Natural flavors in cat food

Hi all, i have a question about natural flavors in dry food, i feed my cat dry for breakfast and wet for dinner. I used to feed him orijen but orijen changed their plant from canada to US and also changed the formula and my cat no longer likes or tolerate the food. I have been giving him different brands to try but he is so picky most of the time he just refuses to eat them. I recently tried Merrick limited ingredient chicken and to my surprise he really likes it!! His tummy is doing well on this too so I am so happy to finally found a food he would eat. However upon reading the ingredients i notice there is "natural flavors" listed as the sixth ingredients. I read online that this is MSG and is addictive! I certainly dont want to give him msg, if anyone has any insights into it can share with me i truly appreciate!!

I don't know what "natural flavors" are...I think it could be more than one thing, but I'd rather have "natural flavors" than "artificial flavors", which a lot of cat food has. 

BTW, depending on which source you read, MSG is either an "artificial or natural ingredient".  I'm going to choose "artificial"

KiKi82 said:

Hi all, i have a question about natural flavors in dry food, i feed my cat dry for breakfast and wet for dinner. I used to feed him orijen but orijen changed their plant from canada to US and also changed the formula and my cat no longer likes or tolerate the food. I have been giving him different brands to try but he is so picky most of the time he just refuses to eat them. I recently tried Merrick limited ingredient chicken and to my surprise he really likes it!! His tummy is doing well on this too so I am so happy to finally found a food he would eat. However upon reading the ingredients i notice there is "natural flavors" listed as the sixth ingredients. I read online that this is MSG and is addictive! I certainly dont want to give him msg, if anyone has any insights into it can share with me i truly appreciate!!

Click to expand...

You are very right " any flavors" is the hidden name for MSG and free glutamic acid . It is one of the sneaky names of msg . You can find this online . Msg have over 40 different names . That mean it's very easy to confuse us . I can't believe that this is legal .

I have been informed that "natural flavor" can come from anything from chicken liver to a combination of yeasts. Sometimes it's also fat.

For example, the natural flavor in Rawz is chicken liver. The natural flavor in Performatrin Ultra is a blend of chicken liver and several yeasts.

Well, I share what I find out on line . That any flavor is msg . Never purchase cat food that have not specify ingriendents . It is really bad .

Why not just toss the kibble and feed just wet food? 

I tried to find a healthy cat food . I spend so much time and no success . Can anybody help me please? I did try cook for cats and they don 't like it . It was good and healthy . They like the most same food from PetSmart or Petco and i can't find something safe to feed them . Every cat food have a lot of chemicals ,so scary . I lost 3 cats to the same kind of cancer and
I was feeding them with Blue Buffalo dry and wet . Theirs food still have a carrageenan as a ingredient . This caused cancer for sure ,but there are much more ingredients they should never use in pet food and it is legal to make ours pets sick . So sad , only money important for this food companies . They even use a dead pets from vet with deceases and is legal too.
Crazy world we live in .

Forget about addictive, msg is extremely bad for your cat. 

[quote name="Zosia"

I'm trying my best to decipher this jumble but

Carrageenan does not cause cancer. There are two forms of it, one which causes cancer and one which does not. The one which causes cancer is not in food products! The "whole" form of carrageenan is completely food safe and is what is found in cat food. Yes, some cats are sensitive to carrageenan but that's because they are obligate carnivores that dont really have the capacity to digest plant matter (carrageenan is seaweed extract)

Also, you sound like some customers I've had. Those "chemicals" are vitamins and minerals mandated to be in the food by the AAFCO...if those vitamins and minerals are not in the food then it cannot be legally sold as "cat food" but as a "topper" or "complement".

Everything is a chemical. Water is a chemical. The only "chemical" you should avoid in cat food are high levels of carbs and synthetic vitamin K (menadione).

And I'm pretty sure the "they make pet food out of dead pets" is an urban legend with no basis in facts.

There is nothing online is about two different carrageenan
It is the sneaky name for MSG and free glutamic acid .

I wish i could feed my cats with dead and whole frozen mouse . That is available on line but I love all animals and I could not see that . I know meat is also from animals but I try block that in my mind

Also there's a ton of sources "avalible on line" about how carageenan does not cause cancer.

 There are actually two different kinds of carrageenan (which is derived from red algae): degraded and undegraded carrageenan. And believe it or not, they're actually very different compounds and should be treated as such. Undegraded is approved for human consumption while degraded (also known as poligeenan) is not.  You see, the 2001 animal studies  showing the link with cancer used poligeenan in high doses giving undegraded carrageenan a worse wrap than it should

Click to expand...

(Source)

 
To make things slightly more complicated, there are two forms: degraded and undegraded carrageenan. Technically, undegraded is approved for use in food, while degraded is not.

Degraded carrageenan is also called poligeenan. Chris Kresser looked more closely at the research, and found that many of the animal studies are done using poligeenan and not undegraded carrageenan, which further muddies the water.

One important difference is that while poligeenan can cause cancer on its own when given in high enough concentrations, undegraded carrageenan has only ever been shown to accelerate cancer formation when administered with a known carcinogen. In other words, food-grade carrageenan has not been shown to cause cancer in animal models. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is is in the clear when it comes to cancer, but contrary to popular belief, it is not a known carcinogen

Click to expand...

(Source)

What "natural flavor" is, in regards to Performatrin Ultra and most other holistic brands

 I would agree that Natural Flavor is a bit like a mystery ingredient. Our foods are sold in both Canada and the United States, and our labels meet both US and Canadian labelling laws, the USA labeling for pet foods is more restrictive. Under US labeling restrictions we have to call the palatability enhancer we use “Natural Flavor” which very non-descriptive. None of the ingredients used in the Natural Flavor are artificial or synthetic. The natural flavor used is derived from yeast. To get a meaty flavor specific parts of yeast are extracted, and then enzymes are used to break the yeast into very small amino acid chains. It is the end of the amino acid chains that give different flavors. This technology has been used in soups for decades. The yeast is hypoallergenic because the amino acid chains are too small for the body’s immune system to recognize them as a protein.

Click to expand...

Zosia said:

Every cat food have a lot of chemicals ,so scary . I lost 3 cats to the same kind of cancer and I was feeding them with Blue Buffalo dry and wet . Theirs food still have a carrageenan as a ingredient . This caused cancer for sure ,but there are much more ingredients they should never use in pet food and it is legal to make ours pets sick .

Click to expand...

Zosia, I'm sorry you lost three of your cats to cancer.

There is no way to know for certain what specifically caused cancer in all three of your cats, there are many variables.

That being said, I personally avoid carrageenan, in both pet food as well as human food. 

This report from the Cornucopia Institute, released in November 2015, may be be of interest to you: Decoding Pet Food.  (See Section II, "Pet Food Ingredients to Avoid") beginning with carrageenan:

https://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/DecodingPetFoodfullreport.pdf

The problem lies with the amount of polligeenan (which makes up degraded, unsafe carrageenan) which is present in undegraded (deemed "safe") carrageenan.   

"The fact that food-grade carrageenan contains poligeenan in any amount should be enough to ban its use in both human and pet food, considering its well-documented carcinogenic properties, even at small doses."

The Cornucopia Institute also released a report on carrageenan (alone), April 2016:

https://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/CarageenanReport-2016.pdf

I hope this helps Zosia.