Does My Cat Need a Limited Ingredient Diet?

If you have recently strolled down the pet food aisle in stores or at your veterinary clinic, you might come across the term Limited Ingredient Diet. However, before you jump into purchasing that for your fur babies, keep reading this blog so you can learn more about it. 

What is A limited ingredient diet?

Limited ingredient recipes offer a single source of premium-quality protein meat, fish, or poultry as the first ingredient, with few other ingredients as possible to meet the nutritional requirements of cats.

Fiona TansilMSc Student – Animal Nutrition

These recipes are usually recommended for cats with food sensitivities. Currently, some commercial pet food products incorporate a lot of different ingredients that makes it hard to exactly pinpoint the causative agent for food allergen or sensitivity.

Moreover, a lot of those ingredients are considered high exposure, which means that they are commonly fed to cats before and have a higher chance to cause food sensitivities. In a limited ingredient diet, fewer ingredients are included in the product, and this lowers the chance of cats being exposed to potential food.

Limited ingredient is not a regulated term in the pet food industry. There is no specific limit on the number of ingredients that can be added into pet food products to be labelled as a limited ingredient diet. Therefore, the number of ingredients can vary from one product to another.

Fiona TansilMSc Student – Animal Nutrition

In our Go! Solutions recipes, we add the fewest amount of ingredients possible to meet the nutritional requirements of cats. Thus, unnecessary additives such as chemical preservatives and food colouring are not added to our recipes.

Many of the Go! Solutions Sensitivities Limited Ingredient recipes feature animal protein sources that are considered to be low exposure, which means that they are not the typical protein sources domestic cats would be exposed to previously. Low exposure protein is often referred to as novel protein. Some examples of low exposure protein are duck, kangaroo, venison, and ostrich meat.

Recommended Solution

Go! Sensitivities Limited Ingredient Grain-Free Salmon Cat Food

Designed for cats with food sensitivities, our Go! Sensitivities Limited Ingredient Salmon Recipe showcases premium quality salmon as the single source of animal protein.

View recipe

We also choose other ingredients that are not commonly known to be food allergens in cats such as peas and lentils. All of our limited ingredient recipes are complete and balanced  for your cats, which means that by feeding the Go! Solutions recipes alone, your cats will receive the right amount of nutrients they need to stay healthy and happy. However, our Go! Solutions Sensitivities Limited Ingredient wet food recipes can also be used as a topper to your cat’s diet to add more flavour or as a reward for them.

Recipe Options

As mentioned above, protein sources that are low exposure or not commonly fed to cats are the kind of proteins that are used in our limited ingredient diets. As obligate carnivores, the primary protein sources for cats has to be of animal origin.

In a limited ingredient diet, the protein source is usually limited to one, while carbohydrate source may be limited to one but can be more.

Peas, lentils, and pumpkin are also considered as a source of protein and dietary fiber that can support digestion.

Should my cat be eating a limited ingredient diet?

Limited ingredient recipes are recommended for cats with food sensitivities. Food allergies induce an inappropriate immune system response to an ingredient in which the body treats it as unsafe foreign material. Food sensitivities can arise from various types of ingredients, whereas food allergies typically occur in response to proteins.

In our Go! Solutions recipes, the protein sources are considered to be low exposure, which means that they are not the typical protein sources domestic cats would be exposed to previously. To accurately diagnose food sensitivity or allergy, your veterinarian might recommend a food challenge trial. In a food trial, the suspect food is eliminated from the diet and then reintroduced again. This process will be repeated a couple of times. If allergy symptoms recur on the suspect diet and disappear once the diet is eliminated, then true diagnosis of food allergy or sensitivity can be made.

Our Go! Solutions Sensitivities Limited Ingredient recipes are also suitable for cats with no food sensitivity or allergy issues issues and can be used as part of your rotation feeding regimen However, do remember then when rotating your cat food, do it slowly and replace their food little by little. Abrupt change of food can cause upset stomach or even loss of appetite in your cats.