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Liz's Food recommendations



 
 
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Old October 7th 03, 02:25 PM
Steve Crane
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Default Liz's Food recommendations

For about the umpteenth time Liz, please provide us with the
commercial foods you think have fewer grains than the comparable
Hill's product. I know I have asked you for this many times before

and
you always refuse to answer. The constant lack of an answer seems

to
prove you have an anti Hill's agenda, rather than a sincere concern
about pet health.


Oh, I´m sorry, I´ve not seen that question before. How about

Wellness,
Felidae, Flint River Ranch, Wysong, Innova and other super premium
brands? The carbohydrate content of a food gives you a precise idea

of
the percentage of grains it has.


Not exactly, but close, in fact the percentage of grains will likely
be HIGHER than the percentage of carbs, since a portion of the protein
and fat is derived from grains.

All you need to do is add up all the
percentages given (protein, fat, ash, moisture, etc.) and the
remaining is carbohydrates, that is, grains (unless the manufacturer
adds other plantstuff like carrots or apples). Plain and simple. And
don´t forget to check the lable for the *quality* of the animal
protein used (by-products or not) and the process by which the food
was manufactured (heating destroys many essencial components - baking
x extrusion, cold processing, etc.).


Yes of course we wouldn't want to leave out the fact that chicken by
product meal is MORE digestible than plain chicken and contains less
ground up bone tissue – good point. Of course the comment about heat
destroying nutrients is silly scaremongering nonsense. Manufacturers
have known the degradation rate of every vitamin for forty years,
based upon time and temperature. It's a no brainer to add in
sufficient vitamin X to accommodate loss. Further all competent
manufacturers test the FINAL product to insure it has all the
nutrients it is supposed to have at the right levels AFTER the
manufacturing process. This old wives tale and scaremongering about
heat destroying stuff is complete nonsense. In fact for many
nutrients, heating is what makes them bio-available to the animal.


I have done two. If you´re interested, you can do the calculation for
the other brands I mentioned.


Terrific Examples – Thank-you now let's see what we've got.

Felidae Dry: 21% carbohydrates

First of all your calculations were in error on this one, according to
their web site they have: protein 32.0%, fat 20.0%, fiber 2.5%,
moisture 9.0%, ash 5.5% Total 69% 100-69 = 31% carbohydrates, NOT
21% carbohydrates as you claimed above. Now we'll go beyond third
grade ingredient nutrition and take a peek at the nutrients.
Calcium - 1.2% to 1.33% - In excess of KNF maximum calcium levels.
Phosphorus – 1.0% to 1.1% - in excess of KNF maximums levels for an
adult cat.


Wellness Dry: 23.22% carbohydrates

Again your calculations were in error, according to their web site
they have Protein 33.0%, fat 19.0%, fiber 5.0%, Moisture 10.0%, Ash
6.0% Total 73% 100-73 = 27% carbohydrates NOT 23.22% carbohydrates as
you claimed above.
Now we'll go beyond third grade ingredient nutrition and take a peek
at the nutrients.
Calcium 0.94%
Phosphorus 1.33% In EXCESS of KNF maximums for an adult cat.
WARNING – this food has an inverse calcium phosphorus ratio.


Science Diet Nature´s Best: 34.5% carbohydrates

carbs by adding up the guarantees, you cannot choose to measure carbs
in Science Diet products by going to the web site and getting info you
can't get from others. You must compare apples to apples. Guarantee
levels: Protein 30%, fat 19%, fiber 2.0%, moisture 10%, ash 6.5% Total
equals 67.5%. Carbs are therefore 32.5% NOT the 34.5% you noted above.
Calcium 0.92%
Phosphorus 0.74%
Digestibility Protein – 88% Fat – 92% Carbs – 94.9%


Science Diet Original: 34.3% carbohydrates

Again you erred by not adding labels and not comparing apples to
apples. Protein 30%, fat 20%, fiber 2%, Moisture 10%, ash 5.5% Total
67.5% Carbs are thus 32.5% not the 34.3% you claimed above.
Calcium 0.76%
Phosphorus 0.70%
Digestibility Protein – 87% Fat – 91% Carbs – 99.9%

If you want to compare products you ought to compare products within
the same category. Both Wellness and Felidae are "All Life Stage"
foods, which means they have passed AFFCO testing for growth and are
indeed "kitten" foods. Therefore the correct comparison would be to
compare one growth food to another.

