In favour of raw food

Cats are predators. They evolved eating a prey based diet, and more importantly, eating that diet raw. Cooking degrades nutrients in meat, causing losses of vitamins, minerals and amino acids.¹ Meat used in highly processed pet food is cooked at high temperatures and the nutrients lost must then be added back in. This supplementation is not exact, and there are nutrient losses which aren't always replaced.

Cats in the wild eat often eat the entire prey animal if it is small and will eat nearly everything except the intestines of a larger prey animal. This includes the bones of their prey, as raw bone is highly digestible and is their primary source of calcium. Cooking bone not only reduces the nutrients available but also makes the bone brittle and dangerous to ingest.²

Providing your cats with a diet that is modeled on what they would eat in the wild has many benefits, for you and your cat.

• Improved digestion
• Greatly reduced stool odor and volume
• Healthy coat, less shedding, fewer hairballs
• Increased energy
• Weight loss, if overweight
• Better dental health
• Better urinary health

Improved Digestion

Cats are obligate carnivores, they must eat meat. Their digestive systems are adapted specifically for a meat based diet. A cat's digestive tract is short and acidic, and processes a species-appropriate raw diet highly efficiently in about 12 hours. This gives very little time for bacteria to proliferate, so cats are naturally resistant to food poisoning.³

Cats have no requirement for carbohydrates and limited ability to digest them. For cats, a raw meat diet is more digestible than a diet of plant based foods.⁴ Because they evolved eating a diet with almost no carbohydrates, they have only one enzyme system capable of handling them. 

Greatly Reduced Stool Odor and Volume

When cats are fed a proper diet, their bodies use most of their food, so there is much less stool volume. Stool production can be cut in half. They also eliminate less often, sometimes once a day or even less. Their stools are often dry, a little crumbly and hardly smell at all. In the wild, this makes sense for a predator that is small enough to also have to worry about being preyed upon itself. It wouldn't want to be leaving too many smelly advertisements of its presence.

When cats are fed a diet with a large amount of carbohydrates, their systems will struggle to digest the excess carbs. Since much of what they eat isn't being efficiently processed by their systems, the amount of waste is much greater than it should be. Those big, gloppy, smelly puddles in the litter box are not normal.
Read more at http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/the-benefits-of-a-raw-diet-for-your-cat 
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Lisa Pierson, a veterinarian in Lomita, Calif., is familiar with the arguments and disputes them passionately on her own web site. She says she hasn’t had issues with bacterial contamination in the six years she has made her own cat food because she is careful: She knows where the meat comes from, she parboils mostly rabbit and bone-in chicken, grinds it herself, and adds minerals like taurine to make sure her cats are eating a balanced diet.

She says it’s also cheaper than higher-quality canned food and would take an owner of two cats about two hours a month to make.





People from all over the world are feeding their pets raw meat diets. The risk from pathogens and parasites is minimal if you follow safe handling procedures and are careful about sourcing the products you feed your cats, just as you would with foods intended for your own consumption. Cats eating a wild, prey-based diet routinely eat raw bone; it is a vital part of a natural diet. Cats evolved to eat their food raw, and their digestive systems are specialized for getting the maximum nutrition from a bio-appropriate diet.

 

Salmonella and E. coli

 

Concerns about salmonella and e. coli are usually the first worry. Salmonella and e. coli are pathogens that are usually the product of improper slaughtering methods or improperly raised animals. Neither of these pathogens should be in meat intended for humans or animals.

 

Cats have highly acidic digestive systems. This acidity makes them pathogen resistant. They also have short digestive tracts, which doesn't give bacteria much time to proliferate in their systems. Food passes through their systems in about 13 hours, compared to two to three times that long for a human.¹ If a cat ingests some salmonella bacteria, it has a good chance of not being affected by it. Keep in mind this applies to a healthy cat; resistance can be severely diminished in a cat that is ill. The concern is more about the people in the household — most of the emphasis on safe handling is to protect humans.

 

Bones

 

Contrary to what many people think, raw bone is highly digestible and provides calcium, minerals and enzymes. The marrow is nutrient rich. It is only cooked bone that is dangerous. Cooking makes bone sharp, brittle and almost impossible to digest.⁷ Cats that hunt eat the bones of their prey; bones are their primary source of calcium. Feeding your cat small, raw meaty bones is a natural way to provide calcium and give your cat some chewing exercise for healthy jaws and cleaner teeth. Chicken wings or Cornish game hen bones are about the right size. To be safe, it is always a good idea to supervise your cat when feeding raw meaty bones.

 

Nutrients

 

Cats have been eating their food raw for millennia. It is only recently that humans thought they could do better with a highly processed, cooked and packaged diet. A raw diet tries to emulate a diet that a cat would be eating if she were hunting her own food. The digestive system of a cat is specialized to deal with raw food that is high in protein, high in moisture and has little or no carbohydrates. Your cat should get most of the required nutrients from the food directly, in a form she is adapted to utilize most efficiently.

 

If your cat were to eat a varied, fresh prey diet, she would get all of the nutrients she requires directly from her food. This kind of diet is not practical for indoor companion cats. Frankenprey diets, consisting of varied whole parts of animals fed so that a nutritional balance is attained over a set period of time, are the next closest to prey-based diets. Properly planned, this type of diet usually requires no supplementation. Even this type of diet is not practical for many people, and cats sometimes will not eat it. Feeding a ground raw diet is the easiest and most practical method of raw feeding, but grinding and freezing does cause some loss of nutrients, so supplements are required to be certain your cat gets enough essential nutrients.

 

Whatever method of raw feeding you choose — ground, frankenprey or a combination of the two — variety is important. Meats vary in their nutritional profile, and feeding a range of meats provides the best overall assurance that your cat will get all the nutrients she needs.
Read more at http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/spooked-by-salmonella-raw-food 
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