Vet recommended cat foods in Australia
In Australia there are two brands of cat food which vets tend to recommend, and these are Hill’s (Science Diet and Prescription Diet) and Royal Canin.
These two brands are dominant globally, with Hill’s being part of Colgate-Palmolive, and Royal Canin one of the many pet food brands from Mars.
Some vets endorse the Nestle brand Purina Pro Plan for reasons I can’t fathom as a nutritionist of carnivorous cats, and some endorse Advance which I see as a more budget-friendly alternative from Mars to the arguably more premium Royal Canin.
We also have the Australian brand Delicate Care, and I’ve known some vets to endorse another Australian brand LifeWise which I’ve had a lot of faith in over the years.
So, if you want a vet recommended cat food in Australia they’re pretty much your options, but I’d urge you to make a few other considerations:
Vets aren’t trained nutritionists anymore than doctors are trained in our nutrition
That may sound like a sensible statement, but it’s almost always overlooked.
I urge you to see vets (amazing human beings as they are) more as animal doctors than animal nutritionists, although it must be said they see positive results when sick cats are transitioned from one cat food to a vet recommended cat food.
Would you like to know why?
The reason for this is almost always overlooked as well, but the reason is simple – if you’re feeding your cat one of the many brands of kibble available in Australia, particularly household named brands or those at the supermarket, then you’ve been feeding your pet carnivore processed nuggets made significantly of grains or plants.
This makes no sense nutritionally at a fundamental level (although makes a lot of sense in terms of profit margins), but ask yourself this:
Would your cat show an improvement in health if you stopped feeding processed nuggets made significantly of grains or plants, and instead fed them processed nuggets made instead of a little less grains and plants, or slightly more digestible grains and plants?
The answer to that is of course yes, it’s very likely your cat will show a marginal improvement in health.
Your vet could give your cat a blood test before and after the transition, and feel warm and fuzzy about the test results improving.
Over time, it’s easy to understand why a vet would recommend such a cat food of processed nuggets of grains or plants, because they’ve seen these marginal improvements on repeat.
But, is this optimal?
We’re discussing factually scientific obligate carnivore animals who we fully understand have a digestive system designed by nature to consume prey, and I don’t know about you, but wheat, corn, rice, potato, sweet potato, tapioca, or many of the other ingredients you find in vet recommended cat foods are prey.
We should also account for the historical intervention of pet food companies like Hill’s and Royal Canin providing coursework, study materials, exams, and all manner of other incentives to our veterinary students.
Many years ago when I studied at Portsmouth University in England, everything I was taught I believed to be utterly correct – it’s an easy assumption to make.
It’s not just veterinarians who rarely consider whether processed nuggets (I’ll drop the grain/plant thing from now on) are truly a good diet for your carnivorous cat.
Leading researchers in pet food also neglect to consider most cats are fed processed nuggets which are far from optimum nutritionally.
This means it’s very easy for a researcher to study something daft like whether cat carnivores fed vegan nuggets versus some control group of regular cats fed the regular crap, and conclude cats should be fed vegan food (something University of Queensland have pumped out a lot of in recent years).
Why don’t these researchers use a control group of raw feed cats, or cats fed prey-based cat foods?
Well, they wouldn’t be able to prove much, would they?
Simple ways you can decide if a vet recommended cat food is right for your cat
I’ll start by saying the wet food from both Hill’s and Royal Canin is much more aligned with the nutritional needs of your cat than the dry foods.
Let’s say your cat has early signs of renal disease (or kidney failure), which comes as no surprise when most cats have been struggling to digest inappropriate cat foods which understandably can take a toll on their kidneys – kidney disease, and most diseases cats suffer, are diet-related diseases.
Given the inherent need for cats to consume a diet of prey and approx 70% moisture, not prey and approx 70% carbohydrates, I don’t see continuing to feed a cat suffering renal disease a dry food to make any sense at all.
However, due to affordability reasons combined with lack of thought on the matter, most Australian cats beginning to show symptoms of diet-related disease are transitioned, sadly, from one dry kibble to another.
You wouldn’t water a sick plant with vodka, so why consider dry processed mostly moistureless nuggets to your sick cat?
If I were you, I would start considering the real nutritional needs of your cat as an obligate carnivore who’s ancestors survived surprisingly well in the wild for some 10 to 15 million years without being fed high-carb nuggets.
Have you considered it’s only us and now our domesticated pets who suffer all the diet-related diseases veterinarians will happily recommend you a “better” diet for?
Carnivores fed a prey diet won’t get transitioned to dry processed foods to improve their health, because ironically they don’t suffer in the same way our domestic cats and dogs suffer on consumer product processed foods.
Are Hill’s Science Diet, Prescription Diet, and Royal Canin the best vet recommended diets in Australia?
If you want the reassurance of your veterinarian’s recommendation, then I would have to say Hill’s and Royal Canin are probably your most solid bet.
At least in terms of the much better formulated (and also more pricey) wet food formulas.
If budget is a problem (which lets face it, for most of us it is), then the dry foods sometimes can’t be overlooked. When it comes to Hill’s and Royal Canin, sadly I see them as expensive for what they are, but in this current era it seems all cat foods are expensive (at least cats are more affordable to feed than dogs).
If dry food can’t be avoided, then at least try and mix dry and wet, dry and fresh, or dry and raw.
Alternatively, there are some excellent brands of cat food in Australia which more closely mimic your cat’s natural diet and nutritional needs – we have Frontier Pets freeze dried raw, CatChi wet foods, Ziwi Peak air dried with much more moisture than dry food, and all these are predominantly prey and all the nutrition your cat would get from real prey ingredients.
You’ll find reviews (and sometimes money off offers) if you search and read the full reviews.
Dental health can also be a precursor to many diseases our cats suffer, so check your cat’s teeth – if you find they’re yellowing with plaque and tartar, then the reason is kibble and wet mushy foods do very little to keep their teeth clean (and I’ll include fad “dental diets” in that).
I have a 17 year old cat with pristine teeth, and he gnaws on raw chicken bones every evening – go figure.
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