#032. A Cat Food Comparison Resource I Wish I Had
Quest to Find the Ultimate Healthy x Convenient Cat Food Solution (Part 2)
To my boyfriend's dismay, the cat food saga continues. I wanted a clean mental break from cat food after my last article about cat carbohydrates, but instead, I found myself with more questions than answers and STILL didn’t know what I should feed my cats.
Partly, my questioning came from how misleading it is to compare cat foods based on the nutritional label. Call me naïve for wanting to be able to go to the pet food store, look at the nutritional label, and use that to pick cat food.
But turns out, that’s not how you compare cat food. At least not without jumping through multiple mental math hoops.
Anyway, this is the article I wish I had read so that I could save myself hours of standing in front of the cat food aisle, combing the internet, creating spreadsheets, and editing this newsletter just to compare cat food.
Dry Matter Basis: The Most Common (and Wrong) Way to Compare Cat Food
Most websites teach you to compare carbohydrates in canned cat food by converting the guaranteed analysis (what’s on the label) of wet food to its dry matter basis. Because there are different levels of moisture content across products, doing so allows you to compare foods on a dry weight basis.
Except, this is incomplete because comparing the dry weight of something doesn’t tell you anything about calorie distribution. Although, if you are looking to reverse engineer a cat food recipe from its percent calorie basis, this could be very useful.
Percent Calories Basis: A Better Way to Compare Cat Food
When you’re looking for a cat food that meets the golden ratio of >50% protein/ 20-40% fat/ <10% carbohydrates (or <2% carbs is even better), you’re looking to compare % calories, not weight.
To do this correctly, you need to convert guaranteed analysis to dry matter, and then dry matter to its calorie distribution.
Previously, I had allowed myself to be duped. As you can see in my Nifty Cat Food Conversion Calculator below, a cat food that met the 50% protein rule no longer meets it once you convert from a Dry Matter Basis to a Calorie Basis. Fool me once, *shakes fists*, but never again.
Feel free to make a copy of this calculator and geek out with me (it also works for dog food conversions).
Grams Per 1000kcal: The Best Way to Compare Cat Food
But wait, you’re not done yet.
As this board-certified veterinary nutritionist says, “Pets are fed by calorie, not by weight, so comparisons should ideally be expressed in the amount of a particular nutrient per calorie.”
Basically, because pet food also varies in its caloric density, you should control for that by converting % calories to grams per 1000 kcal. Then you can compare it to the National Research Council’s recommended allowance as well as the low, moderate, and high levels of the nutrient.
If you wish to learn the math, check out the table below, otherwise you can once again use my Nifty Cat Food Conversion Calculator.
Conclusion:
Thanks to my confusion, I got to the bottom of how to compare cat food and am satisfied with my foods of choice. A wise man once said,
“Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.” - Abraham Lincoln
Or at least, keep fielding information, learn to ignore the crap, and lean into your confusion until its resolved.
I think I can finally put this cat food thing to rest, at least for now.
This just completely cracked me up. First, the spinning cat graphic. Oh. My. God. I'm going to use it for mid-day meditations. Second, the Nifty Cat food Calorie Converter??? I love your mind...and color sense. I don't have a cat, but it was pretty to look at :)