How Fats are Essential to Your Cat's Healthy Diet

We often think of fat as a bad thing when it comes to our own diets, so it comes as no surprise that many of us are also wary of it in our cats’ food. However, some amount of fat is necessary, even vital, to the health of your cat. Let's take a look at just how and why fat is important in cat food.

What are Fats?
There are many types of fats present in cat food and each type of fat plays a different role. Fats used in cat foods are typically highly digestible and are used by the body as a source of energy.

All fats are made of fatty acids. These fatty acids can be thought of as the building blocks of the different types of fats. Fatty acids may be characterized in several different ways. They may be classified, based on the length of the carbon-chain that makes up their backbone, as long-chain, medium-chain, or short chain. They may also be classified as saturated, unsaturated, or polyunsaturated based on the number of bonds between the carbon atoms in the backbone. In addition, they may be classified based on where the bonds between the carbon atoms occur. Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids are examples of this type of classification.