Tapioca Starch? Avoid? Confused!

Hey everyone!

My baby girl Scarlett was just diagnosed with diabetes and I'm completely confused. I trust my vet but I also want to verify. I'm totally going down the rabbit hole with food and I started looking up every ingredient in her current food. Most of it made sense but I came across tapioca starch and found this article:
https://betterwithcats.net/tapioca-starch-in-cat-food/

They specifically say it should be avoided by diabetic cats and seems to have been written by a veterinarian. Should I be avoiding anything that even sounds like a starch? I'm sorry I know this has probably been asked before but I'm totally overwhelmed and wondering if I should be looking up individual ingredients at all at this stage. = / TIA

 

Hi and welcome to the forum Jodie and Scarlett
Tapioca is a carb and as such should be avoided.
Here is a link to a list of suitable foods for a diabetic cat. Look for carbs 10% or less
https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

Would you like to tell us about Scarlett?
What insulin she is on and the doses.
Are you going to home test the glucose levels? We strongly recommend you do this to keep Scarlett safe.

Here is another useful link. Make sure you have a hypo kit set up in case you need it. Information in this link
https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/new-how-you-can-help-us-help-you.216696/

It is overwhelming in the beginning but we are here to help you. Ask lots of questions
Bron

 

My vet told me food containing starch are fine as long as the overall carb is low (below 10%)

 

It is best to avoid starch, if you can. Starch is a long chain of glucose molecules, chemically hooked together. It is very easy to digest, and break apart into glucose molecules, fairly quickly. If you think of the glucose molecules as each is a bead, and starch is a necklace of glucose beads strung together. Your cat's digestive system is like having a pair of scissors, and snipping off each glucose bead from this starch necklace, one right after another, snip, snip, snip--glucose, glucose, glucose.
So, even if the overall carbohydrate of a food is low, if most/all of that is from starch, it's not the greatest thing for them because of how quickly starch can be broken down into glucose. Tapioca starch is almost like feeding sugar directly.
Tapioca starch is used in food because it acts like a gel or gum, sticking/thickening the food together, especially gravies and sauces. If the tapioca is higher on the ingredient list, even if overall carbs are not high, probably not good. If it's lower on the list, indicating there isn't much there, and the overall carbs are low, it may not be an issue. If you cannot avoid the tapioca starch in her food (because of what she will/won't eat, etc) then test carefully to see if the food with the tapioca causes problems with her bg levels.

 

Hi Josie,
Tapioca seems to be a relatively new ingredient in cat foods, and its use seems to be increasingly common. Many 'in gravy' foods are now thickened with this instead of cereal/grain.
In times past we never would have considered 'in gravy' foods a low carb option, because the cereal/grain thickening made them too high carb. But a surprising number of 'in gravy' foods (with tapioca) now calculate as being quite low in carbohydrate.
For sure, it is a starch. But quite often the amount actually added to cat food is very small.
As to whether or not it will adversely affect your cat's blood glucose, well, that will depend on your cat. If you are hometesting blood glucose you should be able to 'see' the effects of the foods that you are feeding.

My own diabetic girl is quite carb sensitive, but she doesn't seem to have an issue with a small amount of tapioca in a food. In her case it has not spiked her blood glucose. But, 'Every Cat Is Different'...

Eliz