What brands do we like, and which do we dislike?

I've seen numerous opinions about this on here. Which pet food brands do you like, and which don't you like? Why?

I'm a big fan of Weruva and Nature's Variety. Two of the best foods, IMO. Weruva was created for pets by pet owners. That's what drew me towards the brand, to be honest. Nature's Variety is one of my favorites because I feel comfortable feeding it to my cats. I've been transitioning my cats over to commercial raw and Nature's Variety Raw Instincts has been a godsend. My cats love it, and it has wonderful ingredients!

I dislike Hills. I'm not a fan of Hills because I find them very deceptive. They market Science Diet like it's the best food in the world (and slap a pretty high price tag on it) when it's nothing different than grocery store brands. It contains by-products, meals, grains and fillers...not stuff I want my cats eating. Plus they've brainwashed vets to think that their food is the best diet for an obligate carnivore.

So what do you guys think?

I have been posting here almost two months and so far seen no praise for Science Diet, only criticism. Unfortunately, I fell in the "vet recommendation" trap and spent 12 years buying junk food because I thought it was good. Now I just want to threaten a boycott of all Hill's products!

I had never heard of Weruva before joining the board in May, but now I am convinced that is what I should feed my next cat instead of the Blue Buffalo Patricia eats. Unfortunately Petco and Petsmart don't sell it, but I'm willing to order online to get the best cat food.

The cats in my family have been through so many foods.. Iams was popular ten or so years ago, and after we realized it wasn't too great, my cats went through a variety of random brands before falling into the Science Diet trap. Now they eat and love Royal Canin, which I know isn't free of bad ingredients, but it has done wonders for improving an older cats weight, fur, and attitude. Also, my five year old had always had this brand and it's fur is ridiculously silky.

What I'm interested to know more about is Purina One Beyond. I've never been a Purina fan, but the ingredients list on this looks pretty amazing compared to my Royal Canin. Has anyone tried this?

I used to feed Purina One but I switched food during the recalls.  I was feeding Evo dry for a long time but the quality went down during the buyout. I switched to Wellness Core Grain Free for dry food and they also eat Wellness wet food too.

I can see this thread becoming a long one. A lot of members have one cat who likes this and another cat who likes that. There are all kinds of opinions about which food is good or bad, although I think everyone agrees Science Diet is junk food.

I fell ine the dry food and "complete and balanced" traps. During the massive recall in 2007, my vet told me the truth: cats do not chew their food and it is better to feed all canned than all dry. I asked her, "How do I know which foods don't have wheat gluten?" because that ingredient was the one being tainted with melamine. She named three: Fancy Feast Classics, Wellness, and California Naturals. While my cats ate Fancy Feast, I learned it has by-products, which are defined as non-meat animal parts such as beaks, feathers, and feet. Yuck.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

I can see this thread becoming a long one. A lot of members have one cat who likes this and another cat who likes that. There are all kinds of opinions about which food is good or bad, although I think everyone agrees Science Diet is junk food.

I fell ine the dry food and "complete and balanced" traps. During the massive recall in 2007, my vet told me the truth: cats do not chew their food and it is better to feed all canned than all dry. I asked her, "How do I know which foods don't have wheat gluten?" because that ingredient was the one being tainted with melamine. She named three: Fancy Feast Classics, Wellness, and California Naturals. While my cats ate Fancy Feast, I learned it has by-products, which are defined as non-meat animal parts such as beaks, feathers, and feet. Yuck.

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Science Diet and IAMS used to be the big ones followed by Eukanuba.  Back then my parents used Nutro and refused to follow the fad diets, including the vet recommended diet of Science Diet.  They wanted something better.  Luckily Nutro was sold where we bought our horse supplies to we were able to get it there.  Never had a complaint about Nutro and it's almost 50 years later.  And I work for them now as well.  I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't believe in the product.  All that said...  I do mix up my wet food with different premium foods other than the Nutro products.  My feral cat will only eat FF classics and Nutro Max Cat duck wet.  My indoor 4 like almost all of the Nutro wet and one premium in particular that I can't mention but it is discussed often here and is grain free.  I think there are a lot of good premium foods out there.  Where they are manufactured has become a huge issue with me personally.

