what type of food is best. help!!!

[yygms1978]

My cat has had diabetes for 4 yrs and has done well eating dry food with a very high protein content. However, the more I read it is telling me no dry food no matter the contents is good enough for a diabetic?? PLease tell me what you feed your cats . I will not provide a raw food diet and me making his food is highly unlikely. I do have 2 cats and need a food that would work for both. thank You!!! i should also menton he has been eating merrick dry food ..chicken flavor..grain free..high in crude protein but after reading a lot of posts i am scared its not good enough..

 

[Elizabeth and Bertie]

Hello, and welcome

Most of us feed ordinary decent quality canned/wet food. Some folks feed raw food.
The general guidelines are that food for diabetics should have less than 10% calories from carbohydrates. Many ordinary foods are just fine.
Are you in US? If so then I'm sure US folks will be able to advise you on some good food choices.

It is fine to feed the same food to all cats in the household.

However, reducing the carb content of the diet can reduce the cats's blood glucose; dramatically in some cases. So, the insulin dose may need to be reduced accordingly so as to prevent hypoglycemia.
Therefore, we advise that the carb content of the diet is only lowered if the caregiver can hometest (test their cat's blood glucose at home) and can monitor the effect of the diet change, reducing the insulin as necessary.

Which dry food are you feeding your kitty at the moment?

Eliz

 

[yygms1978]

http://www.merrickpetcare.com/cats/purrfect-bistro-grain-free

i am in the us...thank you for your response!!

 

[scoobydoox]

http://binkyspage.tripod.com/dryfood.html

 

[Sarah Smith]

I know I've seen a calculator shared on other posts for calculating the carb percentage, but I ran across this one this morning and the format was a little easier for me. Thought I'd pass it along. If anyone with more experience on this checks it out and finds its not correct, please let me know, I'd hate to mis-lead anyone!

http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html

 

[Elizabeth and Bertie]

I know I've seen a calculator shared on other posts for calculating the carb percentage, but I ran across this one this morning and the format was a little easier for me. Thought I'd pass it along. If anyone with more experience on this checks it out and finds its not correct, please let me know, I'd hate to mis-lead anyone!

http://fnae.org/carbcalorie.html

That calculator is pretty good.
It works out the calories per 100g, and the calories from each nutrient per 100g food.
But the figure we usually compare is the 'percentage of calories from carbs'.
To work that out you just start out with the calculator that Sarah has linked to above, and then grab a calculator and do this:
Divide the 'calories from carbs' per 100g by the 'total calories per 100g', and them multiply by 100. Bingo!

However....
If you live in the US the labelling on the cat food will give 'minimum' and 'maximum' amounts for certain things, and these may not be an accurate representation of what is in the can at any given time. For that you'll need to contact the manufacturer for the current 'as fed' values...
Without this you can still make a sort of educated guess though... You can do the calculation based on the figures that you do have, and also have a good read of the ingredients list and check for any obvious source of carbs. If it all looks OK you could try the food and see how your cat does on it....

Do also look at the catinfo.org food data tables. There are a lot of foods listed there. (This was updated in 2012, I think...)
http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf

Eliz

 

[Sarah Smith]

That calculator is pretty good.
It works out the calories per 100g, and the calories from each nutrient per 100g food.
But the figure we usually compare is the 'percentage of calories from carbs'.
To work that out you just start out with the calculator that Sarah has linked to above, and then grab a calculator and do this:
Divide the 'calories from carbs' per 100g by the 'total calories per 100g', and them multiply by 100. Bingo!

However....
If you live in the US the labelling on the cat food will give 'minimum' and 'maximum' amounts for certain things, and these may not be an accurate representation of what is in the can at any given time. For that you'll need to contact the manufacturer for the current 'as fed' values...
Without this you can still make a sort of educated guess though... You can do the calculation based on the figures that you do have, and also have a good read of the ingredients list and check for any obvious source of carbs. If it all looks OK you could try the food and see how your cat does on it....

Do also look at the catinfo.org food data tables. There are a lot of foods listed there. (This was updated in 2012, I think...)
http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf

Eliz

Is the percentage area in green on that calculator not the % of carb per calorie? I picked up some simply nourish source venison and chicken flavors the other day at petsmart, they were .25 a can, but go out of date soon, I was hoping Cooter might like them, and I believed they were 0% from the calculator. Even if they aren't, I know the feral kitties out back with enjoy

 

[Elizabeth and Bertie]

Is the percentage area in green on that calculator not the % of carb per calorie?

The second 'green' column shows the number of calories from protein, fat and carbs per 100g food.
(The first column tots up the percentages (from the product label) of protein, fat, ash, fiber and moisture, and then deducts that from 100% to give the amount of carbs by weight).

Note: If there's close to 100 total calories in 100g of food, then the calories from carbs in 100g of food will be pretty much the same as the 'percentage of calories from carbs', so no further calculation is really necessary.

Sarah, if your calculation (using the calculator) showed 0% carbs then that looks really good (no further calculation needed). You may also want to check the ingredients on the product label for any obvious carb sources though, because sometimes the labelling isn't that accurate....

Eliz

 

[Sarah Smith]

Thanks Both flavors did come up 0%, now just hoping he'll like them!

 

[Sieden]

I definitely think that you should visit the Binky's Page site or the other link that was listed. It will give you a good idea within a point or 2 for the carbs. Ideally you want to choose a food that is higher in protein than fat but I've found that many of the higher protein foods are also made with fish which isn't good to feed very often. I have spent many hours racking my brain over finding a good food at a decent price. After settling on Friskies (value for price), I've now decided to start my journey all over again and search for a better food. Finding something that is affordable is my main issue but if it isn't for you then find a few good picks on those websites and then either go to the company website or petco / petsmart website and read the ingredients list to make your final choice. Make sure that a meat protein is listed first, that there are minimal by products if you can, no grains, try to avoid veggies and finally no wheat, soy, yeast or other crap like artificial flavors or colors. That's the best start without losing your mind lol. Best of luck.

 

[yygms1978]

omg please excuse me as Im evidently quite slow but I cannot figure out the calculations for what my cats been eating..
this is for merrick dry food

BG 96%-Chicken 31 67 2 341 44 40 3 1.73 89/3.2 oz

I have copied that from the food chart....I know its asking a lot but if anyone has time can you let me know what that works out to..just wanna make sure the food ive been feeding him for 4 years is ok..

Thank You!!!!

 

[Sarah Smith]

What type and flavor is the Merrick, there should be a label on the bag that shows all this info that the screenshot i attached shows, that is the info needed for the calculator. If you can tell me that info, or what type of food I can try to get you a number.