Do you know what’s inside your CAT FOOD?

There are so many different cat food options on the market right now, it’s so overwhelming sometimes! Which one should you buy? Which one is healthier?

Tell me, do you read cat food labels when you buy your cat’s food? I think it’s essential to understand what all those weird-looking and confusing ingredients mean, to help us make the right choice. So how do we determine which ones are good and which ones are better to stay away from? Stay with me, and we’ll talk about how to read a cat food label, so you’ll be more comfortable, knowledgeable and confident about the food you feed to your cat.

If you prefer watching a video vs reading a blog, here’s my YouTube video on this topic.

So, let’s talk about cat food labels - how to understand them and make sure you get the best for your cat. Today I will not be covering the type of cat food I usually recommend to my clients; this is a topic for another day. For today, we’ll just focus on what the words on cat food labels really mean and most importantly, what’s on the ingredients list. This is an extensive topic, but I’ll just try to cover the basics for now, to make it easier for you to understand and follow.

You may ask, why do I need to know this? Why is it important? Well, a nutritional diet is the foundation of good health. Since our cats can’t pick their food or hunt, they rely on us to make the right choices for them, and make sure that they have the best food possible with all the necessary nutrients.

There are 7 nutrients vital for life:

1. Protein – for growth, repair and energy

2. Fats – for energy

3. Carbohydrates – a source of energy and fiber

4. Fiber – to keep the stool regular

5. Vitamins

6. Minerals

7. Water – it’s vital for life

We need to keep this information in mind if we want to make sure our kitties have all they need to flourish and be healthy.

So, what do we need to pay attention when looking at a cat food label?

(This information will be the same for any type of food: raw, freeze-dried raw, wet, or dry)

1 - Life stage

Is it made for kittens, adult cats or seniors? Cats have different nutritional requirements at different life stages. For example, you don’t want to feed kitten food to your 10-year-old kitty, because kitten food has more fat and protein for growth, and your senior cat don’t really need that. Yes, they would need more protein, but definitely not fat. Or if you have an overweight kitty, you don’t want to give them kitten food (again, because it’s much higher in calories and has high fat content).

2 - Balanced and complete OR for supplemental feeding?

This is very important, because some food for supplemental feeding only consists of 2-4 ingredients, so it’s not good as a main food for you cat on a daily basis. Make sure you choose a “complete and balanced” food for your cat’s main diet, and use supplemental food as a treat or just to add variety and nutrients.

Personally I think there’s an over-obsession with cat or dog food being “complete and balanced”, because in nature, their meals are not the same every single day, there’s a variety of proteins and fats, different balance of minerals and nutrients, and therefore animals in the wild never have each single meal “balanced and complete”, but what they have is variety, and overtime, their diet gets complete and balanced. With that being said, I realize that our cats don’t live in the wild and cannot get exactly what their body craves for, so of course, giving them cat food that is complete and balanced makes it easier for us to make sure our kitties get all they nutrients they need, at least statistically. The key here is to make sure they have a variety!

I think if cats eat the same food every single day for years, there’s no variety, and it’s not good. Their body might be lacking certain vital minerals or vitamins, just because this one food doesn’t provide them. Imagine eating pasta with veggies every single day for the rest of your life? That’s why I prefer giving our cats a variety of foods with different proteins, veggies, herbs, and I mix brands of food as well.

It’s also interesting to pay attention to what your cat prefers, maybe they crave more pumpkin or veggies, or maybe not. Maybe they like chicken for a few months and then stop eating it and want something else. So instead of being angry on your cat for being a “picky eater”, try to understand what they’re trying to tell you. What is their message?

3 – Finally, let’s talk about ingredients!  

List of ingredients go from high to low by weight but doesn’t tell anything about quality or digestibility. The more description of meat there is, the better (ground beef with bone vs poultry by-products).

Let’s divide mostly common ingredients into two categories: good/ healthy and bad/ junk.

Let’s talk about them in more detail.

The good/ healthy ingredients:

• Chicken/ turkey/ beef/ other meat

• Organ meats (gizzard, liver, heart, kidney, etc.)

• Ground chicken/ turkey/ beef/ other meat with or without ground bone

• Dehydrated chicken/ turkey/ beef/ other meat

  Meat has to be listed at the very top of the list, and as long as description is clear and it tells you exactly what kind of meat or organs there are, it’s a good sign! Some bone is good for cats because when they consume their prey, they eat the bones too. Bones provide minerals and protein, and they are a part of the species-appropriate diet.

  High quality animal protein provide superior amino acid balance compared to grains! BUT! Animal protein can be of high and low quality, so we need to consider that too when choosing cat food brands and looking at their sourcing and values.

