Cat-owners, take note! Feeding your feline smaller meals more times per day may curb obesity in them, a new study suggests.
Just as with people, feline obesity is most often linked to excessive food intake or not enough physical activity.
Researchers from the University of Illinois looked at a previously suggested claim that increased meal frequency could help to increase overall physical activity.
The idea is to feed cats the appropriate amount of food needed to maintain a healthy body weight, but to offer it in more frequent, smaller meals throughout the day.
Researcher Kelly Swanson determined that both increasing the frequency of meals fed per day, as well as offering meals that contained added dietary water - neither method involved decreasing the overall amount of daily food intake - did promote more physical activity among the cats in the study.
"It all comes down to energy in and energy out. It's very simple on paper, but it's not that easy in real life, especially in a household where there is more than one pet. That can be difficult, but I think these two strategies are very practical ideas that people can use," Swanson said.
The researchers evaluated the activity of the cats between meals using activity collar monitors.
The cats were divided among four rooms and were given dry kibble meals four times per day, two times per day, one time per day, and in the fourth room, were fed a random number of meals per day.
The overall amount of food fed to each cat in each room per day was the same; feeding frequency varied.
The cats were then divided among two rooms and were fed twice per day with a 70 per cent hydrated diet, using similar amounts of dry kibble used in the first experiment to maintain body weight. Water was added to the kibble an hour before each meal time, Swanson said.
The researchers evaluated the cats' food anticipatory activity (FAA), which included the activity of each cat two hours before meals were given.
During the dry kibble experiment, they noticed that the cats were much more active during those anticipatory times, especially those fed four meals per day and those given meals at random times.
"If they know they are going to get fed, that's when they are really active, if they can anticipate it," Swanson said.
