I'm certainly no expert and am reading and asking alot of questions.
Seems like the jury is still out on the carb question diabetes, as
well as on the protein/phos question, kidneys. I've run across an
awful lot of conflicting information - all from some kind of expert or
another.

At this point in time, I'm leaning in the direction of reduced (not
*none*) carbs, moderate, high quality protein and low phosphorous diet
for my older kitty with diabetes. The fact that kidney values don't show
a rise until the disease is well underway seems pretty well documented.
However, there seems to be quite a bit of research that also says that
implementing a "kidney diet" will not *prevent* the disease in otherwise
healthy cats. There's also alot of research that supports the thought
that cats don't really need carbs at all - they're natural carnivores.
However, the proteins used in alot of canned and dry cat foods are
combinations of grains, and cats can't produce the right amino acid
chains from those sources, like vegetarian humans do.

This may be real simplistic, but I'm kind of coming to the conclusion
that shooting for something close to the "in the wild" feline diet, may
be the best way to go. Still need to do "alot" more research!!!

Thanks all-
Jean