good diabetic food for my 21 year old cat - besides the usual Hills and Purina from the vet. I use Integra 'diabetic' and 'kidney' (from zooplus) and purina 'duck and garden vegetable' and find that her Bg does not increase when on these foods. Anyone else have any info to share please? Royal Canin light is OK. It's hard to compare foods when different information is given on different products etc. She is also on Fortekor for renal failure. Thanks.

 

Hi and welcome to FDMB :mrgreen:

I'm a Brit living in Germany.

Commercial wet foods low in carbs available in the UK are:

Felix in jelly 8.3%
Felix 'As Good as It looks' 3.4%
I'm not at home as I do have info on others but can't remember them off the top of my head.

Ruth From Wales also uses:
Tesco Luxury poultry in Jelly,
Tesco Finest in jelly (only as a real treat as it's expensive) or
Whiskers Oh so meaty in jelly.

Whiskas MMM was 1% but I've a feeling they have stopped making this.
Butchers from Sainsbury's too, but again I don't know if it's specific ones without checking at home.

The other important thing, I note you say kitty has renal failure?
I'm sure there is something about low phosphorous? or such like for these kitties.
Sorry I'm short on time, but if you scroll down here in health until you see a post CKD-What you need to know (something like that). THis is an on-going post that I'm sure is aimed at kitties with kidney deficiencies.

Hills dry is a waste of time-too high in carbs and not particularly nutritious either! (not to mention the costs)

Please ask if you want any other help.

The ethos of this board with giving insulin is start low, go slow. (1unit of insulin initially and then hometesting to monitor how this goes)
Good Luck :mrgreen:

 

Many thanks, I buy a lot of food from zooplus (which is shipped from Germany) and they have quite a variety that comes up if you search for 'diabetic' in their search engine. I have used Almo light, Vom Feinstein select, feline Porta 21 and sometimes Kattovit. It's hard cos in a way the diabetic diet and the kidney diet are at odds, but I am finding that using the Integra kidney (nieren) seems to be the best compromise, but I am always looking for new and better food. She does go through periods when she is not feeling so great and then it can be hard to get her to eat, so I need to have a variety to hand. She usually likes the Purina Dm wet but I am not sure how good it is? I also read that one can feed Dene's Older with Turkey and Lamb (which she loved and then hated!) and have tried Smilla Tuna (Thunfisch) recently.

I'd be interested to know what anyone thinks of some of the food on zooplus as they have good info on each product.

I'm going to try Felix as good as it looks, many thanks. Most food doesn't list the carb% which is frustrating, so I look for high animal protien and no sugars, cereals and as littel plant based additives as possible.

She was diagnosed in Dec 08 and I hometest before every injection as she does throw some low readings every now and again. Luckily she is a honey to deal with.

 

Hi again,

I will have to look at the Zoo plus.

I've got a list of the low carb cat foods that you can get here in Germany too. I just figured you couldn't really get them in UK.

You can actually work the carbs out yourself. It's not 100% accurate because often the values they put are general and can vary slightly from batch to batch. Again, I'll have to do this when I get home from work.

Felix does have a small amount of plant extracts in it, but I had Lucky beautifully regulated-it was Pancreatitis that was the problem along with ignorant vets!

Out of interest, what insulin do you use and what dose do you administer?

Fabulous that you do hometest. Been quite hard recently trying to persuade UK newbies hometesting is the way forward. Do you do any spot checks through out the cycle?

Sorry, now I'm asking all the questions :roll:
Going out shortly so will be this evening before I get another peek.

Ps-when she's off her food a little, use the fish varities of Felix (or which ever product you use). Because of the pungency and something else! kitties seem to go mad for fish. Jojo, one of the vet techs on the board said not to use fish more than once a week (I think it may be to do with mercury build up?). I only used it when Lucky was off her food.

I'm going to find the link for tANYA'S (?) WEBSITE TOO-ALL ABOUT KITTIES WITH KIDNEY PROBLEM,S. mAY BE OF SOME HELP TO YOU.

 

Oh thanks, you've been so helpful already. I think the carb and "junk" content are the most NB things for me to be looking out for - small amounts of "forbidden" (like cheese, yoghurt) don't seem to make much diffs to Cattro.when she is really off her food baby food is best, but hard to find w/o onion - seems they all have it, and hard to find pure meat, but at that stage I will do anything to get her to eat. She is not a fish fan at all, but will eat it sometimes. My vet told me years ago to avoid fish due to the poisons in the sea.

She is on PZI twice a day, a very low dose, depending on her readings I'll give her 0.2 -1 iu each time. She sometimes has really low readings pre-shot so she seems sensitive to insulin. We had a hypo episode just after being diagnosed, when the vet increased her Caninsulin too quickly and she was also home alone after vomiting her am feed.

I look forward to hearing what you think of all the foods on zooplus.

