Great Life Essentials -- ok for blood sugar?

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Michelle & Dusty

Michelle & Dusty

Member Since 2012
I have a quick food-related question. A couple of days ago I bought a few cans of high-quality canned cat food to try out with Dusty. The one that I tried today - Great Life Essentials' Western Medley - has made all my cats go happy crazy. Even my cat that only eats dry food was trying to eat as much of this as possible. I've tried finding it on the various food lists but can't find it. (Perhaps I missed one of the lists?) Does anyone have experience with this food? Here's a link to the food: http://www.doctorsfinest.com/Cat_food_p/ccf-wm.htm

Here's the ingredient list:
Free Range Beef, Buffalo, Meat Broth, Beef Liver, Taurine, Organic Blueberries, Organic Tomatoes, Organic Pumpkin, Organic Yams, Organic Chia Seed, Guar Gum, Vitamins (Vitmain A Supplement, Vitmain D3 Supplement, Vitmain E Supplement, Vitmain B12 Supplement, Vitmain B3 Supplement, Folic Acid, Vitmain B1 Supplement, Lecithin, Biotin, Choline Chloride, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin), Minerals (Zinc Amino Acid Chelate, Iron Amino Acid Chelate, Copper Amino Acid Chelate, Manganese Amino Acid Chelate, Cobalt Amino Acid Chelate, Calcium Pantothenate, Copper Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Selenium)

Here's the nutrition breakdown:
Calories-155 kcal/can
Protein min. 9%
Fat min. 6%
Fiber max. 1.7%
Moisture max 78%
Ash min. 1.9%
Phosphorus min. 1.5%
Taurine max. 0.167%

Any thoughts about the food? Does it have too much fat, relative to protein? Do the blueberries, yam, and pumpkin cause worries about spikes in blood sugar?

For what it's worth, this would be part of my cats' diet but not its entirety. I'm hoping to split their meals between some really great high-quality food and then some fancy feast.
 
I am not great a looking for bad ingredients but that list looks OK to me, and the biggest is to hear that the dry food eaters will switch to a wet food! I would feed this food and quickly remove all the dry before they look back!

While a food may not be on any of the food lists, your diabetic cat's numbers will be an indicator of the carbs in the food.... if you feed this food and you see big spikes/rises in your cat's numbers and/or need to increase the insulin dose, maybe it's not great for your diabetic, but it's surely better for the dry food eaters.
 
Yes, I was very heartened to see Adele (my dry-food eater) gobble this up. I'd love to get her off dry food but, before this morning, despaired of doing so as she's the sort to not eat rather than eat something she doesn't care for. I can't pay much attention to Dusty's blood sugar today as I have to be away from home for big periods of the day. But I'll grab another can of this from the store and give it to them on a day when I can test her blood with greater regularity.

Thanks for the advice!
 
"Organic Blueberries, Organic Tomatoes, Organic Pumpkin, Organic Yams"

All of these are potential sources for glucose. If the amounts are minimal, it may be OK. Only testing will tell you for sure.
 
dustysmama said:
Here's the nutrition breakdown:
Calories-155 kcal/can
Protein min. 9%
Fat min. 6%
Fiber max. 1.7%
Moisture max 78%
Ash min. 1.9%
Phosphorus min. 1.5%
Taurine max. 0.167%
Click to expand...

According to Dr. Lisa's calculations, this looks to have less than 3% carbs*, so it may be a good choice! Best way to know for sure is to call the company and ask them for Typical Nutrient Analysis instead of Guaranteed Analysis. If you haven't already seen it, she also has an amazingly thorough food chart for a good majority of commercial cat foods. I even went so far as to print it out and take it with me when I go shopping. :-D

BJM said:
"Organic Blueberries, Organic Tomatoes, Organic Pumpkin, Organic Yams"

All of these are potential sources for glucose. If the amounts are minimal, it may be OK. Only testing will tell you for sure.
Click to expand...

BJM is absolutely correct. Unfortunately, most all commercial cat foods, including low carb, contain some type of non-meat filler. As I'm finding out, even with low carb, that filler can still spike glucose levels. Another thing I learned that can affect BG levels is fat/protein ratios. ECID, so compare your cat's BG readings on those foods vs. what they normally eat to find out how it's impacting his numbers.

*ETA: I had originally typed calories but I really meant carbs. :oops:
 
I like to see no by-products and things like potatoes and rice.
The cat's numbers will let you know if it's OK for your cat or not.
 
BJM said:
"Organic Blueberries, Organic Tomatoes, Organic Pumpkin, Organic Yams"

All of these are potential sources for glucose. If the amounts are minimal, it may be OK. Only testing will tell you for sure.
Click to expand...

Those should be minimal since they are listed after Taurine.
 
Thanks, all! While I haven't been able to closely monitor Dusty's blood sugar, her +6 was an 89 which suggests that this doesn't have a terrible effect. (With a huge caveat that I'm still in the beginning stages and so that 89 may be nothing more than noise as Dusty settles into her dose.) I'll still carefully monitor her the next time I give it to her, just to be careful.
 
This comes out to 13.6% carbs on a dry matter basis, by my calculations. And that's problematic (I don't use a calculator but just round the moisture to 75% to make the math simpler).

