Mutts and Cats,
Like you, I hate when I can’t make sense of things. As I recall mineral analysis is fraught with error so there are limits in the methodology that could account for some of the discrepancy.
I think there is movement away from thinking that the 1.2:1 ratio is most important and moving towards actual amounts as being more important. I’d suspect a lot of interplay here but yes I’m overall not a fan of high ash/mineral diets and I won’t feed them. I don’t know that there is a lot of literature on this in adults. As I recall there is a paper looking at high calcium diets in adult dogs and no adverse effects were found during study duration and there is research in cats with high phosphorous which appeared to result in kidney damage in adult cats.
Based on the ingredients, I think I found the diet you are discussing. If so, it
appears to be labeled as being formulated to meet AAFCO. With mineral content that high they would seem to be in violation of that statement. Did you bring this up to the rep and what was the response? If a company gave me that type of data in a food labeled to meet AAFCO, it would be reason for me to choose a different company.
I have seen companies claim to meet AAFCO through feeding trials when they have foods this high in mineral content. I don’t like to see companies using a feeding trial to get around the profile. I think AAFCO is trying to close the loophole a bit on that at least in relation to growth. In one case the company told me they never did any feeding trials but they just label that they did one, telling me AAFCO said it was Ok for them to do so. I contacted AAFCO.. they disagreed… Lot’s of nonsense out there..