Let's see how that works.

Science Diet Feline Kitten
Protein 33%, fat 23%, fiber 3%, moisture 10%, ash 7% Total = 76% thus
this food is 24% carbs.

Science Diet Nature's Best Feline Kitten
Protein 35%, fat 22%, fiber 2%, moisture 10%, ash 6% Total = 75% thus
this food is 25% carbs.

The Science Diet products are 21-33% *LOWER* in carbs than Felidae and
Wellness dry products. Guess you'll be off to buy some Science Diet
won't you? Both are lower in carbs than your picks for a dry food
based upon the third grade nutrition of lowering carbs and ignoring
nutrients. The biggest irony of all is that if the Nature's Best
kitten was repackaged as Brand X and had claims all over the bag as
"holistic", "human grade", both of which terms could legally be
applied to these foods, they would be the perfect foods according to
your criteria. Oh never mind that won't work because you don't care
about the digestibility of ingredients, only that they sound good.
Since one food contains chicken by-products which are more digestible
than plain chicken you would still ignore one of them because what
goes on in the animals body isn't as important as an emotional
judgment made about how good ingredients SOUND.


Purina Cat Chow: 37.5% carbohydrates

Calcium 1.24%
Phosphorus 1.25%

Whiskas: 40% carbohydrates

Calcium 2.73%
Phosphorus 1.82%


Canned:
Science Diet: 5.5% carbohydrates (all grains)

Sigh, same errors actual by label is 5.7% carbs – How in the world you
can call this all grains is utterly beyond me. You claimed earlier
that the carbohydrates were exactly the amount of grains in a food.
Since this food is composed of 94.3% NON carbohydrates and only 5.7%
carbohydrates how you could claim it is "(all grains)" defies logic.


Felidae: 0% carbohydrates (perfect for cats with diabetes or excess
weight)

Calcium 1.32% - in excess of KNF maximum levels for an adult cat.
Phosphorus 1.32% - in excess of the KNF maximum levels for an adult
cat.


Wellness: less than 3% carbohydrates but no grains

Calcium 1.52% Exceeds maximum KNF levels for adult cats.
Phosphorus 0.96% Exceeds maximum KNF levels for adult cats.


Whiskas Ground Chicken Dinner: 0% carbohydrates

No data available, But let's look at another ZERO carb grocery store
food. Fancy Feast Turkey & Giblets canned = 0% carbohydrates
Calcium 2.1% *Greatly* in excess of maximum KNF's for calcium for a
healthy adult cat.
Phosphorus 1.9% *Greatly* in excess of maximum KNF's for phosphorus
for a healthy adult cat. I would expect the Whiskas product to fall
into the same category.


So, as you can see for yourself, Science Diet is much closer to
grocery store brands than it is to the super premium brands above

both
in low-quality ingredients and in percentage of carbs.


And you have now been proven wrong. I'm sure you didn't purposefully
distort the carb levels of the foods you offered. You're too smart to
think you wouldn't be checked, so I'll assume there was some math
error somewhere.

Felidae dry carbs = 31% with *excessive* calcium and phosphorus
Wellness Dry carbs = 27% with *excessive* levels of calcium and
phosphorus

Science Diet Original carbs = 32.5% within KNF guidelines for calcium
and phosphorus levels
Nature's Best Chicken carbs = 32.5% within KNF guidelines for calcium
and phosphorus levels.
Science Diet Kitten carbs = 24% within KNF guidelines for calcium and
phosphorus levels.
Nature's Best Kitten carbs = 25% carbs within KNF guidelines for
calcium and phosphorus levels.

Purina Cat Chow carbs 37.7% with *excessive* calcium and phosphorus.
Fancy Feast carbs 0% but with calcium double maximum KNF levels, and
phos more than double maximum levels.

So what you have proven is that Science Diet is anything but a
"grocery store" quality food as it was the only example which kept
calcium and phos levels down in the proper area. The clear message
here is that some manufacturers are using much less expensive meat
meals with very high percentages of ground up bone tissue in the meat
meals, whereas Science Diet has chosen to use more expensive low "ash"
(bone) meat meals.

The only other thing "proven" is that some people still cling to third
grade math levels of nutrition by basing their judgment on ingredients
and have yet to take the next step to high school math level nutrition
and carefully look at the nutrients.
 




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