Best Cat Food? When criteria get too strict...

At least this was my impression of this project. Reviews.com decided to find out which is the best cat food and so they set out to disqualify brands on various pretenses. Now, some of this makes sense, but honestly some criteria are just too strict IMO. They end up disqualifying respectable brands that are frequently recommended by TCS members here, and IMHO their reasons are not always valid.

At least some of the ingredients in their "controversial ingredients" list are not known to be unsafe for cats, by any means. And no, studies in mice are pretty meaningless without addressing quantities. Anything can be toxic, even water, it's all a question of how much of it you feed, considering feline physiology. Some things can be toxic to mice in certain concentration but perfectly safe to feed in moderation to cats (or humans for that matter), and vice versa too. Some things can be safe to feed to mice, even in large quantities, yet entirely toxic to cats even in small amounts. In short, I'm not thrilled with their list of "controversial" ingredients, when the so-called "controversy" is often sparked by companies with a vested interest in selling people unnecessary supplements.

Also, recalls are not necessarily a bad thing. A large company is bound to have more recalls than a smaller company, especially if the smaller company doesn't adhere to the same quality assurance standards. So many brands were taken off their list for that, it's mindboggling. 

Still, I think at least they seem to have done a fair job of sorting out through the data, so this is an interesting article to read. Just with a grain of salt, is my suggestion. I'd love to hear more from TCS members on this.

http://www.reviews.com/cat-food/

How ridiculous. It's basically saying that, unless you can afford to pay top dollar, you're feeding bad food :frusty: Some of the exclusions make sense, but others are totally arbitrary. There's nothing wrong with meat by products or meat meal, to name just two of their exclusions. Some great brands didn't make the cut too. :disa:

Interesting reading, but definitely not one to be taken as gospel!

They only consider food made in the U.S., Canada or New Zealand because laws are less stringent elsewhere? If that were true, why could several U.S. brands no longer be sold in the EU following revision of EU laws after the 2007 recalls? All pet food ingredients in the European Union have to be fit for human consumption. Even if a pet food is labeled "not for human consumption" because it contains by-products, the latter have to be derived from animals fit for human consumption. How is that "laxer"?

I will have to have a read of this later when I get home from work. 

I think the golden rule is that the best cat food is the one your cat will eat. Your cat may unfortunately be averse to everything but the crappiest foods out there. I won't starve my cats just to make sure they eat a high-end meal that I can't afford anyway. Not that I think my cats would care as much but at least one of mine seems a bit on the picky side.

I feed Science Diet, and I think we have since sometime in the 1980s. And until the last maybe 5 years, they were all on an all-dry diet. I know that brand gets some serious knocks but in all of my research the last few days (and I've spent more time researching cat food during my time off from work than anything else), the canned Science Diet isn't looking too bad! I'm guessing this link you posted is talking about cats without any specific needs. I have five cats with nutritional needs are various ends of the spectrum, and need a food that can still be fed to all of them. It also is something that I can afford.

Anyway, thanks for posting this, and great timing too   

Gosh, I feel so uninformed.  I've never heard of most of the recommended food brands.  

If transparency and knowledge of the original source are things the reviewers recommend in determining what cat food formula a person would like to feed to his/her feline, I think what would be helpful for the reader would be for the reviewers to have listed out all of the cat food formulas they disqualified at each stage of their methodology / review process.

Then the decision-making, choice and reasons why can be made by the reader at each stage of this article, since people may agree or disagree with some or all of their criteria at each stage. Then they can come up with their own hierarchy of transparency, ingredients and reasons why they might choose a food formula or not -- even including those in the reviewers' final list of 163 cat food formulas. They chose to list the names of the cat food formulas in their final 163, but not the below...



Snippets:
List out ingredients of these the 505 formulas, or at least list the name of the formula and we'll research the ingredients on our own...



List out ingredients of these the 311 formulas, or at least list the name of the formula and we'll research the ingredients on our own...



List out ingredients of these the 457 formulas, or at least list the name of the formula... etc. ...



List out ingredients of these the 323 formulas, or at least list the name of the formula...


Some might think asking for the above is TMI [too much information] but if educating owners on "the best cat food" and why they think so is their goal, well, I say, go for it!

