Why science diet for shedding

Question
I came across your Q and A about a shedding cat.

I got pretty upset with you suggesting to a young girl that she suggest to her mother to feed science diet for the cat.

While you clearly work for science diet, and have stake in the company; as so many vets do, excess shedding can be caused for a variety of reasons to include thyroid disorders. Why would you not recommend taking the cat to the vet? And why would you offer science diet as the solution?

While I am no vet, I can tell you as a sitter, I have had a lot of clients who have taken many bags of science diet back to the store after they learned what chemicals are in your food.  

Answer
Well, first of all I do NOT work for Hills at all. But I sold and feed their food and have for over 28 years. I have never had a client take back a bag of food. Science Diet has no chemicals in it as you say and it has much higher quality of ingredients than the so-called premium diets sold at pet stores that don't even trial feed their foods to real dogs. It has lots of vitamins and extracts of those just as every other food on the market has. If those look like chemical names to you they probably do to lots of people. But they are not.

If you have been studying small animal nutrition for over 26 years as I have from a variety of sources as well as from 20 years of seminars and CE articles, and have a valid argument as well as proof that some food is better than I would be happy to read it.

I never said that ONLY diets cause shedding but when an owner doesn't point out any other physical problems I can only conclude, with my 28 years of veterinary experience, that they are feeding Friskies, or Fancy Feast or whatever is cheap at the store this week. I have seen it over and over ad nauseum. 9.5 times out of 10 that is a major cause of shedding in cats- as are the seasons.

If there were symptoms that matched a profile for thyroid disease then my advice would have been to go to the vet for a check up. Do you even know what the symptoms are of hyperthyroidism in cats?
Did you even know that cats don't get hypothyroidism and rarely is shedding a symptom of that? In dogs maybe yes, but this is a cat.

Thank you for being a concerned pet owner and sitter. I hope that this clears up any misconceptions you have about thyroid disease in cats.