Grain-free means it contains no grains. Grain-free cat food is a good diet for cat health if your cat has a food allergy to grains, but is not particularly beneficial if it is not due to a grain allergy. Because it is a food made from a limited number of ingredients, it has drawbacks compared to regular cat food. As for the “grain-free is best” claim, the following will confirm it. Most cat owners seem to have become concerned about “grain-free” cat food. Since cats are already carnivores, it can be argued that this product satisfies the desire of owners who feel that their cat’s diet is as healthy as it would be in the wild. Cats can digest the right amount of heated and cooked grains. It is considered a wild haunt that does not eat grains. Because, the carbohydrates contained in the grains are not well digested. We humans cannot eat rice directly, but add water and heat it to eat later. Not only carbohydrates, but also plant-based proteins such as glutamic acid, are particularly digestible through heating and processing. However, since cats are complete carnivores, they do not use carbohydrates as much as dogs with their highly omnivorous habits. Up to about 40% can be used without any problems. The grains in cat food are cooked and the amount of carbohydrates is pre-gelatinized, so they can be used in the body without any problems.2. Grain-Free Cat Food Benefits If your cat’s health warrants avoiding grains, then grain-free cat food is a good dietary choice. Specifically, there are food allergies to grain proteins. But other than that, there are no particular benefits. Grain-free cat foods containing grains Advantages Avoiding food allergies to grains It is possible to use a variety of raw materials and it is possible to suppress the price Easy to establish a nutritional balance Shortcomings They tend to be expensive because they are carefully selected for their ingredients and are low in carbohydrates, so they tend to contain more protein. As a result, it can be a burden on the internal organs of older cats is not suitable if you are allergic to gluten, etc. Choosing a grain-free food Step 1. Let’s see if it is really a food allergy to grain If your cat has symptoms indicating a food allergy, even if you blindly eat grain-free cat food, the symptoms will not improve if the allergen is different. It is often difficult to identify the allergen and first diagnose if it is a food allergy by consuming a therapeutic diet with degraded proteins so that temporarily no allergic reaction occurs and symptoms are observed. In the case of food allergies, the strict approach is to identify the allergen by sequentially testing cat foods that remove a source of protein contained in the food you normally eat.2. Make sure there are no raw materials to avoid having a wide variety of cat foods that exclude certain substances from the ingredients of food allergy cats and grains. If the allergen is oat gluten, you should avoid oats, and if the allergen is beef, it should be beef. Grain-free foods are useful if multiple grains are the allergen, but the interpretation of grains may vary from product to product. Note that grain-free does not mean carbohydrate-free: Although many of the Noble brands are labeled as “grain-free”, they still contain carbohydrate fillers such as potatoes or soy fiber.
