Are these ingredients bad?

The Blue Buffalo Basics that I am feeding has deboned turkey and turkey meal as the first two ingredients. However, it also contains peas, pea starch, pea fiber (why so pea heavy?), potatoes, caramel, salt, kelp, yucca, carrots, barley grass, alfalfa meal, oil of rosemary, dried parsley, turmeric, chicory root, blueberries, and cranberries as some of the ingredients (not in that order). I know that the caramel is probably used for coloring, but could it hurt my cats? Also, I think that the cranberries are supposed to help prevent UTIs. Do you think they really work? Is salt as bad for cats as it is for people? I don't know much about the other ingredients. Do they have any nutritional value? Are they harmful? My adult cat does great on this food (no more puking), but I am still trying to "firm up" my kitten's stools (for months on several different foods) Would any of these ingredients stop that from happening? I recently started feeding the grain-free turkey version of Blue Basics to see if eliminating rice and oatmeal will help. I'm mixing it with the Fish and Potato and trying to get them off of the fish completely.

I know that some of you will tell me to feed canned, but as I have said on other threads, the vet has advised me not to feed canned for now. She doesn't want to keep switching the kittens's food but try one kind at a time and see if it helps, although she is pretty sure that diet is not an issue.

I would just like to know your opinions about some of the ingredients in the food that I am currently giving my cats.

It is pea heavy because peas are cheap and depending on how the nutrtional analyis is run, can show an inflated protein count. (Peas have protein, not nearly as high as, say, deboned turkey, and not readily utilized by a cat.)
In my opinion, cranberries are a gimic. They do more harm than good, as very well researched and written in this thread (see post #5).
I personally wouldn't worry about the amount of caramel and salt (I'd worry about the amount of pea, etc. instead).
But I can *kindof* understand where your vet is coming from: constantly switching foods can cause loose stools.

As mentioned, the peas are there to boost the protein content, which is misleading since cats cannot utilize plant based proteins very well. The peas and potatoes are both starchy fillers which have no business in a cat food. However, because they are not grains, the food can be marketed as "grain-free" which people assume is better. The yucca, carrots, alfafa meal, barley grass also all contribute to a carb percentage which is way too high for an obligate carnivore. Also note that pea allergies have been noted in some cats.

Ritz has already mentioned the problem with cranberries. The other ingredients are probably neither harmful nor beneficial in the small amounts that are in the food.