Balance It® Feline

Thank you for taking the time to leave an optimistic review, Yuko. We're glad you were able to generate recipes with our free online Recipe Builder ( balance.it/recipes ) that you believe are a good fit for your sensitive cat's needs. While lower carbohydrate recipes are possible with Balance It® Feline, you are correct that Carnivore Blend® is our solution for low to no carb. recipes' fortification. We hope your cats are doing well and enjoy their new homemade meals with Balance It® Carnivore Blend. Feel free to reach out to our Customer Care Team at info@balanceit.com if you have any questions along the way. We are happy to help.

Thank you for taking the time to leave a review for Balance It® Feline, Kay. We're so happy to hear that it's working well for your 15 year old feline and that they are eating without problems. Our supplements are of the highest quality and are very well accepted/tolerated in almost all dogs and cats, even those that are very discriminating/sensitive. However, they do have a natural odor that can be reduced by storing them in the refrigerator or freezer. We have some additional details about this in our FAQ titled 'Why do your supplements have an odor?' at balance.it/faqs . We appreciate your support and hope your cat continues to do well.

Thank you for your five-star review, Cherie! We're glad you think Balance It® Feline is great.

We understand home-cooking with the proper fortification can be expensive. For 19 years, Balance It® has consistently strived to keep prices as low as possible while never compromising product quality and safety. As a result, we have continued to grow, but have also incurred sustained and significant cost increases for raw materials, employee wages and benefits, insurance, software development & maintenance, cGMP certifications, third-party product testing, and shipping as well as inflation. Our March 1, 2024 price increase is only our second price increase since April 2019, almost five years ago. During that time we have worked very hard to improve, including our efficiency, to maximize the value we offer and minimize any cost increases. You can learn more from our FAQ titled 'Why did your prices increase?' at balance.it/faqs .

Our founder has co-authored multiple studies along with faculty at leading veterinary schools (e.g., J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2022;260(S3):S53-S60 ) that show that while home cooked food (aka human) grade diets may be less expensive than canned or wet feed (aka animal) grade food, they cost more than comparable kibble or dry feed grade commercially prepared diets. Overall we are confident that our ecosystem of technical expertise & support, free recipes, and human dietary supplement grade Balance It® supplements provide the best overall value and convenience possible. In multiple cases, we also offer the only all-in-one supplement for the nutritional management of certain medical conditions.

We appreciate your feedback and hope your cat is doing well.

Thank you for your kind review, Rhonda. We're glad to hear you had success in generating a couple of recipes with our free online Recipe Builder ( balance.it/recipes ) that work well for Minnie. We hope she continues to enjoy her homemade meals with Balance It® Feline.

Thank you for sharing your cat's experience, Milka. We're sorry to hear she did not eat her homemade food. Cats can be quite particular about what they will eat. We do provide some general suggestions in our FAQ titled, 'My cat won’t eat their food without or with the supplement slowly added and mixed in. What should I do?' at balance.it/faqs.

We see that this FAQ was shared with you via email along with our 45-day return policy. Your order was returned and refunded yesterday, April 03, 2024. Please allow 24-48 hours for the refund transaction to settle to see the credit to your account.

We wish you success in finding a diet that your cat enjoys and does well on.

Thank you for your review, Margaret. We are sorry to hear about your disappointment with our wide range of free and customizable online cat food recipes at balance.it/recipes.

Our healthy cat recipes are formulated to meet AAFCO nutrient profiles, which do not limit carbohydrates and are the legal standard in the U.S. Unfortunately, there is no known 'ideal' distribution of calories, but many can be fed, tolerated, and enjoyed. For rough reference, many over-the-counter (aka OTC) healthy adult dry cat foods have a range of protein at 30-40% of calories, fat at 25-35% of calories, and carbohydrate at 25-45% of calories. A lower concentration of carbohydrate, like you have suggested/cited in your review and separately in your previous communications with our Customer Care team, is possible and can be appropriate for cats which are obligate carnivores. Consequently, you often see no to very low carbohydrate recipes as one of the default options when you allow recipes to be made by the recipe builder on our site. You can also choose to select only animal-based ingredients on Step 2 of the process to avoid any carbohydrates or ingredients that you do not wish to prepare/feed.

AAFCO does not exclude carbohydrates, and we provide recipes that include carbohydrates, as cats do utilize digested dietary carbohydrates in the form of glucose as a main energy source. Glucose, as you likely know as someone trained in human nutrition, is oxidized within mammalian (and other species) cells to synthesize adenosine triphosphate (ATP). ATP is a molecule that stores and releases energy as required by the cell.

When on a dietary carbohydrate free diet, cats utilize gluconeogenesis to produce glucose from protein and fat to then synthesize ATP. To highlight the importance of glucose, if cats are unable to utilize glucose, they develop an ultimately fatal condition called ketoacidosis.

Some cats also need to be fed some carbohydrates to provide prebiotics (dietary fiber) as well as to reduce dietary protein and/or fat to nutritionally manage conditions and diseases, while still meeting energy needs. Thus, our system's flexibility allows a very broad range of needs to be met.

For our return policy, please refer to our email to you on March 14, 2024. We just received your returned package at our facility and plan to process it tomorrow given the late hour tonight. You will receive an automatic email notification when a refund has been issued.

Please feel free to contact our Customer Care Team at info@balanceit.com if you have any further questions. We are glad to hear that you found alternative options (we are not familiar with them) that you feel more comfortable with and that work well for your cats' specific needs. If your veterinarian(s) has/have any questions, we are also happy to address them if they would like to reach out to us directly.

Thank you for your 'excellent' review, Veronika! We're thrilled to hear that your cats are happy and full of vigor with their 'wonderful' homemade meals and Balance It Feline.

Tina, thank you for your review and longtime support of Balance It! We're so happy to hear that you have had pleasant interactions with our team and fast shipping across the country throughout the last dozen years.

We hope we have the opportunity to assist you and your cat for many more years to come.

You are very welcome and thank you Ralane for the great review of not just Balance It Feline but also Balance It Canine elsewhere.

Thank you for your review, Kathleen! We hope Molly is enjoying her organic chicken meals with Balance It Feline.

If you are unable to use the full 500 gram bag before it expires, you may wish to consider purchasing some of our smaller 20 gram pouches instead to help avoid waste.

Here is also a little more on shelf-life if of interest. Our expiration dates are never longer than 11 months, and we do our best to assure at least 3 months of shelf-life on all shipments. Supplements are perishable as vitamins naturally degrade with time. The rate vitamins degrade is increased when in the presence of trace minerals. We account for this inherent degradation with our formulations to ensure that there are extra vitamins present when first made. These overages have to be limited to avoid excess at the beginning of the supplement’s shelf-life. Since we take the extra step of assaying all guaranteed essential nutrients in a laboratory, the longest shelf-life we ever might have is 11 months (since it can take a month for testing, release, and packaging).