Columbine said:

How ridiculous. It's basically saying that, unless you can afford to pay top dollar, you're feeding bad food

Some of the exclusions make sense, but others are totally arbitrary. There's nothing wrong with meat by products or meat meal, to name just two of their exclusions. Some great brands didn't make the cut too.

Interesting reading, but definitely not one to be taken as gospel!

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Yeah I agree. Excluding Tiki Cat, Weruva (and Soulistic) because they are manufactured in Thailand? Really?Nature's Variety, Merrick (and Whole Earth Farms) because of a history of recall? So they should be punished forever? They really give you a very small list of brands to choose from. What is someone who doesn't have access to these brands supposed to do? Do they expect anyone who cannot afford these brands to not have a cat? I'm going to continue to do the same thing I've been doing all along. We have a good rotation of foods in place. I keep a balance of higher quality brands in with the Friskies pates and such and it works for us. The kids like them and they are all healthy.  

I think it's a decent list, for sure, and I agree with a lot of their exclusions, but I like Natural Cat Care Blog's list of cat foods better. I think they included too many foods that have a lot of veggies in them, like Addiction, while eliminating good foods that don't have many veggies in them like Soulistic, Tiki and Weruva. 

This list is a bit ridiculous. Half of the dry foods had potatoes, potato flour, tapioca, ground corn, rice, etc. as the 2nd ingredient. (The ground corn I noticed was on the Blackwood brand, which is weird because corn is under their "ingredients to avoid" list.) I'd honestly feed by-products before I'd feed a ton of empty filler carbs. 

I do like some of the main points of the article. They did touch on the subject of dry food and teeth, and how little cats actually chew their food - which is appreciated. They also talked about cats being carnivores, so meat first foods.

They mentioned how much water cats actually need, which I think is hugely unknown to the general public. I actually had a friend that told me that her cat only pees once a day. I was shocked, and she followed up with, "It's the cat's fault for not drinking enough water." 

So, while I think the article did bring attention to a lot of great points, I think they totally missed the mark with eliminating as many brands as they did. I have 0 problems feeding a brand that's been previously recalled, as long as they've implemented the necessary changes since then. I make sure that the recalls are not a constant habit though. I also feed multiple brands for this reason.

Columbine said:

How ridiculous. It's basically saying that, unless you can afford to pay top dollar, you're feeding bad food :frusty: Some of the exclusions make sense, but others are totally arbitrary. There's nothing wrong with meat by products or meat meal, to name just two of their exclusions. Some great brands didn't make the cut too. :disa:

Interesting reading, but definitely not one to be taken as gospel!

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I think what they are saying is if the company did not identify the actual meat meal or meat by product by name (instead of just listing "meat" generically), then that was less preferable. It's better to have the label identify the particular meat by saying, chicken meal, or salmon meal, etc. When the labeling isn't specific and clear, it's hard to vouch for a "mystery meat".

Hm. This is interesting. A search for "All" and "Kitten" specifically only comes up with dry food choices.

I might suggest that anyone looking for kitten foods also explore the "All Stages" section if they want more results (other than dry foods for kittens). Many people feed their kittens 'all stages' or adult canned foods, and just increase the amount of ounces and/or calorie intake so that it is geared to a kitten's important growth needs.

PushPurrCatPaws said:

I think what they are saying is if the company did not identify the actual meat meal or meat by product by name (instead of just listing "meat" generically), then that was less preferable. It's better to have the label identify the particular meat by saying, chicken meal, or salmon meal, etc. When the labeling isn't specific and clear, it's hard to vouch for a "mystery meat".

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I absolutely see your point. On the other hand, named meat by products are natural and healthy for a cat - they'd eat the whole mouse or rat if they were hunting to survive.

Named meat meal as the first ingredient on kibble can actually end up creating a higher protein food than fresh named meat - simply because of the water content in fresh meat.

I just think the list as a whole has too many imperfections.

Paiger8 said:

 
This list is a bit ridiculous. Half of the dry foods had potatoes, potato flour, tapioca, ground corn, rice, etc. as the 2nd ingredient. (The ground corn I noticed was on the Blackwood brand, which is weird because corn is under their "ingredients to avoid" list.) I'd honestly feed by-products before I'd feed a ton of empty filler carbs.