Why aren't you allowed to say what your cat eats?

I thought about Nutro and will do more research on it, but I want to know if it is better than Blue Buffalo before I buy a bag.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

Why aren't you allowed to say what your cat eats?

I thought about Nutro and will do more research on it, but I want to know if it is better than Blue Buffalo before I buy a bag.

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I personally wouldn't say that dry Nutro is better quality than dry BB. Corn gluten as a major ingredient is my main complaint. And tons of wheat. But their paté canned food is pretty good and not too expensive . Not grain-free but decent. The chunks have wheat gluten, though.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

I thought about Nutro and will do more research on it, but I want to know if it is better than Blue Buffalo before I buy a bag.

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Every time you mentioned Blue Buffalo, I thought you meant the wet food! Are you feeding canned - or kibble - or both?

As for the original question, I can think of a TON of dry foods that are totally horrible. Meow Mix and Alley Cat don't even deserve to be called cat food, IMO. Most store brands are terrible, too. Of course, all dry food is fatally flawed in that it's dry, which of course isn't good for cats. And that kibbles need starches and carbs to hold them together. But for those who need to feed a bit of kibble, there are at least some reasonably decent options. I think I'm going to go with a mix of EVO and Earthborn Holistic Primitive Feline once I'm out of my current stock. Although if I only had one or two cats, I might go with something like Ziwipeak or freeze-dried raw as my "kibble".

As for canned foods, there are very few I'd call truly terrible. There are some dollar-store brands that are mostly grain, and Meow Mix has sugar. But all in all, most canned food is halfway decent, and is at least wet. Just feed a good variety. Of course, everyone has opinions about what ingredients to avoid, and they should go with whatever they're most comfortable with.

And almost all frozen raw foods are pretty good (the only "bad" one I"ve seen is Bil-Jac. But I don't think they make cat food anyway). Hard to go wrong there.

But of course, processed food is processed food. There is a difference between Hungry Man and Healthy Choice and Annie's Organics TV dinners. But even the best has some ingredients some people want to avoid, and all are in plastic trays. If you want to avoid processed food, the only option is a home-prepared fresh-food diet.

Right now I'm feeding my cats Natural Balance Green Pea and Duck dry food, and the kitten gets NB Green Pea and Venison wet food, while my older cat... is the middle of a picky eater stage.  She grew up with Trader Joe's canned food, but I wanted to get her on something a bit better (although if I were to ever need to start serious budgeting, I'd be comfortable going back to TJ's brand wet food), so I tried Wellness.  That went great for a while, then she would only pick at it.  Then I tried Natural Balance.  Same story.  Next up: Weruva.

I know it's better to feed all wet food, but giving them dry food for breakfast does help stretch the budget, and I'm pretty comfortably with NB's dry food formula.

I'm not a fan of any of the Blue Buffalo brand dry food, not even the wilderness formula.  My cat wouldn't touch the stuff.

LDG said:

Every time you mentioned Blue Buffalo, I thought you meant the wet food! Are you feeding canned - or kibble - or both?

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If Patricia had not changed her mind about wet food during the move, you would be correct. I have to give her what she will eat and that is dry kibbles.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

If Patricia had not changed her mind about wet food during the move, you would be correct. I have to give her what she will eat and that is dry kibbles.

