We often think that it’s best to mix a little of the new food with the old food to get our animals adjusted gradually to the new food.
Well, when transitioning from dry to raw, this is not encouraged.
If a cat is fed high-carbohydrate food (dry food) at the same time as raw food, the carbohydrates can interfere with the efficient absorption of the nutrients in the raw food, potentially cancelling out the benefits of the raw diet. Increased levels of crude fibre in feline rations increase faecal output, alter colonic
microflora and fermentation patterns, alter glucose absorption and insulin secretion, and at high levels can depress diet digestibility.
¹
What do we mean by depressing diet digestibility?
To understand how a food is digested, we need to take a journey through the intestinal tract of a cat. Imagine the digestive tract as a production line. If the first person in the line is inefficient, then the rest of the line can’t hope to do their job properly. In the cat, the mouth is for ripping and tearing. There is no salivary
amylase to digest carbohydrates, so the first stage in the digestive production line is the stomach. The cat, being an obligate carnivore, has a very acidic stomach, with a
pH of 2, ideal for digesting protein and neutralizing bacteria.
Many processed pet foods have significantly increased the carbohydrate content of their cat foods, and have substituted animal proteins with plant-based proteins. The problem with this substitution is that it does have an impact on the digestive environment. In a cat eating a high carbohydrate-high plant protein-lower meat protein diet, we find that the acidity in the stomach changes.
Gastric acidity is dictated by the meat content of the diet. The stomach becomes progressively more alkaline, heading for a pH of 4 or above.
In this less acidic environment, several problems arise in the first part of the production line. Gastric emptying slows down, contaminating bacteria are not destroyed, and raw meat and bones are not softened or broken down effectively as the
digestive enzymesin the stomach only work in a very acidic environment. Feeding processed foods at the same time as raw foods can lead to the entire meal not being completely digested in the digestive tract.
Stomach acidity is the major regulator of pancreatic and liver ability to respond to food arriving in the small intestine. Food arriving in the small intestine with a pH of 2 or less triggers the release of two very important hormones,
secretin and
cholecystokinin. These two hormones are so important that without them, normal digestion of food just can’t happen. The pancreas does not produce its juices and bile is not secreted to digest fats.
The result is
maldigestion and as a consequence,
malabsorption.
² Maldigested carbohydrates get consumed by abnormal gut flora which flourish in the altered pH of the digestive tract. Fats are not digested, resulting in deficiency in the essential fat soluble vitamins, A,D,E and K.
³ When incomplete digestion of starch and
disaccharides occurs, it leads to an acidifying effect on the pH of the faeces, due to the fermentation of the undigested starches and disaccharides in the intestines. A change in pH at any point along the digestive tract will affect the efficiency of the digestive tract. Digestive enzymes function within a specific pH range, and gut flora is also affected by changes in pH. The link between an abnormal gut flora and compromised immunity has been established in man and animals.
⁴
When I bought Coco & Joe’s, I was also told not to mix it with dry or even canned food. Just give it as a treat, separately. Now I know why.
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