Hills v Aldi premium cat food

mellymeep

I'd just like to add that my two family cats at home in Newcastle have been fed Aldi kibble all of their lives and are happy and healthy (just like we have been fed Aldi food too), getting a bit lazy now in their old age and only venture as far as our back garden, but I'm just wondering if there really is any need to be stressing over what we feed our cats too much?

lostinrates

re cats and fish: mine actualy wont eat fish flavoured cat food, but love the fish thrive best. (fussy beggars!) and I agree with the point about it not being a first choice natural food. However, I thought I'd share that I have actually seen cats sea fishing in a feral situation. Though they seemed adept and healthy I have to say they also looked vulnerable and desperate. Thats they looked well on it however, doesn't change that it was a move of desperation and adaptation: not a natural first choice.

Fire_Fox

mellymeep wrote: »

I'd just like to add that my two family cats at home in Newcastle have been fed Aldi kibble all of their lives and are happy and healthy (just like we have been fed Aldi food too), getting a bit lazy now in their old age and only venture as far as our back garden, but I'm just wondering if there really is any need to be stressing over what we feed our cats too much?

There are two answers to that, firstly some cats are better able to digest/ tolerate cereals than others, the same way some humans seem to do better on a diet of MacDonalds than others. Do all humans who don't follow medical nutrition guidelines drop down dead in the street after a month?

Secondly, just because an animal does not have a medically diagnosed disease does not automatically mean it is healthy - neither a cat nor a human goes from 'normal' to diabetic/ heart attack/ kidney failure in one day. Their body will not be functioning correctly for months or years beforehand: there may be no external symptoms or there may be minor ones that are not deemed significant.

I don't think there is any comparison between Aldi food for humans and Aldi food for cats, nor for any other supermarket. A cat is an obligate carnivore, they have to eat meat, yet the worst dried foods contain just 4% meat. It's crazy to feed a cat a bowl of corn flakes, so why do we feed a bowl of corn flakes coated in meat flavouring?

Paradigm

Not being a cat expert (not even close) I don't post on cat related threads but I have to ask....

Given that cats are solely carnivores & their digestive system is designed to deal with foods of animal origin, who decided it was a good idea to chuck carrots, peas, maize & whatever else they can think of into cat food?

To be fair it might look nice to you when you open the tin & see the veg staring up at you like a little casserole but what use is it to a cat?

Surely a cats food should be meat, Whiskas minced mouse or something...

walwin

Paradigm wrote: »

Not being a cat expert (not even close) I don't post on cat related threads but I have to ask....

Given that cats are solely carnivores & their digestive system is designed to deal with foods of animal origin, who decided it was a good idea to chuck carrots, peas, maize & whatever else they can think of into cat food?

To be fair it might look nice to you when you open the tin & see the veg staring up at you like a little casserole but what use is it to a cat?

Surely a cats food should be meat, Whiskas minced mouse or something...

Thanks, your post really made me smile.:D

Strangely, though, if I open a tin of sweetcorn (for me, not the cat) she tries to dive straight in to it. She loves it. Same with tomato flavoured things. She loves gazpacho soup :rolleyes:

And before I get shouted at, no I don't feed her it

Fire_Fox

Paradigm wrote: »

Not being a cat expert (not even close) I don't post on cat related threads but I have to ask....

Given that cats are solely carnivores & their digestive system is designed to deal with foods of animal origin, who decided it was a good idea to chuck carrots, peas, maize & whatever else they can think of into cat food?

To be fair it might look nice to you when you open the tin & see the veg staring up at you like a little casserole but what use is it to a cat?

Surely a cats food should be meat, Whiskas minced mouse or something...

Pet food was invented as a way of using up the waste products from the food industry. Humans equate vegetables and rice with being healthy, therefore if you show pictures of these foods on the packaging the consumer is tricked into thinking they are doing the best for their pet. The 'meaty chunks' in most wet cat food is preformed from derivatives, some dry dog food is a mix of artificially coloured 'carrot' and 'pea' kibble. Dogs and cats don't care what it looks like, so you have to why do the manufacturers go to all that trouble .... Cats should not be getting type 2 diabetes, which is known to be largely a 'lifestyle' condition. With the right high protein low carb diet, diabetic cats can become asymptomatic.

Paradigm

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Pet food was invented as a way of using up the waste products from the food industry. Humans equate vegetables and rice with being healthy, therefore if you show pictures of these foods on the packaging the consumer is tricked into thinking they are doing the best for their pet. The 'meaty chunks' in most wet cat food is preformed from derivatives, some dry dog food is a mix of artificially coloured 'carrot' and 'pea' kibble. Dogs and cats don't care what it looks like, so you have to why do the manufacturers go to all that trouble .... Cats should not be getting type 2 diabetes, which is known to be largely a 'lifestyle' condition. With the right high protein low carb diet, diabetic cats can become asymptomatic.

