How do you determine the amount of carbs in your pet's food and how is starch different?

Young Again ZERO foods contain less than 1% starch/digestible carbohydrates and our other diets contain less than 6% starch. At Young Again, we have an outside lab test each of our foods to confirm starch content. From a calorie consumption point of view, the ZERO diets break down accordingly – 46% of the calories come from protein, 53% from fat and about 0.8% from starch/digestible carbohydrates.

A helpful hint when trying to calculate the digestible starch/carbohydrates of a food – not all carbs are digestible.

By definition carbs include starch, crude fiber and soluble fiber. Only starch is digestible by your cat and only starch will cause a rise in blood glucose. Most companies will only list the level of protein, fat, crude fiber and moisture (some may list ash), however, soluble fiber is seldom listed. In order to calculate starch content accurately, you need to know all 6 of these nutrient levels. Without knowing the soluble fiber level, it gets lumped in with the starch showing an artificially high starch content. It is crucial to know the total starch content of a cat diet especially if your cat is diabetic. Our ZERO foods all contain a little more than 4% soluble fiber and less than 1% starch.