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This was what I noticed first, too! I'd also much rather feed by-products than potato, barley, peas, or lots of tapioca.

And to wipe lots of good foods off the list because they're manufactured in Thailand is just crazy.

RickR said:

 
Gosh, I feel so uninformed.  I've never heard of most of the recommended food brands.  

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That's exactly what I said when I saw the foods that actually made the cut.

I think I'll stick with my own 3-4 days of research. I have enough pickiness in what I need to have, don't need to add to the list. Had recalls? So what. So have dozens of other things. 

Interesting. I suppose I can understand the recall issue if the assumption is  lack of consistency or quality control over ingredients. It's hard to keep track of all of them, but in the past there were recalls because of toxicity of added ingredients, or that a label didn't include ingredients that were in the food. A few years back that was the case with Natural Balance, I believe. And of course in 2007, many pet foods got caught up in the melamine scandal (wheat gluten was manufactured in China and shipped to various pet food manufacturers to be included as protein in the food but instead it was melamine which ended up killing a bunch of cats). Some high end brands were part of that recall and they never included wheat gluten on their ingredient list. So owners, thinking they were avoiding it, ended up feeding it unwittingly to their cats. Diamond foods was heavily caught up in that mislabel/lack of label issue in 2007 when the wheat gluten problem occurred. 

 I completely understand eliminating a brand because there is no information on the manufacturer. To me that's related to the problem above. You have no idea what the quality control is on the food, or if you are paying premium prices thinking you are feeding your pet better food, but it's really the same company that makes generic grocery store canned food, as an example.

I have stayed away from Wysong because I thought they did have some issues with nutrition in their foods and yet that brand made it to this particular list.

I tend to agree about pet food made in Thailand.  While the brands like Tiki and BFF and Weruva end up on the high end recommended list of foods with people food quality appearance, Thailand has a spotty record on food safety issues for people, so I personally feel that there might not be controls in place to make sure the pet food quality is good and consistent if they can't do that for people, why would they care about doing that for pets?

The legal definition of what can be considered  protein in "meat-by-product" can include some weird stuff, but it doesn't necessarily mean the pet food company actually includes it in the food. Anyway, I would agree that if your cat won't eat the food, it isn't going to do her good. My cats have been the champion of rejecting several of the foods on the final list. I had a cat that lived to 19 almost exclusively on Purina One kibble and Fancy Feast canned. That said, I appreciate the effort of the list. 

RickR said:

 
Gosh, I feel so uninformed.  I've never heard of most of the recommended food brands.  

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Very few of them are available in the country I live in and none of the Japanese brands I'm familiar made it onto the list, either as best buys or ones to avoid.

RickR said:

 
Gosh, I feel so uninformed.  I've never heard of most of the recommended food brands.  

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A lot of the brands listed are sold only at independent pet stores so if you only shop at big chains (Petco, etc) or a supermarket / big box store for a big commercial brand (Friskies, etc), there's a whole world of foods out there that you're missing Some brands are store-specific or sold only in a certain area, like US only.

I think Thailand got a bad rap i.e. Tiki, Weruva, Fussie cat. I was told their plant standards are similar to human grade facility.
I feed some on good list and some on not good list. Merrick lid is one of my cats favorites and so is Pride rabbit, I mix them up enough (daily) so I should be ok in a recall. I am sure we as humans eat a lot of stuff not so good for us! I take it with a grain of salt because the cat HAS to like it, if they don't why torture them?

LTS3 said:

 
A lot of the brands listed are sold only at independent pet stores so if you only shop at big chains (Petco, etc) or a supermarket / big box store for a big commercial brand (Friskies, etc), there's a whole world of foods out there that you're missing

Some brands are store-specific or sold only in a certain area, like US only.

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Thanks.  That's kinda what I figured.  We only have one store in town that sells speciality brands.  I shopped there when my kitties were young looking for something healthy my cats would eat.  But since they've settled on some foods available at Petco, I haven't been there in ages.

I shop exclusively online in bulk now I know what they like. Chewy.com has a good selection with free shipping at $50, with 3 cats and 1 dog I get everything from Chewy