the importance of balanced

An important percentage of the pathologies that I take care of in my doctor's office, is influenced by a deficient feeding. When I mention the problem, often receipt by answer, that the foods that they give to the cat are ?natural and/or healthy? and give a list me of which they give them to eat; when I listen the ingredients I think that perhaps they can be good a human being, but definitively, it does not stop a cat.

?A natural and healthy? food is in most of the cases an erroneous concept. If a cat eats a crude mouse to not it passes nothing him since for, it is a natural food, however if a human does, surely is going to have to go to a doctor. Of reciprocal form, to give to a feline foods that are of humans like fried or condimentos, also is going to bring digestive upheavals to him that sooner or later will require veterinary attention.

Treatment to always make emphasis, in which the cats are completely different from the humans in which to his digestive apparatus it talks about. For this, I need to explain the different foundations from a good nutrition, in the following order, using terms that are comprehensible for people in general.

Ration and frequency
The ration is the amount of food that eats of once, the diet is the sum of the daily rations. The diet of the humans consists of four A rations the day: breakfast, lunch, tea, and have supper. In my personal case they are enough more than those, which brings reproaches to me of my dietólogo.

Our stomach works different that the one of our cat, for example: If to somebody we give a diet him that consists of throughout eating only one empanada every two hours the day, this person will feel hunger all along. But the diet we at noon do it of 6 empanadas ones and 6 to the night, will be satisfied. So that? If of the two each 24 forms we are eating empanadas 12 hs!

We are like the monkey or the pig (omnívoros of slow digestion) that when they find a plantation occurs a great one panzada. and soon they are going away to sleep making the digestion. The cat however is a hunter on the lookout (carnivorous of fast digestion), cannot eat great amounts that would put it heavy, needs to eat several meals to the day but that are small.

We are forcing our cats to eat like us, and the problem is that to the 2 hours after eating already they are hungry and they begin to undergo an increasing anguish with running of the hours. This brings that when we served the food to them they are going it to eat as rapidly as possible, with the risks of can bring an expansion of stomach by nutritional overload.

The ideal ration of an adult cat, that goes according to the size of its stomach and it gives a satisfaction sensation him is very simple, is: ? a mouse! This is the natural amount. A cat that lives in wild state eats about five to seven mice to the day: ? a balanced food cup!

My advice at a first moment, mainly if it is an animal in the growth stage, is to give him to food ?ad-libitum? that is to say, to leave him the plate full and that he eats whenever he is hungry. Like disadvantage, I could happen that the fattening animal, in is case changes to a food of low calories or leaves less amount in the plate.

Digestibilidad
This it is a concept with a very complex scientific definition, and to explain I will try it to use a little academic language.

If an animal eats a kg of a food, and defecates means kilo of he himself, we would say that it has a digestibilidad of 50%; if however after eating 1Kg single g defecates 200 it means that it has a digestibilidad of 80%. This concept is related to the concentration of the really nutritious substances with respect to the total of substances that are put in the formulation. It is necessary to be careful, with cheap foods, surely will be necessary to give them more of the double of food with respect to one but expensive one.

In order to exemplify it with a vocabulary that would perhaps blush our grandmothers; I resort to an anecdote of one of (to my to seem) better clinical of Argentina the Dr EH, who used to relate it in his conferences. In an occasion a food manufacturer gave samples him of his product so that she evaluated it. It gave the food him to his dogs and after one week he mentioned to the manufacturer its house, he showed the garden to him covered with the enormous depositions of the dogs and I inform to him that that colorful carpet determined that its food was simply that: A poop mountain.

Satiety
All the mammals have mechanisms to know when there is to stop to eat, in some as on the humans and the bovines they are based mainly on the filling of the stomach (full belly, contented heart), in the felines is based mainly on covering the amount with calories that needs.

It can happen that a cat eats but of a food that of another one, not because it likes but, but because he himself does not satisfy it like food. One eats a garlic sausage sandwich and plenty feels, but the emparedados ones are of lettuce, surely will need to eat several to feel satiated, this supposition can confuse us and that to our cat the food of low quality it likes more.

Palatabilidad
This concept talks about the sensation that feels our mascot when eating. This related to the flavor, the scent, and to the size and consistency of the food. Most of the food manufacturers balanced already the main parameters through studies scientifically controlled know, but also there is a great individual variation.

For the lovers of detail, I will say to them that with respect to balanced dry, the cat prefers an acid flavor slightly, but increases the palatabilidad if the mouthful is had by a film of but a slightly acid flavor that the internal one.

Specific nutricias necessities of the cat
The cat is a strict carnivore, unlike the dog that is on way to become omnívoro. This brings that their requirements are more demanding; if we give him to eat to a cat food for dogs they will appear cardiac problems and of vision by lack of a called amino acid Bullfighting, that to the dogs does not affect its partial lack to them.

The ingredients of the balanced ones can be of vegetal origin or animal, in foods for dogs is greater proportion of vegetal proteins for being more sales, they can make essential amino acids from poor vegetal proteins in them, but the cats cannot do it. The feline foods must contain a great proportion of protein animal with respect to the vegetable.

An excessive use in the food diet of vegetal origin, since there is in foods of very bad quality can bring problems of urinary calculations, putting in danger the life of the cat

The proportions of the ingredients (proteins, vitamins, minerals, etc.) must vary, according to the own requirements of each animal, thus is that there are foods for puppies, pregnant females, adult, gerontes, fat people, skinny, and different diseases that have each one a type different from food and is necessary to evaluate as he is the one that corresponds to give. This single one can determine a Veterinary Doctor to it.

Diseases
Several diseases caused by a desbalanceada feeding exist: raquitismo, dérmicas alterations by lack of Zinc and/or Copper, urinary calculations, expanded cardiopathy?, by single mentioning some, caused simply by foods of bad quality. Aside there is a myriad of diseases in which a bad feeding aggravates the picture, exposing unnecessarily the life of our mascot.

A cat that during the stage of the development has not received its minimum quota of Calcium can have complications of by life. For example, if it is a female, the hip will not grow the sufficient thing and could have serious complications when arriving the moment from the childbirth. By a the same reason can arrive at the six years of lost age and to have half of its teeth. There are complicated half to him of the life that reduces to him, single by not to have taken care of its necessities nutricionales.

Another advantage in please the balanced ones, is that of no way it can contract certain infectious diseases like the Toxoplasmosis or the Tuberculosis, to mention but the well-known ones.

Conclusions
During the years that I take seeing cats I have noticed that in general the cats that eat foods of low quality and minor price they do not have so shining and smooth the hair as those that eats highly concentrated (super-premium premium and). The difference is seen after a month be eating a food of good mark.

When you offer to your cat the food to him without restrictions, she will observe that she eats neither one nor three times, but fifteen or twenty times, in small amounts, during the day. This is the way with which the cat is going to eat ?ecologically?, so as it would do it in his wild state. Like additional advantage, if a day you must go to 6:00 and return to 24:00, it can calmly do it without having to worry to return to prepare the food of the cat.

I really do not create that it is necessary to continue going deep but, in the advantages to give food balanced instead of the caretaker. Perhaps the rest of the reasons would fill a whole book, and this brief work is not that my intention when writing.

As much personal as professionally, my recommendation she is the one to give balanced of good quality, the marks will be possible to be given his veterinarian of confidence as much, since as I never we would recommend consciously a food, that it puts in danger the life of his mascot.

Gentility: Association Argentina de Feline Medicina

Author: Dr Mariano Durand Cordero
Durcorvet@Hotmail.com

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