Parents who have followed my previous articles may know that I have always supported canned feeding (in this case, canned staple food) over cat food feeding, which has a higher protein fat content, more water, and almost zero carbohydrates, making it consistently better nutritionally than most cat food.
However, as canned food, the staple food can is not perfect, and some cans will inevitably have additives, the most controversial of which is carrageenan. In fact, the additive is not only carrageenan, some cans will also add agar, xanthan gum, cassia gum, and montmorillonite powder.
It's just that carrageenan has always been on the cusp of the storm: some people insist that carrageenan is harmless, some people insist that carrageenan is like a flood beast, and in fact, the harm of this additive is still inconclusive in the industry.
So what about your attitude as a shoveler?
My own attitude is that the conclusion that carrageenan is completely harmless is untenable, but carrageenan is not a flood beast, and you need to pay more attention to something that is easily overlooked and more harmful than carrageenan.
Understand it first, and then make your own judgment, nothing is absolute.
So today we will talk about what is carrageenan.
Carrageenan is a hydrophilic colloid extracted from red algae seaweed, which is a common additive and is widely used in making jelly, ice cream, pastries, gummies, meat products, eight treasure porridge, and even toothpaste, toiletries, beer and so on.
Strictly speaking, carrageenan can be divided into: non-degradable carrageenan, degraded carrageenan, which are both similar and different.
1. Non-degradable carrageenan:
Also known as food grade carrageenan, as mentioned above, many commercial foods for humans are also widely used in food grade carrageenan, pet food will also use carrageenan, it is generally considered safe, but also recognized by many food regulatory agencies (such as FDA).
However, in the past decade, some institutions have questioned its safety, such as the European Union, which strictly prohibits the appearance of carrageenan in infant formula.
2. Degrade carrageenan
This kind of carrageenan is relatively different from food-grade carrageenan, it is degraded into small segments, more fragmented, not to eat, can not be used as a food additive, in many animal experiments and even used to artificially cause tissue inflammation, is a harmful carcinogen.
Although there is a difference between the two, they are also seaweed extracts, so the two also have a certain connection.
First, who can guarantee the purity of non-degradable carrageenan? Will it contain a small amount of harmful degraded carrageenan?
Second, in different environments, non-degradable carrageenan may be converted into degraded carrageenan. For example, high acid environments, digestive enzymes, intestinal bacteria, and even high temperature conditions may convert food-grade carrageenan into harmful degraded carrageenan.
Since degrading carrageenan is harmful, who dares to guarantee that non-degradable carrageenan will be safe?
This mainly refers to the role of carrageenan, why many commercial foods have to add this thing:
1. Carrageenan is a thickener and adhesive
In the case of canned food, the addition of carrageenan to the can ensures that the thin meat broth in the product will not fall apart, and it can also be thickened, so that the meat in the can looks molded and more selling.
This is also true of other human commercial foods, such as ice cream, jelly, etc.
2. Save costs
This is also very easy to understand, with carrageenan, even if you cut corners, canned food can be molded, and it looks quite viscous, consumers love to pay more.
As we said earlier, the specific harm of carrageenan, the industry has not yet made up its mind, some people (especially businesses) think that polymer food grade carrageenan is not harmful to humans, as safe as pets; and questioning scholars, believe that carrageenan, whether it is non-degradable or degraded carrageenan, may induce inflammation in the body, destroy the immune system, and even cause cancer.
The harm to humans is still inconclusive, and there are even fewer studies on cats, but we can consider it from the following perspectives:
1. The high acid environment is easy to convert non-degradable carrageenan into low-molecular-weight degradable carrageenan.
Cats are carnivores, stomach acid secretion is more powerful than humans, and the cat's intestinal environment is more inclined to a high acid environment.
As we mentioned earlier, whether it is a high acid environment or a high temperature environment, it is easy to convert non-degradable carrageenan into low-molecular-molecule degradable carrageenan.
The degradation of carrageenan is a known dangerous carcinogen.
Even if food-grade non-degradable carrageenan is harmless, when it is ingested by a cat, who can guarantee that it will not turn into a known harmful degradable carrageenan?
2. Even humans do not use processed foods with carrageenan as a staple food.
As mentioned earlier, carrageenan, as a food additive, is often used to make processed foods such as jelly, ice cream, pastries, fudge, and eight treasure porridges, and such processed foods, we generally only eat as snacks, and the staple food is still fresh rice meat and egg dishes.
Humans are still like this, cats are smaller, and they should not consume carrageenan every day.
That said, if you're occasionally fed as a snack, that's fine. And when you use canned staple food as a staple food for cats, try to avoid canned brands containing carrageenan.
In addition, almost all canned snacks (especially domestic, Nissan, and Thai canned) contain carrageenan, which is not that it cannot be fed, but that the number of feedings is minimized.
Just like humans, they don't eat these processed snacks every day.
3. Don't give up your staple food jar because you're afraid of carrageenan
I disagree with carrageenan, but to treat carrageenan as a flood beast is also a bit overreacting.
Some shovelers, fearful of carrageenan, abandon their staple food and choose to feed cat food.
Unnecessarily, canned staple food is still superior to cat food. Long-term intake of cat food (especially inferior cat food) may also cause cats to suffer from urinary tract diseases due to lack of water, and may also cause cats to suffer from gastrointestinal diseases because of excessive carbohydrates.
The problems that may be caused by staple food cans are the same as cat food, and some of the problems that cat food may cause can be avoided by canned staple food.
This principle is somewhat similar to the lesser of two powers.
4. You need to avoid canned fish more than carrageenan.
The harm of carrageenan is some, but it is worse than carrageenan, which is worse than consuming too much canned fish.
One is marine pollution, many canned fish, fish cat food heavy metal problems exceed the standard.
The other is that canned fish is addictive, making cats more picky eaters.
This is also why most snack cans are avoided, as almost all snack cans are canned fish.
On the canned staple food, the proportion of canned fish should not exceed 10%, and I have 100 cans of cans of various flavors, of which only 10 cans are salmon flavored.
5. It is more important to give cats more natural, fresh food.
Whether it is cat food or canned food, or even freeze-dried, it is a commercial food, all commercial food is not as good as fresh, natural homemade meat, if possible, give the cat more meat.
Of course, it should also be emphasized that eating homemade meat requires a certain amount of time and energy to study the ratio of nutritional balance, which I also mentioned in the previous article (see here specifically: how to ensure nutritional balance when making cat rice for cats?). It is not enough to give cats chicken breast meat every day, and the nutritional value of chicken breast meat is not high.
I did not list the specific hazards of carrageenan here, but explained that carrageenan is not as safe as you think, and likewise, it is not as dangerous as you think, and I think the correct attitude towards carrageenan should be:
Can choose natural homemade meat, try not to choose commercial food;
If you can choose a staple food, try not to choose cat food;
If you can choose a can that does not contain carrageenan, try not to choose a can containing carrageenan.
As I did, two-thirds of the food I gave to cats was homemade cooked meat, one-third was canned as a staple food, and most of the staple food cans were bought without carrageenan, but even if I sometimes bought a small number of cans containing carrageenan, I would also feed it to the cat, just as a snack.
Cat food is occasionally fed, but it is fed less, almost as a snack, after all, I do not buy any snacks for cats to eat, since they like to eat cat food, then cat food as a snack occasionally does not hurt.
Above, I hope you can correctly look at the carrageenan in the can, I am a family with ten cats of the haunting, the original works of the leader of the cat group, welcome to pay attention to ~