A study in the Journal of Animal Sciences (J. Anim. Sci. 2013.91:225–237) claims that raw diets aren't quite the cat's meow. Researchers from the University of Illinois and an Omaha zoo fed raw diets to domestic cats as well as African wildcats, jaguars, and Malayan tigers. Let's see what happened: Our objective was to evaluate raw meat diets for captive exotic and domestic carnivores containing traditional and alternative raw meat sources, specifically, beef trimmings, bison trimmings, elk muscle meat, and horse trimmings. We aimed to examine diet composition and protein quality; apparent total ...

A study was just published on the relative digestibility of different diets in cats. The researchers found that the raw-meat based diet (RB) and cooked meat diets (CB) were both better digested by cats than an extruded (dry kibble) food, even though the kibble started out higher in protein. Hill's Science Diet did similar research many years ago, and also found that cats did better on a raw meat diet. This research was never published. I've long said that one of these days, the big pet food companies will introduce ...