If you've found something your cat will really eat, that's important also. A terrific food for your cat that's left sitting in the bowl as your cat gets hepatic lipidosis is less than worthless. You may not notice problems for a while. If you do keep feeding this, just make sure you keep testing & be ready to change. You won't set your cat back much as long as you're attentive to the BG spikes & don't let them go on for long before you intervene both with insulin & a change in food. It's prolonged hyperglycemia that seems to hurt the pancreas in both the short & long run.

My 2 cents.
 
Sandman said:
This comes out to 13.6% carbs on a dry matter basis, by my calculations. And that's problematic (I don't use a calculator but just round the moisture to 75% to make the math simpler).
Click to expand...

Please excuse my ignorance, but can you please explain your calculations and what "dry matter basis" means if she's feeding canned? :-D I'm still new at this and have generally avoided buying any foods not on any of the low carb lists so I wouldn't have to remember/figure out the math of the REAL nutritional values. :lol:
 
Please excuse my ignorance, but can you please explain your calculations and what "dry matter basis" means if she's feeding canned? I'm still new at this and have generally avoided buying any foods not on any of the low carb lists so I wouldn't have to remember/figure out the math of the REAL nutritional values.
Click to expand...

Nothing to excuse. We're all new at this and I'm basically parroting what I've picked up elsewhere. I offer this with the caveat that it's just based on the analysis guaranty from the label, as opposed to an "as fed", which will be more accurate. But I really do believe this gets you decent ballpark estimates that should work ok for you just picking up an unknown can of moist (or bag of dry for that matter) food at your local petsmart as I was doing last night.

I'll give you an example from the food I feed my own cats (blue wilderness chicken).

Guaranteed analysis:
Crude Protein: 10%
Crude Fat: 9%
Crude Fiber: 1.5%
Moisture: 78%

I've eliminated the maxes & mins, since I don't use them anyway. If they'd listed an ash content, you'd throw that in also. Nothing else counts (taurine, vitamin x, etc.) because it's included in these categories.

This totals out to: 98.5%. That leaves 1.5% carbs.

But that is based on the whole mix (including water, which doesn't really count). So, to relate the carbs (or protein, fat, whatever) in % of just the solids in the food, we need to factor that out. Since 78% of the food is moisture, that means 22% will be solid.

So, the food will be .015/.22 or (rounding the .22 to .25 to make the math simple --- I just multiply by 4) that gets me 6% carbs in the dry matter.

And that's ok for a food to feed a diabetic.

This is precisely what I did to come up with the 13.6% for the food as above.

If you want, you can convert this to % of calories from carbs by repeating the process for protein & fat, multiplying by cals/gram for each of these to get that. You'll come out with a number <6% because fat has a higher kcal count than either protein or carbs (about equal at 3.5).

Make sense???
 
Perfect! Thanks. :thumbup I'll be adding this to my repertoire of food shopping lists.
 
KPassa said:
Perfect! Thanks. :thumbup I'll be adding this to my repertoire of food shopping lists.
Click to expand...

As I said in my caveat. It's imperfect, but short of calling up the manufacturer and asking them what their food is made of (they may not answer you), it's the best you can do.

And it's something you can do in your head walking down the petsmart aisle.

I would treat any new food as suspect, and test BG numbers more intensively for a time after getting your cat eating the new stuff just because of the imprecision in the method.

The bottom line is what your cat's BG numbers do with the new food. On my current regimen, (including the above food & a "zero carb kibble on free feeding) my cat is running hypoglycemic on a human meter most of the time, so I think there's little risk of a relapse related to the carb load in the foods.

Trust but verify.
 
Yes, I've been tracking how each food I feed my cat affects his BG levels because I noticed that certain foods (EVO, specifically) were spiking his levels higher. I probably wouldn't buy anything that I didn't have the nutritional information for, but it's good if I find a food that seems like a good choice, I can quickly check and see whether or not it's even worth calling the company for NI. :smile:
 
Just looked at your spreadsheet. Looks like you have one heck of a problem on your hands!

I think you need to be a bit more aggressive about getting those sugars under control if you want a remission. I see you're using lantus with which I'm not so familiar (used PZI). You are trying for tight regulation (TR), right?? You are over at the Lantus TR board, right? Some sort of sliding scale protocol?
 
I have a kitten diabetic Type 1 (most likely Type 1 because there's no preceding or underlying conditions, but there's no test for it), so I have all sorts of problems on my hands. :lol:

No sliding scale, really. Just increase dosage as his levels climb and, in Mikey's case, his levels seem to consistently climb with growth spurts.
 
Here is the Lantus Tight Regulation Protocol Tight Reg with Lantus

It is not sliding scale; you adjust doseage based on nadir with a holding period for any specific dose to stabilize. Lantus is a depot insulin, so it builds up in the system and has carryover between shots. Thats part of what helps keep the curve somewhat flatter, compared to non-depot insulins such as ProZinc.
 
Sandman.
The L insulins aren't dosed on a sliding scale using any of the protocols followed on the board, unlike the P insulins. Lantus and Lev are just not effecive when adjusted on a cycle to cycle basis. Adjustments are made based on results over a number of days and on the nadirs rather than the preshots.
Carl
 
Yeah, like you I shot a sliding scale on PZI and it took me forever to wrap my head around Lantus TR.
Carl
 
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