Homemade Cat Food Can Be Harmful to Your Cat
If you are trying to rethink your diet and cook more at home, you may be tempted to do the same with your cat. There are many homemade cat food recipes available, but recent research has shown that many do not provide adequate nutrition.
Commercial pet foods must meet nutritional and food safety requirements, but there are no such requirements for recipes that you find on the Internet or in books. A team of veterinarians selected 114 prescriptions intended for everyday use in cats without medical problems, of which 94 had enough information for correct analysis. The authors found that none of the recipes fully followed the National Research Council’s recommendations for pet food, but five (all created by veterinarians) came close.
Some of the missing nutrients were vitamins and minerals that you might not think about, such as choline, iron, thiamine, and zinc. In some cases, protein was lacking in cat food recipes.
Many recipes also had vague instructions. For example, whether you drain the fat from the ground beef after cooking has a big impact on the fat and vitamin content of a food. Some called for the addition of vitamin supplements, but did not say which brand or which one. Many recipes lacked instructions or caveats, such as the recipe that used bones, but did not mention that the bones must be finely ground to avoid damaging your pet.
The authors told Treehugger that if you really want to feed your cat homemade food, you can ask a Certified Veterinary Dietitian to help you find or write a recipe that suits you. But if that sounds like too much work or cost, you might just want to buy regular old cat food at the grocery store.