Do carnivores just need to eat meat? >
Lions and tigers living in the wild are carnivores, but they don’t just eat meat. In fact, most of the targets of their predation are herbivores. When they catch their prey, they don’t just eat the meat, they bite open their stomachs and swallow the intestines, which are hoarded with carbohydrates grains and fibers vegetables that have yet to be fully digested. Although carnivores can also eat grass, but the carnivore’s intestine is mainly used to digest meat, so it is shorter than the intestine of herbivores, and lacks the enzyme to digest fiber, so it is not suitable for digesting “grass”. The first thing you need to do is to eat the undigested plants in the intestines of herbivores to get the necessary nutrients to maintain nutritional balance.
There is no such thing as a “Tom and Jerry” cartoon, where the ideal food for a cat is to “swallow a mouse” from a biological and nutritional perspective.
Dogs and cats don’t just eat meat
Dogs and cats also need a balanced diet. It is possible to make your pet’s food at home based on the appropriate calorie and nutrient content for its life stage and weight, but it requires specialized knowledge of nutrition and time costs. So giving a “quality” pet diet is the minimum necessary.
Tip: Unlike “regular food” or “snacks,” only pet food and water are sufficient to maintain health is called “comprehensive nutritional food. Nowadays, in foreign countries, to meet the AAFCO Association of American Feed Control Officials; American Association of Feed Prosecutors nutritional benchmarks of pet feed as “comprehensive nutritional food”, so choose with “comprehensive nutritional food” label pet. Therefore, it is a prerequisite to choose a pet feed with the label of “comprehensive nutritional food”. However, there is no standard in Japan like AAFCO, nor is there a public body that monitors the safety standards of pet food and additives for cats and dogs. What can be used as a criterion for choosing a feed is the “additives”. While nutritional additives are needed for nutritional balance, additives such as “coloring agents” and “flavoring” are added as part of a sales strategy to get consumers to buy feed that “looks good. However, “coloring”, “flavoring” and other additives are added to make consumers buy “tasty-looking feed” in the sales strategy, and are not necessary valuable in nutrition. It is important to check the ingredient description on the package and choose a pet feed without unnecessary additives.
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