Is fancy feast truly horrible for cats?

[terestrife]

I started giving it to my cat before i realized that people call it "kitty crack." i get 36 cans at BJ warehouse for $18 so its not that expensive. She loves it, and prefers it over her dry food. I only give her a 3rd of a can a day. 1/4 dry food in the morning, 1/4 dry food at night, and i give her some fancy feast mid day.

i give her these cans:


if this is really unhealthy i dont mind changing it. but wow, they sell 12 cans for $20. Is fancy feast really that bad? do you guys know any healthy alternatives that wont be too expensive?

thanks!

 

[smitten4kittens]

Fancy Feast canned isn't the best food in the world, but not the worst either. Keep in mind that feeding Fancy Feast canned is much healthier than any brand of dry food. Cats need protein and moisture. Not dehydrating carbs in dry food. They have no use for carbs.. Use the classic varieties of Fancy Feast, they have less carbs and a high protein. I would only feed the fish flavors occasionally because of mercury and possible bladder issues. Try Fancy Feast classic chicken next time. I don't really know any healthy canned foods that compare to that price. Just rotate a few in when you can. The expensive brands are cheaper if you buy the bigger cans and refridgerate the leftovers.

 

[sevenwonders]

As s4k mentioned, feeding fish daily is not a great idea...

I'd stick to one meal per week.

Some might disagree, but

personally, I'd consider Friskies Poultry Platter over FF.

It is typically 46 to 50 cents per can,

so you'd still be at $18. for 36 cans...

now the BETTER news - these are 6 oz cans

compared to the 3 oz cans of Fancy Feast.

IMO, a step UP would be to try

Innova Cat & Kitten -

I pay about $16. or so for twelve 13 oz cans

on PetFoodDirect using "Auto Ship."

Of course you would need to store the leftover in the fridge

in a plastic container then add a little warm water at feeding time.

Also, you would need to order more than one case at a time

to offset the shipping cost, but you can usually find great prices

on Dry food there as well (unless you are feeding Blue Buffalo,

which is usually much less at Petsmart for some reason.)

I also second s4k on the wet vs dry situation...

wet is definitely better for our Kitties  

However, to save some cash and provide some variety,

for one meal per day, I soak dry food in warm water for 5 minutes or so before serving -

they love the "gravy" and again the extra water is good for them.

 

[miagi's_mommy]

I don't think it's horrible. There's worse things out there like 9 lives or Special Kitty canned. I don't feed mine fancy feast canned except for when my aunt's cat died she gave us a whole bunch of fancy feast. I also don't feed it because those cans are tiny! I usually feed Friskie's canned as they do well on it.

 

[terestrife]

I also second s4k on the wet vs dry situation...

wet is definitely better for our Kitties  

However, to save some cash and provide some variety,

for one meal per day, I soak dry food in warm water for 5 minutes or so before serving -

they love the "gravy" and again the extra water is good for them.

the whole wet vs dry thing im noticing is mostly peoples varying opinions. i dont think anyone knows for sure what is best for a cat. every site you go to someone says to feed wet only, and some say dry only. even vets disagree. So, i decided to feed both so she can get whatever benefits there are in both.

by the way, my cat can eat a plate of dry food and be fine and has never vomited. the only times she has vomited with food was when she was eating wet food. it happened 3 times right after i would give her the suggested portions on the can. Thats why i limit her wet food, i dont want to risk her vomiting so im going to stay with the small amount i give her. She has two water bowls so im not worried about her getting dehydrated.

thanks for the advice though.

 

[miagi's_mommy]

I feed my cats both dry and canned. Yes, some say feed all canned or raw.. well it's my preference to feed dry and canned. I would feed raw if I could. Tiger has a super sensitive tummy to some canned foods so I have to be careful what he gets. He does great on dry though and gets plenty of water during the day. Miagi & Angel eat dry and canned and also get plenty of water. It's all a matter of preference. You can feed both if you like. Feed what you are comfortable with.

