I understand your reasoning, Bill, but just out of curiosity why DO many pet food brands put so much corn and/or wheat in their foods? I think with science diet its the second ingredient. Is it because it’s a cheap and abundant filler, or is it actually good for the animal? Why not put some more nutrient dense carbs in there like vegetables? My cat will eat broccoli or carrot but has never shown interest in grains. i’m just wondering if its something they would naturally choose. If not, then I don’t think it should be in their food in large quantities.
It’s probably a combination of taste – corn can be a substantial component without harming taste; being an entirely adequate source of carbs; that most vegetables are actually quite low in vitamins and minerals anyway and are certainly not remotely economical means of supplying them; and most vegetables are not economical means of supplying carbs. It takes a huge amount of say spinach or broccoli to provide a substantial amount of carbs.
The taste issue really could be quite significant. To get my cockatoo to eat broccoli and bean sprouts for example requires making a “baby food” sort of formulation that has chicken and papaya
in it, with a weight of dried papaya
equal to the weight of broccoli and equal
to the weight of bean sprouts, and therefore
probably much more caloric content of
papaya. Anything that has a more substantial
percentage of broccoli or sprouts, or doesn’t
have so much papaya (one of his absolute
favories) and you can be sure that the broccoli or sprouts will get him to refuse
the food.
Sure, an individual cat might like broccoli
but I wouldn’t be surprised if on average
it would take very little broccoli content
for most cats to prefer a different food.
I don’t know about types of Hills cat food
besides the Senior, but for the Senior the
corn is the third ingredient (rice is second,
chicken by-product meal is first.) So far as I know it is not thought by veterinarians that the protein content is too low, nor the fat content too low, so the carbs presumably are not too high.
Now, I would prefer seeing chicken or perhaps lamb rather than chicken by-product
meal as the first ingredient: but whether
this is actually significant nutritionally
I don’t know.
I wonder if the Nutro stuff is better?