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Pottenger's Cats: A Study in Nutrition

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Pottenger's Cats is a classic in the science of nutrition. Dr. Pottenger discovered quite by accident that cats degenerated unless they were fed raw food. In his 10-year study of 900 cats, he found the optimal diet for his cats was 2/3 raw meat and 1/3 raw milk plus a little cod liver oil. If either the meat or the milk was cooked, the cats degenerated. And if both were cooked, the degeneration was much worse, and the cats could no longer reproduce by the third generation.

Some of the problems Pottenger found in the cats fed cooked food were: heart problems; nearsightedness and farsightedness; underactivity and inflammation of the thyroid; infections of the kidney, liver, testes, ovaries and bladder; arthritis and inflammation of the joints; inflammation of the nervous system with paralysis and meningitis. And in the third generation, some of the cats' bones became as soft as rubber. Lung problems, and bronchitis and pneumonia were also frequent. Moreover, the females became irritable and even dangerous, and the males became passive and lacked sex interest.

Do many of these conditions sound familiar? Pottenger, of course, realized that his cat studies didn't apply entirely to humans. He believed nonetheless that his findings for cats did have relevance for humans, and in his sanitarium he fed his patients much raw food, with considerable success. Weston A. Price reported in his book, "Nourishing Traditions" that all of the people's he studied worldwide included much raw food in their traditional diets and were almost entirely free of the degenerative diseases that are rampant in our junk food society, such as tooth decay, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arthritis, digestive disturbances,etc.

If you want to stay healthy, you owe it to yourself to read both Pottenger and Price. Their eye opening photographs alone will make clear to you that you need optimum nutrition if you want to be optimally healthy.

Pottenger's nutrition studies of cats clearly indicate the importance of quality nutrition. They also help understand why people in our society have such problems with poor health, given the poor quality food that they consume. The book is relatively easily understandable, as long as you don't put extensive effort into trying to understand the content of the tables of data.

While the study on cats is depressing (as a cat lover) I found it eye opening. It is more heart breaking because this is exactly what we have done to ourselves. We are literally starving our bodies and are falling apart. As our bodies fall apart, the medical community continues to label new diseases...so much so that a new set of diagnosis codes has to be created just to handle them and the ones they know will come in the future. As a doctor, I have seen people improve just by improving what they put in their mouths. Changing our diets to more whole foods...REAL food...makes a BIG difference! If you want to see what we are doing to ourselves and our children, this is the perfect place to start reading. Then...do something about it!

Careful, the nutritional information in this book tells us only about a cat's diet, not a human's diet. Pottenger conducted these studies in the 1930s. It was not known at that time that the amino acid taurine was an essential nutrient in the diet of a cat. Search for the word taurine in his book and you will not find it. By cooking the meat scraps, Pottenger destroyed the taurine. His cats therefore suffered from, and exhibited all the marks of taurine deficiency. Taurine is not one of the essential amino acids for humans, because our body can manufacture it. There is hardly any taurine in milk or cod liver oil. For more information please refer to http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1h.shtml. It is possible for modern cat food makers to offer canned (cooked) food and add taurine to it. As to whether or not raw meat is better for cats, I don't know, but it is a subject I am very much interested in, as it certainly seems plausible.

This book describes the most extensive study of nutrition for cats ever undertaken. Unlike AAFCO testing (noted on pet food packages) which lasts only a few weeks on a small number of animals, Pottenger compared raw diets to cooked diets fed to hundreds of cats for many years. The raw-fed animals thrived. This could (should) be an eye-opener for anyone heading to the grocery store for a bag of kibble.

Easy to understand and most informative.

This book was an easy read for anyone interesdted in nutrition and a good overview of the famous pottenger studies. It provides basic guidelines and good foundation information. the further reading recommendations are helpful and interesting. I recommend this book to anyone starting out in nutrition or for those of us that are continuing to tweek our practices.

The good doctor's cats lived longer and healthier on raw milk and a natural cat diet.
The cats fed pasturized milk and processed cat food had faulty exo-skeletons and bone structure, lived shorter lives and failed to reproduce after the 4rd generation.
Enough said.

Be warned... Eat food the way our ancestors ate it, or as close to it's natural state as possible.

This study done on cats provides much insight, for how we as humans should eat. Yes cats are different than humans, as some bright individuals have already pointed out to us all. What is important, are the lessons that we can take away: Eat what you as a bio-chemically unique creature need to, for optimal health. Cats, as all living things, were created to eat specific things while living wild in nature. Man, too, was created to eat specific things based upon his/her genetics, location on earth, and the season of the year.

everyone who wonders the difference between raw vs pasturized milk and cooked vs uncooked foods & meats should read what this great researcher discovered when he did it.

If you are interested in learning about human or animal nutrition, especially as it relates to natural diets for health you owe it to yourself to read this book.
Pottenger's Cats is as pertinent today as it was when it was written. It is possibly even more important today as there are now genetically modified foods, pesticides, herbicides, etc. which did not exist at that time.
As cats are prone to suffer many ailments similar to that of humans, it is astonishing to note the results of diets of raw healthy food on the cats in his studies, as well as the behavior and ailments of the cats eating cooked food.

You may also find Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price an amazing look at how humans change according to diet.