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Emily, if all my cats wanted their way (in the beginning of their transition to raw), none of them would be eating meat - maybe Bugsy... Even so, he for sure would prefer his nasty kibbles (and trust me, his kibble was nasty). All of them would still be on kibbles.
I think this analogy was given here many times already..... but if a child wants to eat potato chips every meal, for life, will the parent just give it because "this is what the child wants to eat"? I wouldn't think so....
My cat Lucky was a complete kibble addict - she had never in her life eaten canned - she was absolutely disgusted at canned, meat, any and everything that wasn't kibbles. It took a long time to transition her, but she sure enough was transitioned, and it was done in a stress free manner. On her terms, her time.
The only time I took the approach of "giving what she would eat" was when she was very sick - I had to force feed her for quite a few days (syringe feed), and there was a point, that to make her eat on her own, yes, I let her choose - the vet said she needed a hairball formula, and from several I offered, she chose to eat ProPlan.
Looking back, while I am glad, she absolutely wasn't well on that food, and is way better now on raw. I am glad I went through all the effort to transition her.
I am in no way telling you to feed Patricia raw..... But if you really want, and put some work into it, she will eat canned again - IMHO that is a sure thing.

The potato chip analogy makes sense if you are talking about Science Diet vs. Weruva (which does not come in kibble format). But I am talking about switching from dry to wet, not changing companies. So the only challenge is getting her to eat wet food again.

EmilyMayWilcha said:

The potato chip analogy makes sense if you are talking about Science Diet vs. Weruva (which does not come in kibble format). But I am talking about switching from dry to wet, not changing companies. So the only challenge is getting her to eat wet food again.

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No, potato chips to humans, as kibbles to cats - that is that analogy I am making, and switching from dry to wet is precisely what I am talking about.... which is why I wrote the rest of my post. I transitioned my cats from free-feeding kibbles to raw, including Lucky, a die-hard kibble addict who had never eaten canned food.

I would like to feed my cats a raw diet. I just can't afford it so I give them Purina Indoor with occasional canned food.

First off, I would say that my first choice for any cat diet is a species-appropriate diet that is preservative and filler-free, i.e. making your own raw. 

Pertaining to foods on the market I have yet to purchase any commercial raw so I will not mention any of those, but my top three canned foods are (in no particular order):

• Evo and Innova (both by Naturapet foods). Yes they have been bought out by P&G, but I have yet to see any evidence concerning a change in quality or ingredients., so until then they will remain on top in my books.
• Nature's Variety.
• Blue Bistro and Blue WIlderness Wild Delights ONLY - They are the only two products by Blue that are without carageenan and contain very few carbohydrates. As for the brand in general, I'm not a fan I just like those two specific wet foods.

Runners up: Ziwipeak, BG, and Fromm. I include these guys in my rotation, but not as much as my top three.

Dislikes:

Anything sold at the grocery store (commercial brands such as: Iams, Purina, Meow Mix, Friskies, Whiskas). I don't really support buying any dry foods except under extenuating circumstances, there equivalent to cat junk food, even if they claim to be be holistic/grain-free, etc. 

And I very much dislike brands such as Hills and RC that claim to be high quality and charge you a fortune, but are absolutely horrendous for your pets.

I think that's about it. 

EmilyMayWilcha said:

Why aren't you allowed to say what your cat eats?

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Nutromike has a job to keep in mind when he writes on here, hopefully that clears it up for you. 

I switched my cuties from Purina One to Wellness Core. Been reading alot online about switching food, they said do it gradually as it will cause them to have runs or upset stomach. Thank God I didn't have that problem with my babies. I gave them the 1st day I got the new brand. I always mixed dry food with lil bit of water to make it mushy (they like it, they don't like it when is dry). I'm wondering if this is good for them (dry food w/ water)?

mycuties said:

I switched my cuties from Purina One to Wellness Core. Been reading alot online about switching food, they said do it gradually as it will cause them to have runs or upset stomach. Thank God I didn't have that problem with my babies. I gave them the 1st day I got the new brand. I always mixed dry food with lil bit of water to make it mushy (they like it, they don't like it when is dry). I'm wondering if this is good for them (dry food w/ water)?

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Are you leaving the dry food out? When dry food becomes wet it creates bacteria.

Oh no, not at all. I clean their bowl as soon as they finished eating. There's some days that they won't touch it and I put it in a trash. My husband thinks I spoiled them..lol.