Many ingredients (and the quality of those ingredients) in your cat’s food can have a direct effect on their gastrointestinal health.

Most commercially available diets today are formulated to be complete and balanced. If that were all that mattered, choosing a cat food would be a quick and easy decision. There is, however, a huge disparity between the quality of ingredients, digestibility and impact on the digestive tract from one pet food to the next.

Many ingredients have a direct effect on the gastrointestinal health of the cat. Surprisingly, one of the ingredients that appears in a smaller quantity in your cat’s food has the largest impact. That ingredient is fiber. In the cat, it has the added benefit of regulating the passage of hair that the cat has swallowed in grooming through the GI tract, helping to prevent the formation of intestinal blockage or hair balls. Insoluble fiber limits the build up of hair in the intestines by bulking up the feces and speeding the transit time of material through the gut. Soluble fiber increases the viscosity of the ingesta, retaining moisture and making it easier to eliminate in bowel movements. Soluble fibers, such as beet pulp and fructo-oligosaccarhides (FOS), produce volatile fatty acids when they are fermented serve as a major energy source for the intestinal wall cells. FOS stimulates the growth of bifidobacteria and lactobacillus bacteria, which inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria, such as E. coli and Clostridium. FOS also stimulates the production of immunoglobulins in the intestine as well as the mammary glands, increasing levels in the milk, boosting the immune status of nursing kittens.

Mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS) are also dietary fibers that are found in cell walls of yeast. MOS benefits the GI tract in two ways. First, MOS prevents the development of pathogenic bacteria by blocking their ability to attach to the intestinal wall. Secondly, MOS directly stimulates the production of immunoglobulin within the GI tract, which boosts the immune status throughout the cat’s body.

Both FOS and MOS are considered prebiotics due to their ability to increase the ratio of good bacteria to bad bacteria. Other benefits provided by prebiotics include the increased absorption of calcium, which is very important for breeding females, the reduction of constipation, and prevention of various types of diarrhea and inflammation of the GI tract.

Protein is also vitally important to GI health. The normal turnover of the cells lining the intestines occurs every three days, so a large portion of the protein digested is used by intestinal cells as they replenish. Proteins are made up of amino acids, two of which, glutamine and glutamate, are specifically critical to the health of the GI tract. They are the primary sources of energy.

Another nutrient of great importance to GI health is Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3s, with anti-inflammatory action, protect the cells lining the intestinal tract.

Some dietary minerals have a more direct affect on the cellular integrity of intestinal cells. Zinc is one of those and also plays a key role in the normal digestion of proteins. It is an integral part of the structure and function of the cell membrane, protecting the cell from damage by pathogenic bacteria. Vitamins are also important to GI health, among them Vitamins A and E. Vitamin A contributes to the integrity of the cell membrane and immune function. Vitamin E, a potent antioxidant, helps maintain the cellular health and actively assists in immune function. B vitamins are also vital to GI health and have several roles in which they promote the health and replacement of intestinal cells. Because these cells have such a high rate of turnover, the need for specific B vitamins is particularly critical.

These factors and many more are carefully considered by the many researchers and nutritionists at Royal Canin to continually provide the most effective kind of health nutrition for your cat’s digestive health.