Liver in food

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arozeboom

arozeboom

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I didn't want to hijack the thread on the PZI board so I started over here.

Why do so many varieties of Fancy Feast have liver in them, if it can be bad for our cats if fed to them daily? Of the non-fish "Classic" flavors of fancy feast, these all have liver listed in the ingredients...
Tender Liver and Chicken
Tender Chicken Feast
Tender Beef & Liver Feast
Turkey & Giblets
Tender Beef Feast

The only ones that don't specifically mention liver are the Chopped Grill and the Beef & Chicken.

Some days I feel like I'm picking my way thru a minefield, trying to find what is and isn't ok to get her into and keep her the best shape I can. Don't feed her too much fish. Don't feed her too much liver. But then I read that some say don't give her too many different varieties or it can upset her system.
 
Why is liver bad for cats if fed daily?


In Vet dr Lisa's raw recipy there is liver in, and thus also fed daily.
 
I've read several places online (I did a google search for "Is liver bad for cats to eat") and a few folks here have mentioned that too much Vitamin A can cause vitamin A toxicosis.
 
I believe what they are talking about is feeding a cat nothing but liver...Liver is a great source of Vitamin A which cats need but can't produce themselves. It is also a natural source of Taurine, something else that cats need to maintain health. But like everything else in both their diets and ours it needs to be balanced with other foods.

Just like we can't be truly healthy if all we ate was liver the same goes for cats. If they were solely eating prey they would be eating the liver, heart and other organs but they would also be eating the muscle meat which is what balances out their diet. Same goes with feeding them straight raw muscle meat, it has to be balanced out with supplements to make it a complete diet.

Mel, Maxwell, Musette & The Fur Gang
 
As long as you avoid liver as the first ingredient for every meal, you're ok--liver in small amounts in cat food is perfectly fine.


The Fancy Feast Classic flavors with a muscle meat as the first ingredient are Chicken, Turkey & Giblets, and Tender Beef. The Fish ones also have liver lower on the list but you want to feed fish flavors only once or twice a week at most.

That said, if you want to feed something with liver as a main ingredient, I don't see any harm rotating a flavor in occasionally (Bandit likes the FF Beef & Chicken flavor a lot even though it's all byproducts, so he gets it every now and then). I look at it like people eating junk food--you don't want to chow down on potato chips every day, but once in a while doesn't hurt any thing (as long as it's low carb because of the diabetes, of course!)
 
Ruby wants nothing to do with the fish flavors so I don't worry about those.

Chopped Grill is by far her favorite and the plain Beef is probably the lowest on the list. I try to rotate thru the flavors because she tends to give me the stink eye if I feed her the same flavor twice in a row. The last thing I want from her is more stink eye!
 
The reason so many FF or many other varieties contain liver is because as an ingredient, it is very inexpensive for the makers of the food. But like others have said, as long as it isn't the primary food you are feeding your kitty, it's fine. A "too much of a good thing" problem, more or less. It is a good source of protein and Vitamin A, and it gives Purina and others the most bang for their buck.
I know from the years I spent doing wildlife rehab that a primarily liver diet, not a well balanced diet, will cause metabolic bone disease (rickets) in the Virginia Opossum (I found that out the hard way unfortunately), and we ended up with a non-releasable pair of possums (Popeye and Olive Oyl) that we had as "house pets" for the 2 or 3 years they lived. It was pretty awesome having possums that were litter box trained, and peacefully coexisted with our kitties in the house, and they were used in educational programs for school children to teach them all about marsupials, but it was something that never should have happened to the poor creatures.
Carl
 
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