? Cat food content: % of dry matter v. per 100 kcal

[MayL]

Hello,

I am looking to find the best food for my 18 year old cat who has both diabetes and stage 2 CKD. My internal specialist has decided to focus on CKD because she says it's irreversible and diabetes can be managed. So she prescribed hill k/d and recognizes the carb content is high in prescription food. I want to find a different option.

I've been hearing many good things about Weruva (especially the steak frites option) and said the % of phosphorous is low. When I mentioned this to my vet she said it did not matter what the % of dry matter the phosphorous has, but what counts is the per 100 kcal break down. Does anyone know what this means?

I pulled the information from Weruva's website and it has the food breakdown in both % of dry matter and as per 100 kcal (I also attached it here as an image). I didn't see anything on Tanya's page that has the breakdown per 100 kcal. When looking at per 100 kcal, what are good numbers? What levels are too high? Thank you so much!

 

[Sharon14]

Have you seen Dr Lisa’s chart? http://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf
The phos is listed in mg phos/100 kcal. You want that number under 200 for CKD cat. The Weruva looks good on that count.

 

[MayL]

Thanks! I did see Lisa's chart and saw that she had updated it recently. Great information there. I guess I didn't really understand why my vet thought per kcal was the right measure vs. % of dry matter. She almost made it seem that % of dry matter didn't offer the right information to assess if food is good or not.

 

[Sharon14]

I’m not sure of the difference either!