Dry food for cats: This mistake makes cats sick

Do you feed your cat dry cat food? We will tell you whether it is suitable as good cat food and what you should consider when choosing.

Table of contents

Healthy, species-appropriate, natural and good for your teeth – the food industry promises a lot when it comes to good dry cat food. But that's not all: dry food is often recommended as the main daily food for cats. But is dry cat food really good nutrition?

Just like wet food for cats, there is dry food. We'll tell you exactly why you shouldn't take your cats with youonlyYou should feed your dog dry food and how you can recognize good dry cat food.

Only give cats dry food: is that possible?

As loving cat owners, nothing is more important to us than that our four-legged friends are. And hardly anything has a greater impact on our cat's well-being than proper nutrition.

You have to know:Cats are pure carnivores, i.e. meat eaters. From this it can already be concluded that you should feed the majority of meat to your cats. A cat's organism cannot do anything with vegetables and grains. Both their teeth and their gastrointestinal tract are designed to utilize meat.

Specifically, this means that a cat's intestine is very short compared to that of a herbivore or omnivore, which means that grain, for example, cannot be broken down properly. The result is, for example, digestive problems such as diarrhea or constipation.

If you only feed cats dry food that largely consists of plant ingredients, the food will be excreted, but your cat will not be able to absorb the nutrients it needs. Unfortunately, such a deficiency due to unsuitable food does not become apparent immediately, but usually only after a few years, when it is already too late and the cat is sick.

You can find out more about species-appropriate cat nutrition in the book “Cats Would Buy Mice: How the Food Industry Makes Our Animals Sick” on Amazon.*

Dry cat food or wet food?

If you only give your cats dry food, it is not species-appropriate.Dry food is always bad as a complete feed.Unfortunately, the food industry would have you believe that “premium dry food” is good for our cats.

And many veterinarians even recommend feeding certain types of dry food to cats with, for example, diarrhea, kidney problems or urinary stones - dry food can even promote digestive problems and kidney problems. The existing symptoms will only get worse with dry cat food.

Special dry food is also available for kittens. But especially when cats are still growing and need all the important nutrients, you should use high-quality food. Dry food is not suitable.

1. Cats are carnivores
Cats are pure carnivores, but due to its consistency, dry food can only be made with small amounts of meat. Therefore: There is no dry cat food with a lot of meat. The remaining ingredients must be supplemented with grains, sugar or preservatives. And not only are they unnecessary for cats, they can even cause diseases such as diabetes or lipidosis. After all, you wouldn't give a hamster a cutlet to eat.

2. Cats are desert animals
And that means that they naturally drink little and get fluids mainly through their food. While the moisture content of prey or wet food is around 70 percent, dry food only has a value of 10 percent. Your cat would have to drink a lot to compensate for this lack of moisture, as dry food actually removes moisture from the body during digestion.

An average-sized cat has a daily fluid requirement of around 250 ml. This corresponds to a glass of water. If the cat food is dry, she shouldadditionallyDrink up to your daily fluid requirement to compensate for the loss of moisture. It should be obvious that an animal that is naturally lazy to drink will never drink 300-500 ml of water per day. In the long term, the deficiency leads to kidney disease and urinary stones.

If your cat has eaten more dry food, make sure it drinks a lot. With the help of a drinking fountain (is available here on Amazon*) you can encourage them to drink.

3. Dry food damages your teeth
Unfortunately, the opposite is often said, namely that dry cat food cleans teeth. But would you brush your teeth with sugar and preservatives? Aside from that, a cat will only chew a piece a maximum of two to three times before swallowing it. So there is almost no abrasion on the teeth. Rather, the dry cat food sticks to the teeth and causes tartar over time. If you really want to help your cat clean its teeth, give it some raw meat every now and then.

4. Cats need proteins
Proteins from animal sources are the most important sources of energy for cats. Carbohydrates are also vital for you to stay healthy and have good digestion, but they should only make up a small part of your diet overall. Too many carbohydrates put a strain on cats' excretory organs. However, there is no dry cat food without carbohydrates because it always contains fillers such as potatoes, vegetables or grains.

You can find out more about high-quality cat food in the book “Cat Food Guide: Species-Appropriate Food for House Tigers” on Amazon.*

Credit:Getty Images

Dry cat food: High meat content – ​​is that possible?

Due to its consistency, good dry cat food can also be produced with a lower meat content than wet food, for example. However, the feed industry is trying with all its tricks to convince us of the opposite: with onemisleading declaration of meat contentin the alleged premium food.

In the best case, the meat content of good dry cat food should be stated as a dry substance, because this is the only way you know that it really contains 60 percent poultry meat, for example. However, “60 percent fresh chicken” is often listed as an ingredient. That sounds healthier at first, but the meat has to be dried to produce feed. And if you dry meat, which usually consists of around 70 percent moisture, there is little left in the end.

So if “fresh chicken” is at the beginning of the list of ingredients, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it contains the most chicken meat in percentage terms. It just means that so much fresh poultry was processed. After drying, there is little dried meat left and it quickly slides to the end of the list of ingredients.

