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You are here: Home / Archives for Katty Diet

Are premium pet food worth their price?

June 22, 2015 By Sunny Lim

I believe if you have had a pet with skin problems, you would have experienced a time when you went to a vet or pet shop and they tried to push you expensive prescription diet or top of the line gourmet hand cooked free range lamb with sturgeon caviar promising to be the end all and cure all for your pet’s skin problems. Well, did it?Canine Fine Dining

My guess would be most probably no. If it did however, you have no idea how lucky you are to find a particular brand of food that’s suitable for your pet’s condition (or why did it have to be the most expensive one?!). But I still know of many pet owners who chooses to stick to one particular brand even though they are not seeing significant results.

So then, is expensive food really better? The short answer is: Of course!

Reason? Is organic peanut butter better than Skippy’s? Of course! You’d get less pesticides and all of the chemicals that we don’t want, all for a few pennies more in exchange for good health, why not?

But is fancy organic peanut butter cultivated from virgin volcanic soil good for people with nut allergy?

How good a product is still has to depend whether it’s going to do any good for the body.

So how are we going to determine whether it’s going to provide the benefits? To answer this, we have to first ask what is primary result I want from the food? If you don’t you’re going to be persuaded into buying something you don’t need and most times, having more creates more problems. We’ll come to that later.

So what are some of the primary objectives you can have when choosing a food? Are you looking for any specific ingredients? Is it because your pets are fussy eaters? Skin issues? Underweight? Overweight? Kidney/Liver issues?

What’s your budget?

Just like buying a new phone, if we don’t know what’s the most important function to us, we’ll tend to go for the one that has everything and everything we don’t need (me included).

So once you have your primary objective identified, it’ll be so much easier for you and whoever is serving you.

And I always tell my customers that if they have been doing a lot of trial and error with different food, supplements and products, my good guess is that they already know what works and what doesn’t. Use your gut and trust yourself rather than what people tell you.

For me, even though something didn’t work out the first time, I’d still try two more times with different variations before I confirm its suitability.

But don’t go around changing your pet’s food every time it refuses to eat the same food. If you know they are fussy eaters, catering to their preferences may do them more disservice in the long run. Proper behavioral training is the solution to this issue.

How do manufacturers determine their price?

Luckily for pet food, where people buy it out of necessity than as a luxury, is has not reached a stage where manufacturers are charging crazy prices to position themselves as a premium brand. Of course there are brands that can give you more value in terms of the ingredients for the same price and you will learn how to choose one in this article.

But to simplify things, a $20 bag of food is not going to be of the same quality and as nutritious as a $60 bag of food even if they have the exact nutritional levels.

Why? First up, just take protein for example, I can take a whole bunch of hair, nails and skin of animals, grind them up and make them into kibbles and they will show a good level of protein, well, because they are protein.

Secondly, meat safe for human consumption will surely be more expensive than meat taken from ground up male chicks and rejects.

As for the fancy list of supplements, herbs and botanical? You probably can ask the manufacturers how many milligrams are added in a kilo. The amount is almost insignificant.

What should I look for?

If I have your attention up until now, you’d care enough to at least make sure that the food that goes into their mouth comes from the same carcass that goes into ours.

  1. Fresh Ingredients: The definitions are confusing as there’s no regulation on the definition on the use of the word ‘Fresh’ and every brand seems to be using that now. But if the price is medium range and up, it usually is dependable.
  2. Free range and antibiotics free: Although livestock are generally not slaughtered after their being administered with antibiotics, free range livestock especially from Australia and New Zealand have very low chances to be contaminated with antibiotics.
  3. Suited for your pet’s activity level: If you aren’t working out, you don’t need protein shakes. If your pet is more laid back, giving him a high protein diet might do him more harm than good. Remember, less is more.

Secondly, ask around if you have friends whose pets are on raw diets.

Proponents of raw diets have been touting the benefits of feeding animals like cats and dogs on raw for a long time and it has only gained popularity over the last several years. From experience and research, putting pets on exclusively raw diets from young does produce sturdier bodies and less dental problems.

Let’s say you only have a small dog or cat under your care, commercial raw diets are generally affordable and I strongly suggest this option if you are able to allocate a monthly budget of around $70 – $100 for their food.

Watch out for these traps

  1. Sometimes bigger companies have shareholder’s stomachs to fill: And as a result more money may go into the branding that into the quality of the food. Like buying Panadol versus any generic brand of paracetamol.
  2. Long ingredients lists: Apart from being available in such small quantities that may not provide significant results, more ingredients means higher possibilities that something in the list is going to cause allergies.
  3. Grain free: As long you’re buying kibbles, there’s still going to be carbohydrates in the form of potatoes, lentils, peas et cetera. It’s the only way to hold the kibbles together. Nothing wrong with grains or carbohydrates, just that increasingly, manufacturers are using the term grain free to charge a premium when the cost may potentially be the same.

Some brands have potatoes as their first ingredient, nothing wrong with that. Potatoes are 80% water and some well known brands are using dried potatoes so that they can appear lower down the ingredient’s list.

Take your money and get supplements instead

That’s right. Paired with the right food, supplements double up the benefits of proper nutrition and gives the body help it needs to heal and strengthen itself.

But nobody walks into GNC and grabs everything. For me, the gut is where I start because what isn’t absorbed is just expensive poop and piss. To enhance absorption I recommend digestive enzymes as well as probiotics – minimum. Not all our food is absorbed and diseases starts in the gut (and it starts in the mind for humans) and enzymes helps break down the food to increase the bio-availability of the nutrients and the probiotics protects the gut from harmful bacteria and yeast which if has the slightest chance, will cause your pets health to plunge into a vicious cycle.

