Pumbaa
Very Active Member
First, I want to say that I've been in touch with Wayne, the wonderful guy who initially created this spreadsheet in honor of his GA Hobo, and have his blessings on updating his excellent 2010 spreadsheet. Thank you, Wayne. Hobo's legacy will live on to help other cats!
One of the most difficult things for me when Pumbaa was diagnosed was figuring out the best low-carbs canned foods for him. Too many charts to reference; what appeared to be conflicting information on the cans (sweet potatoes? apples? cranberries? for a diabetic cat on low carbs?); no truly easy way to figure out carb content while standing in the store staring at the min and max numbers listed; and not trusting that the manufacturers hadn't added cheap carbs to the foods since the above referenced spreadsheet and Binky's lists were last updated. (Someone stated that manufacturers can change the ingredients but have 6 months to update the labels on the cans. That's outrageous!)
While people here gave good advice about what they feed their cats, there is also a thread about how pet food manufacturers HAVE been changing the ingredients, and, since they aren't required to list the carb content on the cans, as in human food, I started contacting the manufacturers to confirm the nutritional values.
Here's an example: people were recommending Merrick's Cowboy Cookout as it is supposed to be low in carbs and lower in fat than many of the other foods, like the EVO 95% foods I've been feeding my boys. But when I went to the store, the can ingredients stated, "Beef, Beef Broth, Beef Liver, Fresh Sweet Potato, Fresh Carrots, Fresh Snow Peas, Fresh Whole Granny Smith Apples, Potato Starch-modified, Dried Egg, Dried Blueberry, Dried Cranberry, etc." I freaked out on the 4th ingredient, sweet potato, as well as the carrots, snow peas, apples and potato starch. My brain said, "there is NO WAY this is still a low carb cat food with sweet potato as the 4th ingredient!" And I put it back on the shelf.
But a discussion with Julia (thank you...sometimes I need a 2 x 4 to the head), and then downloading Wayne's "Pet Food Nutritional Values Comparison" SS allowed me to see that he had listed sweet potato as the 4th ingredient, and that his numbers were based on this.
That got me thinking that, if this spreadsheet listed the ingredients at the time the numbers were calculated, we could compare more easily and see if any ingredients changed that would alter the numbers we are interested in. Especially for those of us new to FD and relying on nutritional information that is sometimes 7 years old.
To make a long story short, since I was already contacting the pet food manufacturers who don't list this information on their websites, and I was already creating my own SS, I thought how great it would be to take Wayne's 2010 SS and just update it, and highlight what has changed, and put in a date of the last verification of information or change of information, and list the ingredients at the time the information was verified or updated.
So far, I've done Merrick and EVO. I would love to take this SS a step further and add everything from Binky's charts, so that all of us have just one single source to go to to figure out what food to buy for our cats. And I would like to keep this updated, and have everyone notify me if they see a change in ingredients that would affect the protein/fat/carb values so that I/we/someone could then contact the manufacturer and get new numbers.
I would also love if this would become a group project, and that some of you would volunteer to help check this information and keep the SS up to date. It could easily be split out by manufacturer, or even by manufacturer and product line 'cause I know that we are all very busy people, especially dealing with diabetic cats!
You can view what I've done so far here, by updating Merrick and EVO. This is now called "Hobo's Guide to Nutrional Values in Cat Food" (updated 5/10/12), in honor of the little guy who inspired Wayne to take on the daunting task of creating this SS.
FYI: If you see something in pink, it changed since the last information was posted. For example, EVOs 95% Quail became Quail and Chicken. And a lot of the ash values changed on Merrick Before Grain. If you don't see any pink highlights but the "Date of Update" column still has a date, that is because the information was verified on that date and all was still true. To me, that is a comfort. Also, because all of our computers are different, if you see information that is cut off, try expanding that row or column to get everything to show up. I've been playing with how to upload this, so that we can print it on landscaped 8-1/2" x 11" paper, but I haven't found the best way, yet. I even tried converting the Excel file to .pdf format, but that caused the frozen split panes for the table header rows to go wonky. I'll figure out the best way to share this data that works for all of us, in time.