 

[terestrife]

I feed my cats both dry and canned. Yes, some say feed all canned or raw.. well it's my preference to feed dry and canned. I would feed raw if I could. Tiger has a super sensitive tummy to some canned foods so I have to be careful what he gets. He does great on dry though and gets plenty of water during the day. Miagi & Angel eat dry and canned and also get plenty of water. It's all a matter of preference. You can feed both if you like. Feed what you are comfortable with.

 in the beginning i felt so overwhelmed with all the advice about wet and dry food, that i decided to just go with my gut, and with what agrees with my cat. lol she has a sensitive stomach too. man the first time i saw her vomit, i thought it was my brothers dog that had vomited. lol there was so much of it!  i didnt believe it, until i saw her doing it in front of me.

i had just wanted to know if there was a healthier canned food available.  thanks for the advice! i appreciate you taking the time to respond.

 

[miagi's_mommy]

You are welcome! Natural Balance is pretty good IMO. That's what I get for my kitties sometimes. And it's not too expensive I don't think per can.

 

[just mike]

I started giving it to my cat before i realized that people call it "kitty crack." i get 36 cans at BJ warehouse for $18 so its not that expensive. She loves it, and prefers it over her dry food. I only give her a 3rd of a can a day. 1/4 dry food in the morning, 1/4 dry food at night, and i give her some fancy feast mid day.

i give her these cans:


if this is really unhealthy i dont mind changing it. but wow, they sell 12 cans for $20. Is fancy feast really that bad? do you guys know any healthy alternatives that wont be too expensive?

thanks!

FF is not horrible but there are better alternatives out there.  I FF is what is in your budget, the FF it will be!  You can look at the Nutro Max Cat line.  It's on the lower end price was for premium food.  My cats get Max Cat and Natural Choice wet but I also mix it up with other brands for different flavors and textures for them.  The Max Cat can be found at http://www.nutro.com/natural-pet-food/natural-cat-food.aspx

 

[terestrife]

You are welcome! Natural Balance is pretty good IMO. That's what I get for my kitties sometimes. And it's not too expensive I don't think per can.

i'll look that up when i go to the store, thanks!

FF is not horrible but there are better alternatives out there.  I FF is what is in your budget, the FF it will be!  You can look at the Nutro Max Cat line.  It's on the lower end price was for premium food.  My cats get Max Cat and Natural Choice wet but I also mix it up with other brands for different flavors and textures for them.  The Max Cat can be found at http://www.nutro.com/natural-pet-food/natural-cat-food.aspx

didnt know max cat made wet food. im giving my cat nutro max dry food right now. thanks!

 

[otto]

If you feed Fancy Feast, feed the Fancy Feast classics. They are very low carb, and are even recommended as a good diet for diabetic cats.

I am of the school that believes that any canned is better than a dry diet.

 

[smitten4kittens]

I wouldn't feed a cat the amount recommended on the can. That is way too much for the average cat. Normally a cat would eat about 5.5 oz. a day if they were on wet only. That could be why your cat was throwing up.

 

[duckdodgers]

We have been feeding my older girl fancy feast canned for awhile and it seems to do well with her!

 

[terestrife]

I wouldn't feed a cat the amount recommended on the can. That is way too much for the average cat. Normally a cat would eat about 5.5 oz. a day if they were on wet only. That could be why your cat was throwing up.

you dont understand i would give her the wet food in the morning and a couple of hours later she would be puking. those fancy feast cans are small they are only 3 oz cans, and that much would make her vomit. she stopped vomiting when i lessened the amount of wet food to 1/3 of the can.

 

[gardenandcats]

I have six cats and all of them thrive on fancy feast. They turn there noses up at any other brand. I have no problems with it. I also have a bowl of dry down at all times for them to nibble natural balance.. I would buy a better brand if they would eat it.
 

 

[terestrife]

I have six cats and all of them thrive on fancy feast. They turn there noses up at any other brand. I have no problems with it. I also have a bowl of dry down at all times for them to nibble natural balance.. I would buy a better brand if they would eat it.
 

how funny i was at petsupermarket just now and noticed a brand called natural balance, i decided to get their wet food, because it has so few ingredients, and ingredients i actually recognize, in contrast to fancy feast.

im going to try it and see if my cat likes it, if not, back to fancy feast! lol

im thinking of mixing half fancy feast and half natural balance in case it doesnt agree with her. i have heard wellness is supposedly even healthier, but i didnt see it at the store.