• Whole vegetables and greens: no comments! Veggies and greens have lots of phytonutrients and antioxidants

• Seeds (flax, pumpkin, chia, fenugreek, etc.):  in the wild, cats get their veggies and seeds by digesting the stomachs of their prey, that’s why seeds and veggies are on the healthy list. Each vegetable or seed has their own nutritional properties, but overall it’s a healthy addition in a cat’s food

• Dried kelp: it’s rich in vitamins and minerals, and has anti-inflammatory properties

• Egg/ dehydrated egg: they’re packed with nutrients like amino acids, have lots of protein, but they’re also very dense in calories

• Goat’s milk: contains proteins, fats, enzymes, probiotics, vitamins, minerals, it’s great for digestion and overall health

• Bone broth: it’s nutrient-rich and anti-inflammatory, supports healthy digestion, joints, skin and coat, and immune system

• Probiotics (lactobacillus, bifidobacterium, etc.): they’re great for digestion, immune system and overall health

Now let’s talk about the bad/ junk list:

• Meat By-Products / By-Product Meal

  Let’s talk about by-products first. By-products are basically leftover parts of an animal that are not intended for human consumption. And this could be anything, like hooves, or beaks, or claws. By-products are usually low in nutritional value, unless they use organ meats. There’s this common argument of popular cat food brands saying that there’s nothing wrong with by-products, and that a by-product could be a spleen, liver, kidney, lung, etc. For once, people also consume animal organs like kidney, so I don’t think it’s classified as being “not intended for human consumption”. And even so, if that’s the case, if a by-product you’re using is a chicken lung, why not write it on a label: ”chicken lung”? When something is vague, in my opinion, someone is trying to cover something up. So if a meat ingredient is not clear, than chances are it’s something that the food companies don’t feel comfortable writing, because it might be shocking or aversive.

Now let’s talk about “meal”. Any animal protein ingredient in cat food that includes the word ‘meal’ is essentially a rendered ingredient. It’s usually low protein quality and very low digestibility. Cheap meat and bone meals may contain excess levels of minerals, too much calcium, phosphorous and magnesium, and that is not good for cats.

Rendering is a process of slow cooking, usually on very high temperatures for at least 24 hours. After that, all moisture is removed, turning the meat mush into a dry powder. After such extensive heat treatment, there’s basically no live and vital nutrients left! And on top of that, they remove the moisture, as they say, to make the meal be “nutritionally dense”. In my opinion, this is just a pity attempt to cover up something very disgusting. When I started digging, I found this document from USDA about Rendering. Let’s take a look at it!

It's called “Rendering. Carcass Removal: a comprehensive review”. By their definition, rendering is

“A process of using high temperature and pressure to convert whole animal and poultry carcasses or their by-products with no or very low value to safe, nutritional, and economically valuable products.”

Then on p.6 under “Historical use of Rendering” we see that

“The rendering process uses the dead cattle and other farm animal carcasses or their waste by-products.”

And then on p.26 under “Carcass rendering end products and their applications”, it says that

“Using these products as ingredients in pet food formulations helps sustain the health and extend the life of companion animals.”

I mean, what? How is this healthy? 🙀🙀🙀

• Poultry: usually means flesh or skin of domestic poultry, but it is so vague! Why would they do that, I wonder?

• Ground Yellow Corn: is a filler that adds bulk at a lower cost, it has very little nutritional value and may lower nutritional value of the food as a whole by speeding up transit time in gastro-intestinal tract.

• Corn Gluten Meal/ Wheat Gluten: anything with gluten can cause dietary allergies

• Corn Starch, Soybean Meal, Soy Flour, Wheat Gluten: all these ingredients are most likely genetically modified because currently, up to 92% of U.S. corn is genetically engineered, as are 94% of soybeans. And yes, soy and corn could be a good source of protein, but not for cats! Cats can’t digest starch, and their reduced ability to digest and utilize carbs is reflected in their lack of salivary amylase, an enzyme that breaks down starch. So yes technically adding corn, wheat, soy, rice, legumes, wheat can add protein content statistically, but in reality, cats cannot utilize them, certainly not as good as animal protein, so essentially it’s useless. That’s why if your cat food label has a grain-free sign, it’s usually a good thing!

• Potato and rice: generally they’re ok but it’s a starch! Potato and rice are better than corn, wheat and soy.

• Beans and legumes: are generally not the best ingredients for cats. In small amounts it could be fine, since cats eat a variety diet, but too much of beans and legumes can cause an upset to the digestive system

• Artificial and natural flavors and colors: any additives, including flavorings, colorings, anti-caking agents or emulsifiers, like Guar Gum, Xanthan gum, Carageenan (they are usually added for texture), plus Salt – all those additives can cause hyperactivity, health issues and behavior problems

On top of this, usually cat food has added natural or synthetic vitamins, and sometimes the name looks scary and not-recognizable, when in reality it is a simple vitamin. For example,

Well, you got the idea! Same goes for minerals, so you can see ingredients like zinc amino acid, chelate, potassium chloride, magnesium sulfate, and others. Those are usually all needed vitamins and minerals, although personally I prefer natural sources of vitamins instead of synthetic, when possible.

4 - Let’s move to Guaranteed analysis. 

Guaranteed analysis lists minimum or maximum nutrient content. It is required that company show the minimum % for crude protein and crude fat, and maximum % for moisture and fiber.