So the addition of various veg to cat food is actually designed to appeal to the human buyer, the "nutritionally correct, 5 a day brigade"?
If it doesn't actually benefit the cat or, as in your answer, may actually be causing harm then how do the manufacturers get away with it?

BTW! I have to know... my idea of tinned minced rodent & only minced rodent, a winner or not?

lostinrates

walwin wrote: »

Thanks, your post really made me smile.:D

Strangely, though, if I open a tin of sweetcorn (for me, not the cat) she tries to dive straight in to it. She loves it. Same with tomato flavoured things. She loves gazpacho soup :rolleyes:

And before I get shouted at, no I don't feed her it

My cat that can't eat grains- rer favourite food type? Carbs! Bread, crisps, pasta, pastry...if its starchy and she finds it she wants it. Have caught her running away with a bagged loaf of bread a few times . ther things she'll try and pilfer include, broccoli (a bit of an issue, not great for cats at all), melon, citrus fruit (you know, that stuff cats hate?) any thing.

the one that has no dietry issues is also the one who is easiest with food: cat food -apart from fish flavours- dry or wet, and raw, or occasioanl left over cooked meat. She will not take most treats (apart from thrive) or most human food. They do go cray when I'm cooking oxtail too. By the same token of unnatural, not many small domestic cats could bring down a cow or a sheep.

Natural isn't always best...just as in human science, we know that different available natural foods have different impact on peoples, but neither is ''eating what you fancy''. If we had no dietry issues I'd be happy to let the cats indulge a little in varied leftovers. Just as if I had kids I'd be ok to let them have MacDonalds once or twice a year.

re minced mice: why mince them? cats are designed to chomp through them, leaving certain bits. Mine have a pretty natural diet ...they help themselves. They always bring me home a portion, which they also serve with a little salad: they always drag in ome leaves or grass with it.:rotfl:

Buttonmoons

I feed my cats Whiskas/Felix/whatever is on offer, because I can't afford to be paying through the nose for wet meat, half of my food is value!

They get Hills Science Indoor neutered cat biscuits, which is also mixed with go cat/whiskas whatever to make it go further. I'd rather feed them just dry but the older one will not tolerate that, If I don't feed her the wet meat she just follows me around screaming, chewing plastic and being evil.

The kitten isn't bothered either way, though meows for it first thing because the other one does, and then he bats her on the head to get to it first, eats a bite, then leaves it.

My kitten eats veg, he sits on the radiator in the kitchen above the bin watching me cook, and waits for me to scrape things in the bin and hooks stuff up for a sniff and munch. I never knew cats liked Mango chutney and jalfrezi, he does clearly!

Fire_Fox

Paradigm wrote: »

So the addition of various veg to cat food is actually designed to appeal to the human buyer, the "nutritionally correct, 5 a day brigade"?
If it doesn't actually benefit the cat or, as in your answer, may actually be causing harm then how do the manufacturers get away with it?

BTW! I have to know... my idea of tinned minced rodent & only minced rodent, a winner or not?

You've now narrowed down my comments on veg AND grains to just vegetables. Vegetables tend to be low in carbohydrates and most are low glycaemic index, they have little impact on blood sugar levels. I don't have an issue with veg in cat food as I don't know enough about it, tho I suspect most is added for the owner's benefit.

Grains (maize, rice, wheat) are added because they are cheap: I am not saying don't feed any cat grains, just don't feed a food which has the first ingredient as a grain as it's kitty junk food. Also don't feed grains if your cat is already symptomatic, such as overweight.

IIRC the tests that need to legally be carried out to ensure a pet food is safe are very basic, they feed for a few weeks and the animals can't gain or lose too much weight or become measurably ill. In the eighties there was food on the market that caused cats to go blind and die as taurine was not known to be an essential amino acid.

Not all cats are going to end up with a health condition as a result of inappropriate nutrition, just as not all human smokers end up with cancer. As I said earlier
"Just because an animal does not have a medically diagnosed disease does not automatically mean it is healthy."

In humans lifestyle diabetes usually takes decades to develop (tho it is appearing in obese teens now), cats only live to fifteen or twenty anyway and we expect the elderly to get sick. Before diabetes comes insulin-resistance aka metabolic syndrome, yet most humans don't get diagnosed at this stage even tho we can communicate verbally that we don't feel great.

You can buy day old chicks and rat pups on the net to feed to your cat, and there are those who do - a variation on BARF.