Name a better way to break your cat’s monotony than cat treats; we’ll wait. Not much, isn’t it?
Stretching and napping out in the sun all day with food breaks in between can make your cat a bit blue.
Cat treats are also brilliant for entertaining your cat in scavenger hunts and puzzle feeders.
These exciting applications of a yummy kitty treat can easily make you overlook their health effects. True, treats aren’t particularly meant to be healthy, but nutritional value aside, some ingredients used in popular cat treats adversely affect a cat’s health.
Cat Treats to Avoid
Feline Greenies Dental Treats
These dental treats contain brewer’s rice, ground wheat, ground flaxseed, corn gluten meal, dried catnip, and brewer’s dried yeast. It contains vitamins, minerals, colors, and preservatives, mostly synthetic.
Meat ingredients are poultry fat, chicken meal, and natural poultry flavor.
Wellness Kittles Crunchy Treats
Ingredients include chickpeas, cranberries, potatoes, salmon oil, green tea extract, peas, spearmint extract, rosemary extract, and ground flaxseed oil.
The meat ingredients include chicken, deboned chicken, chicken fat, and herring meal.
Whiskas Temptations
The ingredients in Whiskas temptation cat food include wheat flour, brewers dried yeast, brewers rice, ground corn, dried cheese, natural flavors, vitamins, and minerals.
The meat ingredients are dried meat by-products, animal fat, and chicken by-product meal.
Blue Buffalo Bursts Treat
The ingredients are barley, oatmeal, brown rice, dried whey, yeast extract, lecithin, tapioca starch, and peas. The rest of the components are preservatives and vitamins.
Meat ingredients include pork fat, chicken fat, chicken meal, and deboned chicken.
6 Ingredients in Cat Treats to Avoid
Next, we will familiarize you with a list of ingredients in treats that are not good and which you should try as much as possible to avoid:
- Synthetic preservatives – have you come across treats with over 20 years of shelf life? Such food is preserved with inorganic substances such as propyl gallate, BHT, BHA, ethoxyquin, or propylene glycol. These synthetic preservatives are known to cause pets serious health problems such as cancer and organ failure.
- Meat By-Products – A certain practice involving adding dead pets from shelters to cat treats made people start avoiding cat food with meat products. That’s scary!
See, Pet food regulations state that meat should be from animals that died otherwise than by slaughter. Many companies saw this as a leeway to use even dead pets to make food.
- Grains – cats are predatory, meaning their primary food is meat. The first few ingredients in a cat treat should not be fillers such as wheat, brewer’s rice, gluten, corn, and soybean meal.
- Food-Grade Carrageenan – 2 of 3 canned cat treats have this ingredient associated with intestinal inflammation.
- Artificial food dyes – Who knew the color of food could be a health problem. The common colors in cat treats are yellow 5, yellow 6, red 40, and blue 2, which are responsible for hyperactivity, cancer, allergic reactions, and organ damage.
- BPA – This industrial chemical is used in containers and cans storing various products such as cat treats. It is harmful to pets, causing diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases.
Can I Give My Cats Treats Every Day?
People are different; some offer treats to their cats as a reward for pleasant behavior, and others use the same treats to train their cats. Some even use treats to strengthen the bond and love they share with their feline friend.
No one has devised a rule of how often to give them out. Ensure the treats don’t make up more than 10% of the total calorie intake. No one has devised a rule of how often to give them out. People are different, and how they choose to dole them out. Soe kibbles daily, while others offer a large biscuit.
There is no problem with not giving treats to your cat. There are other ways to show affection and give rewards.
Are Cat Treats Bad for Cats’ Health?
Cat treats lack enough nutrients to satisfy the nutritional needs of cats. Treats lack the balanced nutrition that the normal food you serve your cat during mealtime contains. These treats are like how we consider snacks like cookies, for example, sweet and tasty but not for use in the main course.
Is It Bad To Give Cats Too Many Treats?
Your cat’s total calories from treats shouldn’t exceed 10% daily. And this includes any food given as medicine or table scraps because they aren’t meant for a healthy cat’s diet.
You can know the number of calories your cat requires daily from your vet and then find 10% of the amount. Cat treats also indicate the number of calories in the package. Don’t buy a treat in which the calorie amount isn’t indicated.
Conclusion
Cat treats are amazing when used correctly. They are delicious and always bring a good mood for cats.
However, some of the ingredients can be hazardous to the well-being of your little kitty. We hope this article has helped you discover the cat treats to avoid so that you don’t jeopardize your cat’s health.