 

Sorry, meant to say that I do BG curves every so often and I do spot check if there's anything that makes me a bit concerned. I would usually check at say, 5, 6, 7 hours after insulin.

I found her ears slow to heal and pricking her feet works much better for us. She is an old girl and while I want to do the best for her, I also need to take her quality if life into account.

Kay

 

Here is the list from Germany (most of these are availble at Zooplus)

* Amadeus
* Amora Fleisch pur (enth. Distelöl)
* Amora Vom Besten
* Animonda Carny Kitten
* Animonda Carny Adult
* Animonda Carny Ocean
* Animonda Carny Fisch Menü
* Animonda vom Feinsten Classic
* Animonda vom Feinsten Grandis
* Animonda vom Feinsten Kitten
* Animonda vom Feinsten für kastrierte Katzen
* Animonda Vom Feinsten Pure
* Animonda vom Feinsten Senior
* Bozita Dose
* Bozita Paté (enth. Macrogard)
* Cat&Clean Foodline
* Forza10 Bio
* Leonardo Premium
* LogoCat
* Miamor Bio
* Miamor Pastete
* Miamor Milde Mahlzeit
* Porta 21
* RopoCat Adult
* Ropocat Feinstes Fleisch
* Schesir Natural
* Schesir Pur
* ShinyCat
* Smilla Geflügeltöpfchen
* Tiger Adult
* Tiger Adult Spezial

Supermarkt oder Discounter labels which are also low carbs
* AS Premium Menü (Schlecker)
* AS Paté (Schlecker)
* Dein Bestes (DM)
* Felix Paté
* OptiCat (Lidl)
* Lux (Aldi Nord)
* Shah (Aldi Süd)
* Sheba Essence Paté
* Sheba Menü (nur die Sorten Geflügelcocktail, Huhn & Kalb, Lamm)

For a kidney diet most important seems to be the amount of phosphrous, I can look up later which are best in this area. Kate already mentioned the Felix and Whiskas foods which are low carb. Gormet Gold from purina in the little 85g cans is the same as Fancy Feast which many in the USA feed, mostly the pate styles without sauce or jelly.

 

Monique, thanks very much - I found zooplus to be a great site for ordering these foods and I will try a few more now. I could open my own shop here, with the amount of different foods I have to hand!! Their postage is very decent, and free over £19.00. (no I don't work for them )

As I said, I have found the Animonda Integra very good - both the 'Diabetes' and the 'Nieren' (kidney). Maybe I feed the 'Nieren' on a more regular basis as it should help her kidneys and doesn't seem too bad for the diabetes. Cattro was never a fussy eater but does seem to wax and wane with her preferences now.

All the vets refuse to consider anything but Hills or Purina and I can't get my insurance to cover any other food.

Kay :RAHCAT

 

I recommend Zooplus alot to people from the EU (I don't order food from them myself) but I always get e-mail offers or %off or save 5€ coupons and order things like scratch mats or cat grass etc. I think they deliver in most EU countries and yes free shipping on larger orders (30€ or so). At the very least I use thier website to give people here an idea of what the products are and what the cans look like (in case they are looking in local pet food shops etc.) plus on the website is usually the nutritional information so you can compare a bit.

Be sure and sign up so you can get the discount offers. Or if anyone is reading this who is interested say so and I will post the cupoun codes on the supply closet when I get them in an e-mail.

 

Hi again,

looks like Monique saved me a job.

Here's the website I mentioned. Hope it may be of some help.
http://www.felinecrf.org/

Just ask if there is anything else we can help with.

Good Luck :mrgreen:

 

Hi,

You can calculate carb content of catfood by using the calculator on this link

http://www.scheyderweb.com/cats/catfood.html

Bozita has a wet food that is low in phosphorous, only 0.3%, and only 0.75% carbs. Zooplus sells Bozita.

www.bozita.com

My cat is CRF & diabetic, I am learning a lot about appropriate food for her diabetes, since she is newly diagnosed, but she has been CRF for years, so for the kidneys, there are varying views on the protein level, but the quality of the protein is actually key, and low phosphorous. (and also got a bit too do with if your cat is overweight and needs to lose weight or not, because many kidney foods are low protein and high fat, which isn't great either...). It's a matter of finding a balance that works for your cat.

If you don't mind trying to interpret a little bit of dutch, here is a link to a catfood chart from the Netherlands that contains some info on phosphorous too - wet food has much less than dry...

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key= ... zWWc&hl=nl

I would think many of the foods are similar to the UK + many are available at Zooplus. (I am Swedish, living in Belgium)

Bless your 21 year old cat, that's an amazing age !!!!

Maria & Suzie

 

Thanks am going to order this next time, I've just had an order from them as well as 24 tins of Purina MD. Interested to see that the MD has low Phos levels too.

Many thanks,

Kay