Let me know what you think!
Suze
One of the most difficult things for me when Pumbaa was diagnosed was figuring out the best low-carbs canned foods for him. Too many charts to reference; what appeared to be conflicting information on the cans (sweet potatoes? apples? cranberries? for a diabetic cat on low carbs?); no truly easy way to figure out carb content while standing in the store staring at the min and max numbers listed; and not trusting that the manufacturers hadn't added cheap carbs to the foods since the above referenced spreadsheet and Binky's lists were last updated. (Someone stated that manufacturers can change the ingredients but have 6 months to update the labels on the cans. That's outrageous!)
While people here gave good advice about what they feed their cats, there is also a thread about how pet food manufacturers HAVE been changing the ingredients, and, since they aren't required to list the carb content on the cans, as in human food, I started contacting the manufacturers to confirm the nutritional values.
Here's an example: people were recommending Merrick's Cowboy Cookout as it is supposed to be low in carbs and lower in fat than many of the other foods, like the EVO 95% foods I've been feeding my boys. But when I went to the store, the can ingredients stated, "Beef, Beef Broth, Beef Liver, Fresh Sweet Potato, Fresh Carrots, Fresh Snow Peas, Fresh Whole Granny Smith Apples, Potato Starch-modified, Dried Egg, Dried Blueberry, Dried Cranberry, etc." I freaked out on the 4th ingredient, sweet potato, as well as the carrots, snow peas, apples and potato starch. My brain said, "there is NO WAY this is still a low carb cat food with sweet potato as the 4th ingredient!" And I put it back on the shelf.
But a discussion with Julia (thank you...sometimes I need a 2 x 4 to the head), and then downloading Wayne's "Pet Food Nutritional Values Comparison" SS allowed me to see that he had listed sweet potato as the 4th ingredient, and that his numbers were based on this.
That got me thinking that, if this spreadsheet listed the ingredients at the time the numbers were calculated, we could compare more easily and see if any ingredients changed that would alter the numbers we are interested in. Especially for those of us new to FD and relying on nutritional information that is sometimes 7 years old.
To make a long story short, since I was already contacting the pet food manufacturers who don't list this information on their websites, and I was already creating my own SS, I thought how great it would be to take Wayne's 2010 SS and just update it, and highlight what has changed, and put in a date of the last verification of information or change of information, and list the ingredients at the time the information was verified or updated.
So far, I've done Merrick and EVO. I would love to take this SS a step further and add everything from Binky's charts, so that all of us have just one single source to go to to figure out what food to buy for our cats. And I would like to keep this updated, and have everyone notify me if they see a change in ingredients that would affect the protein/fat/carb values so that I/we/someone could then contact the manufacturer and get new numbers.
I would also love if this would become a group project, and that some of you would volunteer to help check this information and keep the SS up to date. It could easily be split out by manufacturer, or even by manufacturer and product line 'cause I know that we are all very busy people, especially dealing with diabetic cats!
You can view what I've done so far here, by updating Merrick and EVO. This is now called "Hobo's Guide to Nutrional Values in Cat Food" (updated 5/10/12), in honor of the little guy who inspired Wayne to take on the daunting task of creating this SS.
FYI: If you see something in pink, it changed since the last information was posted. For example, EVOs 95% Quail became Quail and Chicken. And a lot of the ash values changed on Merrick Before Grain. If you don't see any pink highlights but the "Date of Update" column still has a date, that is because the information was verified on that date and all was still true. To me, that is a comfort. Also, because all of our computers are different, if you see information that is cut off, try expanding that row or column to get everything to show up. I've been playing with how to upload this, so that we can print it on landscaped 8-1/2" x 11" paper, but I haven't found the best way, yet. I even tried converting the Excel file to .pdf format, but that caused the frozen split panes for the table header rows to go wonky. I'll figure out the best way to share this data that works for all of us, in time.
Let me know what you think!
Suze
directly under the flavor)