On the other hand, you have to look very closely at the terms used in the list of ingredients in order to recognize good dry cat food. We would like to briefly show this using chicken as an example:

  • Chicken:In addition to muscle meat, also all animal by-products
  • Chicken meat (dried and ground):Muscle meat that has been processed for feed
  • Chicken meal:Dried and ground poultry meat
  • Chicken meal:All parts of the animal (e.g. muscles, but mostly slaughterhouse waste such as bones, beaks, feathers, etc.), dried and ground
  • Poultry protein:By-products from the slaughter of poultry (e.g. beaks, feathers, etc.), meat does not have to be included
  • Animal by-products:Can be high-quality offal such as liver, heart, etc., but also contain waste such as beaks, claws, etc

Reading tip:

Bad dry cat food: How to recognize it

How much dry cat food per day is suitable? Even if it's dry cat foodnotAs the main food for your cat, it is of course perfectly fine to give your cat a small portion every now and then as a reward or to use it as a snack to fill intelligence toys. It definitely depends on the right amount.

Contains poor and usually cheap dry cat foodSugar, grains and lots of fillers. But the sugar in dry cat food is often hidden behind different names. These include, among others: caramel, carob bean gum, agar agar, chicory root, beet pulp, beet leaves, gum arabic, sorbitol, , hexose or kandisfarin.

But also large quantitiesvegetable by-productshave no place in dry food and indicate poor quality. It's always best to choose good dry cat food without grains.

Reading tip:

Credit:pexels.com

Recognize good dry cat food

As with high-quality wet food, good dry cat food can be recognized primarily by the declaration on the packaging. This means that the ingredients are listed precisely and broken down so that you can see the exact composition straight away.

This way you can see which and how much meat was used in the dry food, whether it is grain-free cat food and whether it is of good quality.

This is how you can recognize good dry food:

  • As high a meat content as possible (e.g. chicken, beef or even salmon)
  • Meat content is already given in dry form
  • Use of good quality meat (preferably food grade)
  • High protein content (animal origin)
  • Low carbohydrate content
  • No added sugar, grains, dairy products, flavor enhancers or artificial flavors
  • Free from vegetable by-products
  • Contains important nutrients such as taurine

Furthermore, the values ​​of theanalytical componentsmove within the following framework:

  • Rohprotein: 50–60 %, animal origin
  • Rohfett: 20-30 %
  • Rohasche: max 2 %(But for dry food it is usually around 8%)
  • Rohfaser: max. 5 %, percentage of carbohydrates (as low as possible)

Which dry cat food is good?

Ultimately, it is up to you whether and to what extent you want to feed your cat dry food. Since the term “high-quality” is difficult when it comes to dry food, we would like to use it at this pointgoodTalk about dry cat food. However, this should not be fed as a complete daily feed.

We have put together a list of good dry cat food for you that is suitable as a snack for cats as it is quite good quality. It's best to compare the different variants, as it can happen that the type with beef, for example, has a higher meat content than the one with poultry or salmon. Some brands are available in pet stores, but mostly only online.

You can buy good dry cat food here:

  • Applause(70% meat content, contains sugar)– here at Zooplus*
  • Beutenah(high meat content, contains sugar)– here at Zooplus*
  • Dr. A.S. Berg Felikatessen(50% meat content, contains potatoes)– here on Amazon*
  • GranataPet(50% meat content, contains potatoes)
  • Thrive PremiumPlus(70% meat content, contains potatoes)– here at Zooplus*
  • Robert Franz DOGenesis(49% meat content, contains rice)– here on Amazon*
  • Wildcat „Etosha“(over 70% meat content)
  • ZiwiPeak(high meat content)– here on Amazon*

We tested different brands and varieties of dry food to convince ourselves of their quality. You can read our reviews here:

Credit:Getty Images

Dry cat food: advantages and disadvantages at a glance

To illustrate this, we have once again compared the advantages and disadvantages of dry cat food.

Pro:The price of dry food is usually cheaper than that of. It also lasts longer when opened.

Against:However, it is harmful to cats in the long term as a complete feed, as its unsuitable ingredients promote illness and dental problems. Often it is not grain-free either. If you only feed dry food, you may end up having to pay more money for the vet.

Ultimately, wet food is worthwhile despite the higher costs.

Advantages of dry cat food:

  • Mostly quite cheap
  • Long shelf life

Disadvantages of dry cat food:

  • Contains far too little moisture
  • Damages teeth
  • Meat content too low
  • Too high a carbohydrate content
  • Often contains sugar, grains or other fillers
  • Can cause long-term illness
  • Dry food can also become “bad” (e.g. mold, salmonella, mites)

Also read:

Switch cats from dry food to wet food

You often hear: “My cat only eats dry food!” And every cat owner knows how picky and stubborn cats can be when it comes to food. It is therefore advisable to provide kittens with high-quality wet food right from the start to ensure good nutrition.

Once your cat has gotten used to only getting dry food, the change is not that easy. But possible! With a lot of patience it can be done and your cat's health should definitely be worth it to you.

Tips for switching from dry food to wet food:

  • Lightly moisten dry food with a spray bottle before each meal.
  • Increase the amount of water a little from day to day.
  • As soon as the dry food becomes soft enough, wet food can be carefully mixed in.
  • Mix in wet food in very small amounts at first and increase very slowly from day to day.
  • Stay consistent.
  • If the cat really refuses food completely, it goes back to the previous level (e.g. less wet food).
  • Be patient! The change in food can take a few weeks to months. But it's worth it.

Reading tip:

Sources:
Grimm, Hans-Ulrich: Cats would buy mice: How the food industry makes our animals sick. Knaur Verlag, Munich 2016.

Landwerth, Lena: Cat food guide: Species-appropriate food for the house cat. Cadmos Verlag, Munich 2012

*