 

[andrya]

l'm a fan of Fancy Feast myself. l overhauled my cats' diets and got rid of the kibble. l've added both commercial and homemade raw.

l give them a wide assortment of canned foods, which includes both Fancy Feast pate (non-fish) and Friskies. l have a "good" side in the

cat-food cupboard, which l try to keep at 2 or 3 times the amount of the "bad" side of the cupboard. l put FF and Friskies in the bad side,

and also Tiki Cat (just because it's fish).

Tanner obviously prefers to walk on the dark side View media item 137288

 

[bad cat chris]

I have been trying to feed my cat raw food. I give them Natures Valley Instinct Organic Raw Chicken. The problem is, they don't like it and I have never been able to get them to eat it without mixing it with canned food. Usually, the best I can do is 50/50. If I increase the raw more than that they don't like it.

I was mixing it with Fancy Feast but in an effort to be more health conscious, I started buying more expensive holistic brands. Of course, the healthier the food, the less they like it so I have to mix a higher percentage of the canned food. Since raw is the best, I have the dilemma of having to go back to the less healthy Fancy Feast to get them to eat the more healthy raw food.

 

[ldg]

terestrife, I don't know how much time you want to put into learning about feline nutrition, or what sites you've already read.

But a good starting point is a site written by a vet that advocates for species-appropriate feeding: http://www.catinfo.org

The argument for an all wet food diet has to do with how cats evolved. They are originally desert animals (basically all domestic cats are descended from the African Wild Cat), so they did not evolve the "thirst drive" that species like dogs and humans have. They are "built" to derive all their moisture needs from the food they eat, not by drinking water. Many cats do drink water - but do they drink enough? :dk: Some will, some won't. But their digestive system also isn't built to constantly digest dry food. It can, but it isn't designed to. So opinions from people on whether dry food is "good" or "bad" are rather meaningless. Plenty of cats eat dry food and do great - some use dry food in limited quantities and the kitties do just fine. But when it comes to what is good for them and bad for them, their physiology is what matters, and that isn't opinion-based. Cats aren't "designed" to eat solely dry food. How much dry food to include - or not include - in a diet is a personal decision once one has an understanding of cats' physiology, IMO.

So when it comes to a question as re: is "XYZ food good or bad," IMO, there are two components. The first is the "macronutrient" profile of the food. There are six components: moisture, protein, fat, ash (minerals), fiber, and carbohydrates. To compare foods, the moisture is removed from the analysis - what you're left with is protein, fat, ash (minerals), fiber and carbohydrates. Lower one, another one must go up, as the total must always be 100%. Cats are obligate carnivores, and again, they are designed to consume small mammals. This means that they have evolved to eat a high protein, moderate fat, some minerals, and an essentially no carbohydrate content diet.

Their digestive systems are so specialized as carnivores (more so than dogs, which are carnivores, not obligate carnivores), that cats must have a number of fats and vitamins "preformed" in order to even utilize them. They cannot convert the beta carotene in many vegetables (like carrots), for instance, into vitamin A. They need vitamin A preformed - and in the wild, they get this from the tissues of muscle meat. They lack the digestive enzymes necessary to make that conversion. The same is true for Niacin, Vitamin D, the fatty acid arachadonic acid (AA), and they cannot convert the fatty acid alpha-linoleic acid (ALA) into its usable components. Plants are high in the omega 3s from ALA; meat is not. So omega 3s from plants are pretty much unusable to a cat. They have no amylase (digestive enzyme that digests carbohydrates) in their saliva: they do not use the typical pathways that humans and dogs use to digest carbohydrates as again, they do not have the same level of those digestive enzymes (technically, they use hexokinase, not glucokinase to digest carbs; this means carb digestion is slower in cats). There are more examples, but I think you get the idea.

So when considering whether a food is "good" or "bad," one of the primary questions is, is it species-appropriate for a cat? Is it high protein, low carb? (Again, to make this determination, the moisture has to be mathematically removed so just the nutrition available in the food content is analyzed. The guaranteed analysis provided by the manufacturer can be used to do this, though they use minimums and maximums, so numbers come out funny sometimes. This is an example of a Dry Matter Basis (DMB) calculator: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/DMB-Calculator.xlsx ).