Then if your budget allows, you could add in another one and rotate between supplements like krill oil, multi vitamins or spirulina to help reduce free radicals and boost the immune system.

As long as it works

At the end of the day, you’re a smart consumer. What really matters is that the food matches your primary objective. If you need a convenient food with the less hassle to provide them with the best benefits, then raw (and expensive) is the way to go. Contrary, finding a food that is agreeable to your pet immune system and taste buds relies on trial and error or with an exclusion diet plan.

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Do you have any tips or tricks for fussy eaters or have issues you’d like some advice on? Leave your comment below!

 

Filed Under: Cat Articles, Dog Articles, Dog Health, Dog Nutrition, Home, Katty Diet, Long Live The Cat

Your pet’s health can only be as good as its digestive system

August 31, 2013 By [email protected]

Plagued with gastric ailments for as long as I can remember, I know how much a healthy digestive system can affect a person’s health as well as your pet’s.

Allow me to auntie complain for awhile

Basically, I’m experiencing bloating that never goes away and it seems like my meals are taking a long time to digest. Gastroscopy shows that I have an inflammed stomach lining with no H. Pylori bacteria. So doctors put me on a double dosage of Omeprazole (a drug to suppress gastric acid) for months, which did as much as help as asking Alan Garner (Played by Zach Galifianakis in The Hangover) to plan my wedding.

Getting self aid help online

Even after consulting different specialists, TCM practitioners, went through months of medications, strict diets and spent how much money I don’t know, nothing seemed to work seemed and totally solve my problem once and for all. I then started to self medicate and tested different theories and methods – Manuka honey, alkaline diets, apple cider vinegar, ginger tea, green papaya, probiotics, etc. but yet, nothing works.

Also, information found online are often contradicting, like how two different diseases can produce same symptoms. That’s why even doctors take a trial and error approach don’t they? Hence recently, I went for something more straightforward and tried tackling my problem one symptom at a time.

Finally something after years of struggle

Since I reckon that my bloating is caused by indigestion and having too much or too little gastric juices can cause indigestion, I tried using digestive enzymes to speed up the digestion. And guess what? Although not fully cured, it’s the first time I truly felt better.

It was then I remembered that many animals also suffer from digestive problems and even with supplements and probiotics, they can’t seem to gain weight, they over eat, have large stool, or vomit and have diarrhea frequently. Although I don’t have concrete research with me, I believe that if the body can’t absorb, it can’t benefit.

One for you and one for me

Even though there’s digestive enzymes for pets out there, as with most pet supplements, to make measuring simple (imagine scooping 500mg of flour) and to create the impression of ‘Value for money’ manufacturers bulk it with fillers. That’s why I’m using NOW® Super Enzymes, which has worked great for myself and it’s the same formulation from Mercola. I’ll break a capsule into 10 servings of Seacure and a probiotic capsule on top of that. But because the digestive enzymes are quite sensitive to heat and moisture, you can stir in 1/8 tsp of calcium carbonate to act as a desiccant, or simply, put it in the fridge.

Even if you or your pet doesn’t have any digestive issues, I believe it’s a great supplement to boost your pet’s overall health. Here’s a good article on the need for enzymes. I’m not promoting any products in the link, neither am I carrying their products, but I just find it informative. For more info, you can also read this article from www.goodpet.com or The Whole Dog Journal.

 

 

Filed Under: Cat Articles, Dog Articles, Dog Nutrition, Katty Diet, Pet Articles Tagged With: animal nutrition, enzyme

Nutrition: How to evaluate the nutritional value of canned food

April 26, 2013 By Sunny Lim

pet food guaranteed analysis

Have you ever looked at the label of a can of pet food and wondered why the guaranteed analysis of their nutritional content is so different as compared to their dried counterparts?

For example, the protein level in canned food typically seldom exceeds 10% whereas dried food typically has 20-30% protein.

If so, is canned food less nutritious?

The answer is quite simple if we think about it. The main difference between wet food and dried is as the name implies, the moisture content. It’s just like a tablet of vitamin C into a glass of water. In its concentrated form (tablet), there’s 1000mg of vitamin C and even when it’s dissolved, the amount of vitamin C in the solution is still the same.

Therefore, to make meaningful comparison between wet and dried food, we have to remove their moisture content through calculations and compare them on a “dry matter basis”.

Calculations

Let’s say you want to calculate the protein level of a particular brand of canned food which looks like this:

  • Crude protein: 10%
  • Fat content: 8%
  • Moisture: 80%

If we were to remove all the moisture, we would be left with 20% dry matter (100% minus 80% moisture). To find the amount of protein (or any nutrient expressed as a percentage) the dry matter has, divide the amount of protein by the amount of dry matter, which in this case looks something like this:

10 (Protein level) / 20 (Dry matter) * 100% = 50%

So in this instance, the amount of protein (50%) in this particular brand of canned food actually has more protein than most brands of dried kibbles.

As for dried food, their moisture levels usually hovers around 10-15% and for kibbles with a guaranteed analysis of 28%, you will find that their protein level will be around 30% using the dry matter basis of calculation.

That said, higher levels of protein or fat is not an indication of quality and it all depends on what your pet needs. Pets who are overweight or suffering from kidney problems might worsen their condition if fed on a high protein or fatty diet. Secondly, nutritional analyses is just a reference and again, it does not reflect the quality of the food. Hair, nails, feathers etc. are all sources of protein. That’s why food vastly different in price may have exactly the same nutritional analysis. So don’t be fooled, be informed.

Filed Under: Cat Articles, Catty Every Day Tips, Dog Articles, Dog Nutrition, General Dog Care, Katty Diet, Pet Articles Tagged With: canned food vs dried food, dry matter basis, pet food comparison, pet nutrition

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