Is the raw food diet a good idea?

I'm hopefully getting a cat soon and I was wondering if the raw food diet would be a good idea? Is it the healthiest food or what? Thanks.Is the raw food diet a good idea?
I have been doing some research today about it, and from what I can tell, yes it is the healthiest. Look up "Pottenger's Cats" - Francis M. Pottenger used about 900 laboratory cats to study the differences between feeding cats raw food versus feeding cats cooked food. The study went on for ten years and showed the cats fed cooked food ended up with all kinds of health problems. Cooking meat changes its nutritional value, and removes a lot of the Taurine (which is vital to cats' survival). We as humans can cope with eating cooked meat because we're omnivores, so the nutritional losses caused by cooking don't matter to us.



Anyway, for more info, just go onto Google to look for recipes and tips. That's what I've been doing pretty much all day. Like you, I may be getting a cat soon and want to do what is best for its health. Even if you usually feed your cat canned food, and occasionally give some chopped up raw chicken or salmon, that's still better than always giving it pet food. Don't even think about keeping it on a kibble-only diet, kibble (as I've found out) is terrible for cats and usually consists mostly of grain.Is the raw food diet a good idea?
Cats are hunters by nature, so if they were wild and catching their food it would be raw. So, yes, raw food is better. There are recipes for home made cat food you can find. Unfortunately I don't have one. We feed our kitties Costco food, they love it. Treats to clean their teeth and pouch food, which is canned food in a pouch, once a day. I like it that you are so concerned for your kitty's diet, it means you will be a good pet parent.Is the raw food diet a good idea?
its the most natural but vets would recommend a proper cat food, because it has all the added vitamins, minerals etc

i feed my cat a pouch of wet cat food in the morning and cat bix at night, then she gets a treat twice a week, either a tin of sardines or tuna or a chicken breast, neck or wing, fresh fish etc. she also likes a cube of sweet potato or zucchini. the vet has ok'd this diet so i know its the right thing give her.Is the raw food diet a good idea?
I do believe raw diet is the healthiest, but since it's not so easy for me to make it, I feed high quality canned food and supplement it with raw chicken wings, necks etc.



The benefits of raw vs canned is that it is a natural source of taurine, which usually has to be added to canned because the meat is cooked. Taurine is essential to cats since they can't metabolize it. Also tearing apart meat and crushing bones is what the cat's teeth were made for, therefore they tend to be more healthy if you give the cat the opportunity to naturaly exercise them.



Raw really is the most natural way to feed a cat, but if you choose the right canned food, you will be doing a better job than most cat owners who feed the commercial dry and wet. There are some great websites on raw feeding, just type it in google.



If you opt for cat food, I wouldn鈥榯 recommend feeding any dry food. Cats are designed to get their water from food. That's the way nature designed them, they have low thirst drive. When fed dry, they won't drink enough to compensate for the lack of moisture. They will only consume about 50% of the water they should be having. This can lead to kidney disease, UTI, crystals, blockage, renal failure and more. Especially if you get a tom, this is crucial. Male cats have a narrower urethra than female cats and are more prone to blockage from the crystals.



Free feeding also contributes to obesity. And the fact that dry food is over-processed means, that most of it鈥檚 little nutrition has been already destroyed, leaving almost no nutrients for your cat. It needs to eat more to meet it鈥檚 needs, and in the process consumes more calories from the fillers.



Btw wetting the dry food will not help. There鈥檚 bacteria on the kibble and the water would just allow it to grow.



The only way to give the cat it's natural hydration is to feed it wet food only.



But some wet foods are not of a very high quality, either. That goes for most commercial foods. Just like the dry, they are often made with cheap fillers such as corn, wheat, soy, rice etc. These are not a part of cat's natural diet (it鈥檚 an obligate carnivore 鈥?it eats meat) and they are not designed to digest it. Grain is carbohydrate which the cats can't process and it turns into blood sugar and fat, causing diabetes and obesity. In the wild, where cats only hunt for meat, diabetes and obesity are unheard of. It's us who cause these by feeding a species inappropriate food.



We usually read labels on our food, but rarely on the food for our cats. Learn to read the label and understand the ingredients. The healthiest food to feed apart from raw feeding is grain-free wet food with no by-product. Some good brands are Wellness CORE, EVO, Merrick, Nature's Variety, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and more. These will give your cat the proper hydration and nutrition it's designed to get and it will be strong and healthy.



If you switch it's diet, do it gradually, by mixing the current food with the new one over couple of weeks until there's only the new. This will prevent diarrhea and upset stomach.



You will probably get a lot of different answers, so google feline nutrition or look at the links below, and do the research for yourself. I personally wasn't able to find one reliable source (besides the pet food industry) that would say grain is beneficial for cats or that dry is beneficial for them.



More on cat nutrition below,



Good luck!
matter of opinion.



I do not see a problem with high quality canned cat food.