hey friends it's Jess and Jericho and maybe you're wondering why do some cat foods require
a prescription last week we took a look at the prescription diet versus an over-the-counter
diet and there weren't many differences basically the prescription diets are a way to fix prices
and charge more for something that isn't really that different compared to the over-the-counter
cat foods that do not require a prescription and when you look at the ingredients there's no actual
medicine in the product which is concerning because it requires a prescription and it
costs more and it also says on the label that it's intended to cure or mitigate some form of health
issue and federal law defines any product that makes the claim to cure treat or mitigate disease
as a drug but prescription foods are not held to federal law there is an FDA compliance policy
with regard to animal products that are used to cure mitigate or treat diseases notes compliance
policy not federal law so this policy discusses prescription diets and on every single page it
says contains non-binding recommendations and in the intro it states in general fda's guidance
documents do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities the use of the word should in
agency guidances means that something is suggested or recommended but not required so that just
proves to show us that the FDA doesn't regulate it there are no laws governing prescription Foods
these are just recommendations and guidances that you should do but are not required to
do so again there's no actual medicine in the product and there's no actual law that regulates
these products the only guidances and suggestions are that these foods are only available through
veterinarians and through a prescription there are other guidances and recommendations in this
document there's a link in the description below with all of the resources that I use it has
everything that I talk about and I'll include this in that as well now I mentioned earlier that last
week we took a look at a prescription diet and an over-the-counter diet that were made by the same
brand and we found that the prescription diet was lower in meat-based protein higher in carbs
and we know that because of the product name rules and the guaranteed analysis plus the ingredients
list the one of the prescription diet had more of those carbohydrate-rich ingredients whereas
the one that's over the counter that doesn't require description and it also costs less
doesn't it has more meat and it's lower in carbohydrates and we know that the carbohydrate
amount is accurate because on the Brand's website they actually tell you the number of carbs
on a dry matter basis so we don't even have to guess give me a polydactyl thumbs up if this is
helpful so far some workout parents that want to feed their cat better can find this video thank
you another interesting note to add is that this one vet recommended brand it rhymes with
pills Riot they've actually trademarked the term prescription diet and it's part of their logo so
basically this term cannot be used by any other pet food company and you might notice that they
have to use the phrase therapeutic diet or Veterinary diet they cannot use the phrase
prescription diet because it's trademarked as part of pills riots logo and there's even a lawsuit
against these vet recommended prescription Brands because there's no actual medicine in the product
and under federal law it says if it's intended to cure mitigate or treat a disease it's considered a
drug but there's no actual drugs medicines in the products plus a prescription is required
plus it's more expensive and this isn't the only class action lawsuit against this company back
in January of 2019 this company had a massive recall of dog foods that contained excessive
levels of vitamin D which is toxic vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin and you can't just
shed any excess it stays in the body and this causes toxicity which is deadly so initially
they recalled 25 products and then two months later they expanded that recall to include an
additional 19 products and that was recently so you hear all these things like oh make sure it's
vet recommended oh you need a prescription for it but it really isn't that much better and the
fact that it's completely balanced doesn't make it perfect because you have these excessive levels of
vitamin D massive recalls not just one product was like 83 different lots of products and 33
different skew numbers of products that's massive and if you want to check out that comparison of
over-the-counter versus script you can check out this video right over meow thanks for watching