Last Updated on May 2, 2022 by rabiamuzaffar
Do raw food diets benefit cats? Instead of dry or canned food, raw diets rely on uncooked animal products. The choice of cat food can seem overwhelming, especially with all of the recalls of commercial pet foods.
Some cat owners prepare their cats’ food themselves to know exactly what it contains. These homemade meals are either cooked or raw. Raw food mimics what cats eat in the wild, so many owners opt for it.
Is A Raw Diet For Cats Healthy?
Raw cat food consists of natural animal products. These include organ meats, muscles, and bones. Often, these foods are referred to as a “BARF” diet, which means bones and raw food, or a biologically-appropriate raw food diet.
Cats should be fed a raw diet prepared according to a recipe that has been carefully crafted. The diets may be designed at home by cat owners, or they can be purchased in commercial form.
If you want to give your pet a raw diet, be sure that a veterinarian nutritionist has approved it as complete and balanced. Unbalanced diets in cats increase their risk of developing various health problems.
Benefits of Raw Cat Food Health
In addition to being natural for cats, a raw diet can provide many health benefits. With a raw diet, you can be assured that you are feeding your little predator the food they are designed to eat, as it is made of fresh, natural, and easily identifiable ingredients.
Enhances Digestion
As natural carnivores, cats have digestion enzymes designed to digest raw meat. According to research, raw meaty diets are more manageable for cats to digest, but they are also more easily absorbed, which means the nutrients get used the way they were intended.
In contrast to humans, they possess only one enzyme for digesting carbohydrates. Therefore, a meat-based diet of good quality is much easier to digest. When their digestive system is in good shape, you’ll have fewer pesky furballs.
You can try Weruva cat food for its numerous benefits. Their recipes are composed of ingredients that offer excellent nutrition and authentic flavor.
Healthy Weight Maintenance
When cats are fed a high-carb diet, they tend to overeat. They consume more carbohydrate-rich foods to meet their nutritional needs. The high-quality protein in raw food gives your cat more energy, which means your cat will keep active, and we all know that getting active helps prevent weight gain.
Today, obesity is the most significant health concern among our pets. Your cat will naturally store less body fat on a raw diet since raw food has the right balance of macronutrients, high protein, moderate fat, and low carbohydrates.
Encourages Good Toilet Habits
When you feed raw to your cat, you’ll notice a difference in their litter box. When individuals start feeding raw meat, this is often something they see first.
Raw-fed cats’ litter boxes are a revelation. The lack of a carbohydrate requirement in cats and their inability to digest carbohydrates will result in most of a high carbohydrate diet passing through them.
Cats can use more of what they eat on a raw diet, producing less waste. When given raw food, a cat poops less frequently. Some cats only poop once every other day – and their poop is smaller.
The litter is dry, crumbly, and firm, making scooping out the litter box easy. Plus, it hardly smells!
The firm poo that a raw fed cat produces gently presses against the anal glands during excretion, promoting their natural expression and ensuring their health.
Carbohydrate-rich diets may contribute to inflammation and food intolerance, resulting in anal problems.
Maintains Healthy Teeth
Healthy oral microbiomes correlate with lower levels of inflammation in your cat. Low carbohydrate diets are naturally low in the sugar that bacteria in the mouth thrive on. A cat can also develop gum disease, adversely affecting its heart, brain, and pancreas
It’s advisable to give the cat a piece of meat to chew on and a suitable raw meaty bone (raw chicken wingtips are great for this purpose) to create a ‘hassle factor,’ allowing them to remove tartar buildup gently.
Promotes Skin and Coat Health
Unoxidized fatty acids are found in abundance in raw foods, as are Omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and essential amino acids for hair growth. As a result, their fur remains soft and shiny without excessive shedding. While some shedding is normal, too much shedding creates furballs.
Maintaining Bone and Joint Health
An essential component of the raw diet is raw bones packed with calcium and phosphorus in the precise amounts required for strong bones. Besides chondroitin and glucosamine, the connective tissue in raw food also contains collagen to support your cat’s joints and maintain their health.
In addition to the raw food diet, excluding foods such as grains and grain substitutes is equally essential. Studies indicate that grains cause much higher levels of joint inflammation.
Conclusion
Consult your veterinarian when developing a raw diet for your cat. Make sure the nutrition is balanced and complete. Many veterinarians do not recommend raw diets due to the risks involved.
Consider seeking out a veterinarian who has experience with raw diets if your veterinarian is not accommodating about raw diets. Even better, find a veterinary nutritionist who has experience with raw diets.
