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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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