Crude protein, fat and fiber refer to specific analytical procedures used to estimate these numbers, so numbers that you see on your labels are not exact or accurate, they’re just estimates.

All nutrient profiles on cat food labels show “As-fed” analysis.

What does it mean? It means that they measure nutrient content with water in food, literally, as fed to the cats. This essentially means that “as fed” numbers are diluted numbers. That’s why sometimes it’s better to calculate “Dry Matter Basis”, which shows the amount of nutrients minus the water content in food, which gives us more accurate numbers.

This is important because if we compare a dry food label and a wet food label, their moisture content throws everything off and it’s hard to compare levels of protein and fat for example, because the wet food has much more moisture (usually around 80%) than dry food (usually less than 10%, so the nutritional numbers on wet food will be somewhat diluted.

Let’s see it with an example. Let’s compare a guaranteed analysis of a dry bag of Orijen original and a can of wet food Orijen original.

When you look at the dry food label, we have 40% of Crude protein and 20% of fat, with moisture content at 10%. And a can food has 12% of crude protein and 6% of crude fat, with moisture levels at 80%. So when you just compare the percentage of protein and fat, it looks like dry food has waaay more protein and fat, but it’s not true! The reason is because wet food is more diluted (and remember, cats get most of their from food, so they need that moisture!) so it looks like it has less nutritional value. That’s why nutritionists use Dry Matter Basis, where we calculate amounts of crude fat or crude protein minus the amount of moisture. This would give us a clearer picture of the actual amounts of these nutrients.

So please don’t just compare dry and wet food by the numbers you see on the label, because it doesn’t represent the full picture. There is a way to calculate Dry Matter Basis from As Fed numbers, and if you want, I can show you how, just email me via contact form on this website. Or you can just contact a cat food company and ask them if they can give you dry matter analysis for a certain kind of their food. Reputable brands actually have this information readily available on their websites.

Carbohydrates.

Cat food companies for some reason don’t state the amount of carbs in their food, and it sucks because we want to make sure there’s not too much carbs in our cats food (as I mentioned before, cats’ don’t digest or utilize carbs very good). So you can calculate the carbohydrate content yourself, at least approximately.

Let’s take Guaranteed analysis from our Orijen Original can food. So we take 100% and subtract our 12% of crude protein – 6% of crude fat – 0.5% crude fiber – 80% moisture and – 0.2% taurine and that gives us 1.3% of carbohydrate content.

5 - Next, let's look at Calorie content

It’s very important, because a 3 oz can doesn’t always have similar amounts of calories, because different consistency means different caloric density. Pate is generally the most calorie-dense, when shreds or stews in sauce have the least amount of calories. For example, if you’ve been feeding your kitty two 3oz cans of Orijen Original pate a day (which would be 196kcal/day), and then decide to buy, let’s say, a 3oz can of Weruva Paw-lickin Chicken (which are chicken shreds in soupy sauce), then you would need to give more cans of Weruva, because one 3oz can of weruva only has 57 kcal, so you would need three or four 3oz cans of Weruva Paw-licking Chicken to make sure your kitty has enough calories as they used to have with Orijen cans.

Usually, if you follow the feeding guidelines on a can, you should be more or less on track. If you want to be more accurate and precise about your cat’s calories intake, you can ask your vet to calculate how much calories your cat needs a day based on his weight and activity level, and whether you want them to gain or loose weight.

 6 - AAFCO statement

AAFCO stands for Association of American Feed Control Officials, it’s a non-profit-organization that sets standards for pet food labeling practices, nutritional content, ingredient definitions, feeding trials and more.. There is no food that is AAFCO approved, most food companies just create their food to meet AAFCO’s guidelines and standards, but he cat food label at the very least should be stating that the food was formulated to meet nutritional levels established by AAFCO cat food nutrient profiles.

I know that all this can be a bit overwhelming at first, but once you get a hang of it, you’ll be able to see right away which food is healthy and which one is not.

I also want to say that I know cat food can be expensive and if you have a house full of kitties (and I applaud you for that!), you just can’t afford to buy the best food on the market. I get that, and I think in the end of the day, as long as we do the best we can, that’s all that matters. I’m not judging people who take care of 10-20-50 cats and have to give them the cheapest food just to help them survive! That’s ok, we do what we can and what matters is that we try! I think people who have such big hearts are true heroes! 💛💛💛

I always recommend getting the best food you can afford for your cat, or cats, even if its simply switching from dry food to canned food. Wherever you are in your journey with your cat, taking one step closer to a healthy nutrition is good enough!

I wasn’t feeding our cats raw food right from the start, it was a long journey, as I was learning and started seeing better results. Spending a bit more on higher quality food right now means that you’ll save tons of money on the vet bills later, and to me, it’s worth it!

One last advice I can give you is that don’t just look at the label, look at the food itself: how does it look, how does it smell? Does it look like REAL food that you can recognize, or is it just a weird mushy or dry junk? And essentially, let your cat be the judge! 😼

I think this is all for today! Thank you for spending your time with me, I really hope that this information will help you make better choices for your kitty, or kitties!

~ Vani 🐚