The Best Food For Diabetic Cats

A cat owner from Minnesota asks what is the best food for diabetic cats. She already has a diabetic cat and has been feeding it ‘hard science diet’ and her other cat has recently been diagnosed with cat diabetes and she is having problems managing the illness in that cat.

“I was wondering what the best food to use is? I have a diabetic that has been regulated on hard science diet for about 5/6 years, now his brother is diabetic and harder to regulate!

I have limited the hard for both and they are getting soft food, science diet kitten twice a day! Also, do most people only feed their cats 2xs a day, or do you leave food out throughout the day?”

I’m not sure what hard science diet she is referring to but  it sounds like a dry food diet. Which I consider to be totally inappropriate for a diabetic cat unless there are other issues that need to be addressed. A reader of her post replies:-

“I feed my cats a homemade raw diet …………..but I agree with many that say to stay away from dry.”

I’ve said it many times in my other posts that the best diet for a cat is a natural diet. The type of diet that a cat would eat in the wild. That means a diet that is less than 3% carbohydrate. You even have to be very careful with wet food as some gravies tend to be high in carbohydrates.

“None of the Science Diet dry food are good for diabetics. They are very high in carbs (over 30%!) and full of poor quality ingredients. Other brands of dry foods are just as bad in terms of carbs. Dry food in general is not good for any cat..”

“Unfortunately a lot of foods use grains as cheap filler. Even high protein dry foods are higher in carbs than preferred because there has to be some starch to hold it together.”

So the best food for diabetic cats is one that has extremely low or even zero carbohydrate content and is high in protein. A raw food diet that is as as close as possible to that which a cat would eat in the wild is best and in many cases has shown to be able to even reverse cat diabetes.

Remember when the correct diet is administered the need for insulin decreases so it is important that blood sugar levels are regularly checked at home.