Honest Kitchen

I know this has come up before, but has anyone given this food a try?

A couple years ago, my brother switched his geriatric IBD cat from grain-free canned to a raw diet (NV bites).  The cat was doing better, but still needed her prednisone and still threw up every so often.  Now he has a new baby and didn't want to leave raw food around (his cat is a grazer), so he gave Honest Kitchen a try.  To everyone's surprise, the cat actually did BETTER on Honest Kitchen!  She completely stopped throwing up.  And, her stools are still like the raw-fed ones (no odor, small, dry) - in contrast to the stink bombs she had while on canned food.

That mystified me because I thought that that stinky poop and nagging health issues should naturally ensue from a diet that is 30% potato and veggies on a dry matter basis.  Given that a little convenience and less worry about bacterial issues would be nice for me too, I bought a box of Prowl.  Like my brother's cat, both of mine took to it right away - they like it better than their raw chicken and turkey food, and will only bypass it to eat their favorite foods (rabbit, mutton, pork).   And yes, no change in stool, no problems whatsoever, no litter box odor, even when I tried feeding them only the Honest Kitchen for a couple days.

This challenges some of my assumptions about cat diets, for sure.  If it's not the carbohydrates, what the heck is in canned food that causes the stinky poop and other health issues???  I'm still concerned about the high carb content so my cats will still be mostly raw fed, but definitely I will be adding in regular HK meals.

To answer your first question, I've tried Honest Kitchen with two of our rescues and they wouldn't touch the stuff. They also turned their noses up at the (thawed) frozen raw. We have since settled on NV LID Turkey canned and Stella & Chewy's Turkey formula (they are fed this dried...won't touch it if it is reconstituted.)

As to what may be in canned food that causes issues...
That varies by cat. Gums and thickeners (Carageenan, Guar-Gum, Agar-Agar, Xantham Gum, etc...) are big culprits for a lot of IBD kitties. I find that these often contribute to the fowl smelling stool. Protein intolerances can also cause problems.

I haven't tried HK, I was turned off by the potatoes.
I agree with CatPack, likely culprits in canned foods are çarageenan and gums. My fhv - IBD cat had horribly stinky stools even on the high end canned Ziwi Peak, which used to have carrageenan but now does not. I have him mostly on Primal and Rad Cat with some NV canned rabbit. I wanted both cats to like S&C's since it has far less vegetable matter than Primal but it was a miss and not a hit.

I have not fed this food yet, but I'm definitely interested in trying.  Apparently there are no regulations for cat food companies labeling their food as human grade, which means that a lot of companies can claim it without any proof.  The Honest Kitchen, however, has been able to prove that their food is actually human grade and won a lawsuit that stated this.  

http://www.thehonestkitchen.com/media-archive/fresh-news/

http://www.naturalcatcareblog.com/2011/07/stunning-info-about-human-grade-cat-food-and-carrageenan/

@sophie1  : I'm glad you posted. Most posts regarding Prowl and Honest Kitchen are to report their cats won't have anything to do with them. It's good to know that some cats do indeed like them and do well on them.

There is very little research into why some cats do so poorly on so many of the commercially produced pet foods. The truth is most if not all of the reasons for it that you find posted on the internet are really just speculation. It's human nature to want to have solid explanations for everything even when there is little solid information to go by. With regards to how pet food ingredients and how they are processed effects the long term health of cats too little is known for us to be able to state with absolute certainty that we know why, or even if, cats in general do better on food A than on food B. 

Thanks for the comments mschauer.  Yes, I agree the story of my brother's cat is anecdotal as is my own experience, but it does point out how little we know about how to keep cats healthy.  From the stories on this forum, it seems that almost universally, cats do not thrive on traditional canned or dry foods.  And I've seen what happens to my cats' poop the few times I gave them canned food.  And they don't have any hint of IBD.

It might be the gums & binders, but I suspect there's a lot more to it than that.  Barring that info, it's fair to use minimal processing and quality ingredients as the main selection criteria.  HK does this at a price comparable to the raw food I am feeding my cats.  A convenient & storage-efficient food that does not have to be frozen/defrosted is very useful for a raw diet IMHO...it might keep people from falling off the wagon or from being afraid to jump in.  The freeze dried foods are good too, but they are too astronomically expensive to be a practical option.  (S&C F/D is $25-30 per week per cat, if fed exclusively; HK is less than half that.)

I fed my Aby The Honest Kitchen for awhile per the breeder's recommendation (along with the old NV frozen raw medallions). My Aby really didn't care for the Honest Kitchen so I eventually stopped buying it.

Tried Honest Kitchen out on some foster kittens. I had to add Heinz strained chicken to it to get them to eat it. My own cats wouldn't touch it. May was really excited when I was mixing it up, but when I gave it to her, she gave it a darn good sniff and walked away. The others wouldn't give it that much. That said, I know people who feed it to very finicky animals who love it. I really liked that the ingredients were all human grade, and absolutely none from China. Its also quite economical and stores well. My best friend always says "It doesn't matter how good a cat food is, if the cat won't eat it, it isn't any good." Glad its working out for somemoggies though!

I spoke too soon.  Both my kitties liked Honest Kitchen initially, but now one of them won't eat it, while the other loves it so much he won't eat anything else!  So I'm taking a brief break from it and then will introduce it more gradually.