Cat Food: You’ll be surprised to know what’s best/worst!

I give my kitties those 3 oz cans of food, like most people think of Fancy Feast. I like to give them a wide variety. Well, I’ve just decided to look at the ingredients.  This isn’t like other people’s examinations of ingredients.  I know meat by-products sound gross, but they are still nutritious! What’s bad is pure starches, sugars, and fillers like Guar Gum and Gluten. What I mean by bad is, they are just fillers, and have no nutrition value. Sugars are not too good either, it just makes the food taste good and makes them hyper.  Therefore giving you the false idea “it tastes good AND is healthy!” Wrong.

Anyway I developed a system to judge the healthiness of my kitties’ food. I looked at the ingredients of ALL of the ones I have (about 50 different kinds). Even certain flavors are different.

Here is my system.  I looked for ingredients like Guar Gum, Corn Starch, and Wheat Gluten, then counted how many ingredients there are before it. (And I ignored water). So for example, if it goes, Chicken broth, chicken, guar gum… then it gets a 3. So here you go:

Here are the brands I checked, starting with the best, ending with the worst.

• Halo – Spot’s Stew 12-14
• Wellness 12-13
• Iams 10-14
• Innova 13
• Natural Choice 11
• Dick van Patten’s Natural Balance 9
• California Natural 9
• Max Cat 8-9
• Merrick Five Star Gourmet 8-9
• Taste of the Wild 8
• Wellness (Kitten) 8
• Science Diet 5-8
• Max Cat 5-7
• Fancy Feast (the original kind) 6
• By Nature Goldleaf Selects (3.5oz plastic container) 5
• Wellness Healthy Indulgence foil pouch 5
• Blue Healthy Gourmet 5
• Fancy Feast Grilled 4
• Fancy Feast Medleys (blue can) 7 varieties all 3
• Fancy Feast Appetizers (2oz plastic container) 2
• Friskies Seared Filets foil pouch 2

This means Wheat Gluten was the second ingredient in Friskies, and Guar Gum was the second ingredient in the Fancy Feast Appetizers.

However, my system isn’t perfect. Because the Appetizers have only a total of 6 ingredients, which may be different than one with 14. Those at the top, like Halo Spot’s Stew, I truly do like because the ingredients are all different kinds of meat and vegetables, even some fruit. and one of them, I actually didn’t find any gum, starch, or gluten (that was the wholesome turkey recipe).

I didn’t get any Beneful, because I already know the dry dog food is high in corn syrup. And by the way, if your dog is hyper, that could be why. Try something like Innova and you’ll see the difference!

All of the above I got at Concord Pets, just so you know they aren’t as rare as they sound. But as you can see, think again about Fancy Feast! Well, look at the ingredients and compare them yourself!