Monday, October 29, 2012

Iams on ingredients... sorta..


Sorry for the lack of cute photos today.  I so want to take a video of Ella playing and I didn't get to it this weekend.  I'll try to get to that ASAP.

But this post is going to be about something completely different.

Back on September 6th, Pam over at Pet Blogs United announced that she would be meeting with Iams and asked if we had any questions we should ask them in the comments.

Well my questions are pretty much always the same:
I understand the "logic' behind putting plant based ingredients in cat food. Because cats are obligate carnivores and eat animals that eat grains (which is debatable just how much grains vs grasses but lets just pretend they eat all grain) How do they justify putting more than 2% in any diet? Because the digestive contents of any given mouse or bird is about 2% and that's IF they just ate to capacity.

I just don't understand why they add more and say it is healthy, especially when they need to add acidifiers such as l-methionine.

I also do not understand why they use carrageenan which is known to cause problems. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1242073/

And what about garlic? It is known to cause Heinz body anemia. I had one company say there wasn't all that much in the food, but if a kitty has health issues even a little could be a problem. Not to mention you want pets to eat one food exclusively and thus get that 'not much' dose over and over and over. Why on earth put something else in the food that is know to be harmful. http://www.cvm.ncsu.edu/class/2012/files/clinpathNAVLE.pdf

I'm sorry Pam. These probably weren't the questions you had in mind. I could go on all night, but I'll stop here
Imagine my shock when Pam recently posted the answers to three of the questions asked..  I generally don't watch talking videos while at work, and I try to stay off the internet at home during the week to make sure The Crew, the fosters and DH get enough attention for me, so I didn't see the video until yesterday.    At first I thought there was another Connie who asked a question, then the question sounded so much like something I'd say, and then I blushed furiously at the fact that they actually attempted to tackle part of my question.

I'll let you decide if she answered it or not..



Maybe I should start asking how they justify saying grains are health to an obligate carnivore.  And if they are so darn healthy why don't they feed it to larger obligate carnivores in zoos.. and how do the kitties who don't eat 'healthy grains' in the wild survive??   *sigh*

Enough of us are out there saying "obligate carnivore" that the pet food manufacturers are starting to hear it.  I see Iams commercials saying that they (now) do not add plant protein

So they accept that kitties are not vegetarians... but here is the ingredient list for one of their dry foods:
Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Meal, Corn Grits, Ground Whole Grain Sorghum, Dried Beet Pulp, Powdered Cellulose, Chicken, Animal Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), Dried Egg Product, Natural Flavor, Brewers Dried Yeast, Sodium Bisulfate, Potassium Chloride, DL-Methionine, etc (removing from the list a number of supplements)

Remember, these ingredients are listed by the one weighing the most in the recipe first.  Second would be the second heaviest ingredient by weight, etc.  You can't really tell if the chicken BPM is 90% of the diet and everything else is only 10% making it mostly meat based ingredients (although BPM is everything but the white meat of the chicken, so a good part of that is bone and possibly feathers and under developed eggs) but somehow I doubt it..   While I don't see this as a vegetarian diet, I most certainly do not see that as an acceptable diet for an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging, let alone an Obligate carnivores or 'true' carnivores depend on the nutrients only found in animal flesh for their survival

I do know that a lot of people, and vets, are just not ready for cats to be obligate carnivores.. and pet food manufactures are more than happy to supply their products to these people.  Hopefully as the human food movement moves further and further away from prepackaged and highly processed fortified and overly packaged foods, so will pet food.  But even then there will be people who prefer to feed themselves and their pets out of a bag.  It's easy and they are told it is nutritious.. I get it.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it or agree with it.. and I will continue to spread the word that there is a better different option out there if you want to learn.  I just wish the self proclaimed experts would stop telling us that corn and sorghum and beets (or cranberries, or spinach or wheat, or rice, etc) are healthy for cats..

Because it all comes down to those two words.. one scientific principle..

obligate carnivore.

5 comments:

  1. Um, NO, she skirted your question. Also found it notable that the grains she listed (wheat, barley) and NOT anywhere in that list of ingredients you posted. Only the cheaper corn versions are there.

    SIGH.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. sorghum is also a grain.. Then there is also the issue that there is a darn good chance that corn is GMO. While the sweet corn on your table is most likely not GMO (but not a given since they recently OK'd GMO sweet corn too) most of the feed lot corn is GMO. That and the chicken meal most likely came from a chicken on a feed lot that was probably fed GMO corn, but since they don't have to label it (yet, fingers crossed Prop 37 in CA passes) we can't know unless we buy organic.

      Delete
  2. that was no answer just rubish,waste of time!just stick to what you do Connie

    ReplyDelete
  3. These companies are trying to placate humans without having to actually change anything.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I know I'm late here, but I havent been able to get to visiting and commenting lately.. That video ticked me off more than anything. Of all the questions asked, she picked three, two of which were softballs, and yours, she danced around. I didn't get an answer to my question about ash content, which isnt edible to ANYONE, yet they all use. now that's an unacceptable filler if you ask me..
    It's clear from that video that they were not interested in answering any real questions, just pretending that they cared.

    ReplyDelete

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