Link between dry food and kidney disease?

A friend just told me that a veterinarian she knows said that the reason
domestic cats so often get kidney disease is because they're fed dry food,
and their bodies didn't evolve to deal with so much non-meat in their
diet.

Enfilade...

We offer wet food to ours so they get better hydration, but only Tyche
and Smokey will eat it. Nocturne demands utter solitude to eat and
even then she usually snubs moist food--Kumani hates it.

Kumani is our skinny minnie and we try to coax her to eat, and Tyche is
a fattie. So if Tyche's diet is partly moist food and Kumani's is all
dry, there's more to it than that. Tyche just eats like a hoover, I
think.

I can understand that dry food can bring on diabetes, because the cat
is eating a lot more carbohydrate than their body needs or is built for
metabolizing. But kidney disease? I always thought that too much *protein*
was the cause (or one of the causes) of kidney failure. Or can cats ever
have too much protein?

William Hamblen...

Renal failure can mean the need to restrict protein because the
kidneys no longer eliminate the nitrogen from the protein as
well as they used to.

EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)...

I don't remember the reasons, but I do remember reading that
dry food is not terribly good for cats who are prone to UTI's.

Any of the medically savvy want to take a stab at this? Howard? Phil,
if you're reading?

Jo Firey...

Just my two cents. Our first dog nearly died of kidney failure at eight
years old. And the vet blamed it on her getting into the cats food with its
high protein level. This was for the most part dry cat food as that's
mostly what we've always fed. She recovered, restricted to K/D for the
rest of her 18 year life.

Jeanne Hedge...

What I find odd about this old wet-dry debate as relates to kidney
problems in cats is that so many vets have their patients put on a
diet featuring K/D - which comes in both wet and dry varieties. (if
dry is so awful on kidneys, why does K/D come in dry?)

Jeanne Hedge, as directed by Natasha

sriddles...

Very good question! I do know that some cats refuse wet food. Boots
like dry much better than canned.

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http://www.jhedge.com

None of our cats have had kidney or diabetes problems. But that's only
seven cats over forty years.

I have a question though. I get the impression that we've agreed that all
moist cat food is very low in carbs and that all dry cat food is high in
carbs. Isn't there a range of carb vs protein in both of them? I can
understand that a cat might not drink enough water to handle an all dry food
diet, though that has never been a problem with ours. But is there always
that large a difference in the composition of the two?

Our cats are healthy, slim, and have lovely coats. And for the most part
live on Nutro dry cat food.
Jo

jmcquown...

Beats me. Persia's vet doesn't seem overly concerned that she's eating only
dry food (Hill's x/d). Her checkup came out just fine except she's still a
little "fluffy" :) She's (we guess) about 8 years old.

I got her some of the gooshy x/d but she didn't care for it. And since this
is the only food she's supposed to eat since her bladder surgery a couple of
years ago, I have to think the vet knows what he's talking about. She has
not had a recurrence of UTI since, whereas before the surgery and this
Hill's x/d diet, she was experiencing them every few months.

Persia's kidney enzymes checked out just fine. Does your friend have a
citation for her information or is she just passing along something she
heard from someone who heard from someone who heard...?

jXwXeXrXmXoXnXt...

She heard it from a veterinarian. As she put it, a "newly minted"
veterinarian. Which could translate to "inexperienced", but can also
translate to "up on the latest info."

I'd never heard that before myself, so I was just curious if anyone
here ever has.

jmcquown...

Funny thing, Persia is terrified of small rodents! She's not terrified of
dry kibble ;)

She's indifferent about wet food. I used to give her some Fancy Feast as a
treat once a week but even then sometimes she'd turn up her nose at it. She
absolutely devours her dry Hill's x/d and cries when she can't have any more
until 12 hours later. (Poor starving 16 lb. baby! heheh)

I read the bag of her Hill's x/d. The nutritional analysis shows the main
ingredient is PROTEIN. So I'm not afraid of feeding it to her as opposed to
canned. She didn't like the canned x/d very much.

jmcquown...

I read the package of the Hill's x/d that Persia eats (dry food). Protein
tops the list.

sriddles...

I don't have citations, but just think about it. Dry food is about the
most un-natural form of sustenance for a cat you can imagine.
This is a gross example, but it really made me stop and think. Look at
that stuff when it gets wet. It absorbs water like a sponge, and swells
up twice its size. That's what's happening in your cat's stomache, and
it's absorbing from the cat. Vets used to recommend science diet
exclusively, but they seem to be getting away, at least, from
recommending a dry cereal diet. They make quite a bit of money from SD

H. Adam Stevens...

Max preferred rabbits.

on sales, also.

Karen AKA Kajikit...

So is science-diet good, bad or indifferent? It's what we feed the
girls and they seem to like it. They've always had science diet kibble
and now they get SD indoor-lite-hairball control (poor babies, it
doesn't sound like much fun to me!) and Tessie gets a little bit of SD
canned food morning and night to supplement it.

Karen...

It is truly more about wet vs. dry than brand. I bet Scout and SIlver would
even drop their extra pounds by switching to wet.

sriddles...

Oh, I don't think it's bad, for sure. I"ve heard people criticize it
because it has a high corn content, but I know a lot of people who use
it, and their cats do very well on it. My cats just don't like it.
Boots only eats Pro Plan dry, and what wet food I can coax her into
eating. Pro Plan probably isn't as good as Science Diet, but you know
how cats are. She just flat refuses anything else, no matter how I try
to sneak it past her.
I think what's most important is that cats plenty of water w/their dry
food, and I think a diet of *both* is ideal. (Ha. That's just my
opinion, though, and I'm no expert)

Karen...

I know my vet said there was a raging debate over the thought that too
much protein caused it. They are beginning to believe that is not true.
Doesn't make sense to me since cats are obligate carnivores. I just
know there are some big debates going on about things that have been
though previously on CRF.

Yowie...

I would have thought it was due to the lack of water content in it. In its
natural environment - deserts - a cat would live off eating other animals,
which would contain approximatley 70% water because drinking water in
deserts is rare. Dry food does't have the water content, so a cat's kidneys
have to work harder to extract the toxins from the blood stream and
therefore make a much more highly concentrated uring than they would in the
wild. The harder the kidneys have to work, the mor elikely it is that
they'll begin to fail early, so *flesh* was preferrable to dry food.

Yowie
(well, thats how my vet explained it to me. Of course, in its natural
evironment, the cat also doesn't have bathroom faucets and trained slaves
either)