Here is Fancy Feast classic chicken: http://www.fancyfeast.com/wet-cat-food/classic-chicken-feast/

On a dry-matter basis, using the guaranteed analysis, it is 50% protein, 22.7% fat, 6.8% fiber, 13.6% ash, and 6.8% carbohydrates.

A cat's natural diet (from a study of 27 feral cat diets around the world) on a dry matter basis is 62.7% protein, 22.8% fat, 11.8% ash, and 2.8% carbohydrates.

So clearly Fancy Feast classics style of food fits this profile of being species-appropriate. It is high protein,moderate fat, and low carb.
.

After determining whether the macronutrient profile of the food is species-appropriate, the next question is - are the ingredients good? And that is a very subjective decision. It all depends upon whether someone is comfortable feeding various ingredients. Pet food, for the most part, is made from the waste - the leftovers - of human food production. The image of chicken breasts on a pet food package is great - but that is almost never what actually goes into "chicken" cat or dog food. Those breasts are removed to be sold to humans, and what is leftover is typically mechanically recovered for things like.. chicken nuggets. What's left over after everything that goes into human food is what goes into cat food. And that's where you have to start making decisions on what, in your opinion, is acceptable.

If you want to learn more, there are a number of threads on TCS where we chat about some of the ingredients.

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/245614/...by-products-meal-or-rather-not-think-about-it

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/249117/a-strange-question-about-by-products-meals-and-4d

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/246168/the-truth-about-carrageenan

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/245844/cranberry

And for an overview of pet food in general: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/239691/nutritionally-complete-assurances-for-our-pet-food


From an ingredients perspective, Fancy Feast isn't the greatest, but it is a LONG way from being the worst - and there are a LOT of pluses.

Fancy Feast classic chicken ingredients: Chicken, chicken broth, liver, meat by-products, fish, poultry by-products, artificial and natural flavors, calcium phosphate, guar gum, potassium chloride, added color, salt, magnesium sulfate, taurine, zinc sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, Vitamin E supplement, ferrous sulfate, niacin, sodium nitrite (to promote color retention), manganese sulfate, calcium pantothenate, Vitamin A supplement, copper sulfate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, biotin, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, potassium iodide.

It has a rather simple ingredient list, it uses only animal proteins and has no grains - this is a BIG plus. :nod: It does have artificial colors and flavors. Guar gum isn't good for diabetic cats - it's one of those ingredients that's otherwise subjective on whether you want to feed it or not. The links above will help as re: by-products. At least these are actual by-products, not "meal," so not rendered. They cannot be from 4D animals, so that's good.

Personally, I think "by products" are OK for cats. We may think offal is disgusting, but cats in the wild eat the entire animal. The issue as re: by-products in pet food is also summarized here: http://cats.about.com/od/catfoodandnutrition/f/byproducts.htm

There's no carageenan, no soy (which is one ingredient I choose to avoid at all costs), no "natural" questionable ingredients such as cranberry or rosemary extract - there are no vegetables (which are unnecessary in cat food IMO).... so really, a lot going for it. :nod:

I use Fancy Feast classics for the ferals in rotation with other canned foods. I feed my indoor-only pet kitties a home made raw diet.

 

[ldg]

I have been trying to feed my cat raw food. I give them Natures Valley Instinct Organic Raw Chicken. The problem is, they don't like it and I have never been able to get them to eat it without mixing it with canned food. Usually, the best I can do is 50/50. If I increase the raw more than that they don't like it.

I was mixing it with Fancy Feast but in an effort to be more health conscious, I started buying more expensive holistic brands. Of course, the healthier the food, the less they like it so I have to mix a higher percentage of the canned food. Since raw is the best, I have the dilemma of having to go back to the less healthy Fancy Feast to get them to eat the more healthy raw food.

If you want help with transition tips and experiences, you should consider starting a thread in the raw forum. Some of us switched to raw with VERY finicky kitties! http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-feeding-for-cats