This is a YouTube video titled "¿Cuánta TAURINA debe tener el ALIMENTO de tu GATO? 🍖🐱♉ | Piensos suplementados con taurina" created on November 18, 2020. The content features a clinical veterinarian named Carlos explaining the importance of taurine in cat food, how to read labels to check taurine content, and the health risks cats face if their diet lacks sufficient taurine. The video is educational and aimed at cat owners concerned about proper feline nutrition.
I'm sure you're not paying attention to something very important about your cat's food, and that could be very dangerous for him. So be very careful. Well, stay tuned for the video and I'll explain everything. Hello, I'm Carlos, a clinical veterinarian in small animals. Welcome to the Happy Pets and Families Channel. If you're watching this video and you've been following me for a while, you'll know that cats are strict carnivores because I always say so, and that means they need meat in their diet in order to be well nourished. And when I say meat, I'm not just referring to a beefsteak, but also to a quality feed, care, kibble, or balanced food, whatever you call it, that's made with meat. And also an important asterisk here. When I say meat, I'm referring to proteins of animal origin. I don't care if they come from beef or chicken or even salmon or any type of fish. And why is this so important? Normally, we, cats, dogs, any type of animal can make their own proteins with what they eat, except for some types of amino acids, which are called essential, which need to be consumed with their foods so that they can form part of the cat's own proteins so that they can perform their functions in the cat. And one of those amino acids is precisely taurine. And surely something about taurine sounds familiar to you, because we veterinarians get quite annoying with this subject. The problem is that if the cat does not eat enough taurine, it can have health problems. The heart can become deformed and not pump blood properly, and that can have very serious consequences. Or it can also have eye problems because the retina degenerates. There are some cats that start with mild blindness. Suddenly they do not calculate, jumps well, or do not move very well around your house. And the problem is not that they are going blind out of nowhere, but that since they are not eating enough taurine, it is affecting how their eye sees their retina. But the worst part of all this, if what I just told you wasn't bad enough, is that we end up seeing these changes that occur in the heart or in the eye when they are very advanced and practically irreversible. So take note of how important taurine is and take note of how important it is for you to watch this video, because now I'm going to tell you how to know if your cat's food has enough of this amino acid. Why might you tell me? Well, if my cat's food has meat or fish, that would be enough. But no, that's not entirely true because when the food is manufactured or the canned meat is made, the taurine is lost. It's lost in that manufacturing process. So it's very important that the manufacturer has remembered to add taurine to the food so that the cat doesn't lack anything. And that's precisely the crux of the matter, because there are some foods that when you look at the label you realize have less taurine than recommended. And that's not just an exception in four or five cat foods, but it's seen in quite a few foods, especially in mid range foods, supermarket foods, and also in cheap ones. Well, but also in many not so cheap ones, right? Yes, yes. In many not so cheap ones too. In any case, you have to look at the label. That's what I'm going to tell you. Because if you mention the expensive ones, such and such people are going to say, come on, this one's expensive. It has taurine. No, no. And how much taurine should your cat's food have? Although it is true that there is a study that says that 500 milligrams of taurine per kilo of cat food is enough, Fediof, the Federation of Cat Food Manufacturers, recommends that dry food should contain at least 1000-13mg and canned food should contain more than 2000mg. So as you can see, there is quite a significant difference. I would go with the highest figure because the problem is not that it is higher, but that it does not meet your cat's needs. And we are not going to skimp here. Come on. 500. And a little more. It was 700 milligrams. No, no, you are a bit lazy. That is not true on the label as a whole. Look at the taurine and all things being equal, give it the one with the most taurine. Well, okay. And yes, I am telling you here that there is a lot of taurine, not enough taurine in certain levels and quantities. And where should you look for that? The feed, which is the important thing. You have to go to the feed label. Well, I've prepared a couple or three labels here, a few more to compare them a bit. But first you're going to find the ingredients, which is what the feed is made of. Below that you're going to find the additives, which is where you have to look for taurine. Taurine is not an ingredient, it's an additive. That's where you have to go and take a look. One thing first, I Don't trust feeds that don't list or label taurine. Tarin can also serve as a commercial appeal to the company. If the feed doesn't list tarrin, it's probably because it's a minor component that's very low in quantity. So I wouldn't give that type of food to my cat to begin with. I can't check if it has enough or not. And I've come across cat food in which taurine doesn't appear. I don't know why. Well, let's see. Look, for example, this label, as I was saying, shows the composition on top, which are the ingredients, and below that, we find the additives. Among the additives, we find 11 milligrams of taurine, 1,100 milligrams per kilo. So this would be within the limits that we can consider sufficient for our cat. But as I was saying, you don't just have to look at the milligrams of taurine. That doesn't make a feed good. Because, for example, we have our favorite porous feed here. If we look at the label, we realize that in the nutritional additives, taurine is present here in. Let's see where it is. 1300 milligrams per kilo. Would it have a sufficient amount of taurine? Yes. But if we read the rest of the label, as I showed you in another video here on the Happy Pets and Families channel, you realize that you wouldn't give it to the cat because of everything else it does or doesn't contain. Okay. And what I just showed you are labels that show it in milligrams per kilogram. But what happens is that there are some labels, especially I have detected it in some brands that always put it exactly the same that they put it in percentages. Percentage means in grams per 100 grams. So in that case, taurine has to be between 0.1 and 0.13 as a minimum, and from there up, and we find, for example, this label where taurine is 0.2%. Therefore, it is well within the range that is 2000mg per kg of taurine, therefore good. In addition, in this feed, the rest of the label accompanies it. Therefore, this would be a good feed. If you find two labels that are good in terms of ingredients, choose the one that has a little more taurine. Normally, you will not find more than 0.2% or more than 2,000 milligrams per kilo. You will find more or less that amount, and that's it. If you're at home, run to your cat's bag of food and take a look at the label. Check to see if the taurine is above or below the limits and tell me in the comments what you saw. If you expected it to be around that.
