If cats are obligate carnivores, why do we feed them rice, peas, and other non-meat items?

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If cats are obligate carnivores, why do we feed them rice and peas(among other non-meat things)?

To my knowledge, while dogs can have some carbohydrates, a cats liver and pancreas will be overly stressed dealing with carbs. They need to eat meat and exclusively meat to survive and be healthy. So why do I find so many different cat foods with things *other* than meat or fish? Is it filler?

In: Biology

21 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The same reason we feed dry food exclusively, because its cheap and convenient.  We switched over to highly processed dry food diets for dogs and cats because it’s cheap to make, easy to portion out, and convenient to store for the average consumer. 

To feed a cat nothing but meat would be expensive, and would be less shelf stable than us feeding the processed dry food.

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