Cats are predators that evolved consuming a prey-based diet and more importantly, eating their food raw. Cooking, unfortunately, degrades the nutrients in meat, which causes the loss of vitamins, amino acids, and minerals.
Highly-processed pet food contains meat that’s cooked at high temperatures. The lost nutrients must be added back. The supplementation is far from exact and some lost nutrients cannot always be replaced.
In the wild, cats usually eat the entire prey animal if it’s small, and will eat just about everything except the intestines of a larger prey animal. This includes the prey’s bones since raw bone is highly digestible and is their primary calcium source. Cooking bone tends to reduce the available nutrients, which makes it brittle and dangerous to ingest. Raw cat food in the UK is available to buy here and as you can see is very beneficial .
Providing cats with a diet modeled on what they would typically eat in the wild offers numerous benefits for both you and your cat, such as:
– Increased energy
– Healthy coat, fewer hairballs, less shedding
– Improved urinary health
– Improved dental health
– Weight loss, if overweight
– Greatly reduced stool odor and volume
– Better digestion
Better Digestion
Cats, being obligate carnivores, must eat meat. No cat is vegan. The digestive systems of cats are specifically adapted for a meat-based diet. A cat’s digestive tract is not only short and acidic but also efficiently processes species-appropriate raw food in about 12 hours. This allows very little time for the proliferation of bacteria, which makes cats naturally resistant to food poisoning.
Cats have a limited ability to digest carbohydrates and no requirement for them. A raw cat food diet is more easily digestible compared to a plant-based diet. Since cats evolved eating a diet with almost no carbohydrates, they just have one enzyme that can handle them. This is remarkably different from both dogs and humans that both have multiple enzyme systems capable of digesting carbohydrates.
Greatly Reduced Stool Odor and Volume
If cats are fed a proper diet, their body uses most of the food, which results in significantly less stool volume. Stool production can be cut in half. Cats will also defecate less often, sometime once a day or even less frequently.
Cat’s stool is usually dry, a bit crumbly with hardly any smell at all. In the wild, this makes perfect sense for a predator that’s small enough to also have to worry about being preyed upon too. It wouldn’t make sense to leave smelly indicators of its presence all over the place.
If cats are fed a diet with too much carbohydrates, their system struggles to digest the excess carbs. Since much of what is consumed isn’t processed efficiently by their systems, they produce far too much waste than they should. If you want to save then you can buy cheap cat litter online.
Healthy Coat, Fewer Hairballs, Less Shedding
You will discover that after just a few weeks on a raw food diet that your cat’s coat has become silkier and softer. Cats require unsaturated fatty acids, omega-3 and omega-6, in their diets, which must come from animal sources due to the limited ability of cats to make them from plant-derived food sources. The essential fatty acids found in a raw food diet contribute to a healthy coat and skin, reducing shedding and by extension the incidence of hairballs.
Increased Energy
If you switch to raw cat food, you will notice just how much energy your cat now has. A cat that was previously a couch potato now starts to run around and play. Through species-appropriate raw food, cats get more readily available energy from their diet.
Cats are uniquely adapted to make use of protein for their energy requirements. They essentially “burn” protein in the liver and turn it into energy in a process known as gluconeogenesis. Other animals such as dogs or even humans also burn protein this way, but usually turn it either on or off depending on protein availability. Cats are unable to do this. Their “burn rate” is usually always on high with their absolute requirement for high quality protein from meat sources.
Weight Loss
If your cat is overweight, he/she will likely start losing weight once on a raw cat food diet. If cats are fed an incorrect diet, they tend to overeat, trying to make up for the nutritional deficiencies. If fed species-appropriate raw food, however, they usually won’t overeat since they find it satisfying.
Your cat will no longer feel hungry all the time. A cat that previously would wake you up in the middle of the night for food, acting as if he/she was starving will start sleeping right through the night. The increase in energy they will have will also help them burn more calories.
Improved Dental Health
Cat dental health partly depends on genetics as is the case in humans. Cats in the world typically don’t have tooth loss or gum disease caused by periodontal disease. Why? Chewing on raw bones, fur, skin, connective tissue, and meat helps keep teeth clean.
Carbohydrates create a starchy film that not only promotes plaque buildup but also encourages gum disease. Food rich in carbohydrates won’t help control tartar. To keep dental disease at bay, you need to reduce or eliminate carbohydrates in your cat’s diet.
Providing raw meaty bones for your cat to chew on is “nature’s toothbrush” for cats. This is important because the bacteria from dental infections can easily spread to other parts of the body.
