Q&A: What are good HEALTHY brands for wet and dry cat food?
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Question: What are good HEALTHY brands for wet and dry cat food?
He eats Fancy Feast right now, but I want to change to a good quality healthy food for him. When I first got him I bought a few cans of Merricks and he devoured it, so I may start him on that.
Any suggestions? Thx. 
I forgot to mention cat treats too, like Zuke’s Natural Purrz.
Q&A:
Answer by Big Mama
Whiskas has been the main brand we’ve used for all the cats we’ve had. If he’s been a really good boy, give him Dine. That’s for cats who think they’re royal.
Answer by yungdrung3
the healthiest food for cats is one that does NOT HAVE as one of the first three ingredients: corn or any ‘by-products. the protein in plants, such as corn,is not the kind of protein that cats’ bodies were meant to have.
so your best option is to google: cat nutrition, and or go to ‘about.com’ and in that website, go to the ‘cats’ forum. they’re very helpful, and frequently give lists of the healthiest canned, and dry, cat foods.
Answer by mercury
I would NOT recommend Whiskas or Dine, or any other cat food that is sold at the supermarket/grocery store.
The current view on what constitutes the healthiest cat diet is a raw food diet, or high quality canned food.
For some great advice on making raw diet for your cat (its cheap, and if you make it in bulk and freeze it, it is convenient), and for choosing good canned food if you can’t feed raw check out this link : http://www.catinfo.org/
Whilst current research tends to show that raw/canned food is best, many people’s lifestyle dictates that a pure raw/canned diet isn’t possible.
In my opinion, for those whose schedule prohibits a pure raw/canned diet, it is fine in these cases to provide raw/canned food at breakfast before leaving for work, and for dinner in the evening. Provide dry food for the remainder of the day.
As far as dry foods go, I’d say Innova EVO is the best. Its a fantastic food, but being a dry food, it doesn’t contain the moisture that is intrinsic to all wet foods. I know people who feed only Innova EVO (no wet or canned food) and their cats are in fantastic condition.
Another excellent dry food is called “Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul”.
Hope that helps.
EDIT : Just saw your additional question regarding treats.
Treats are just that – treats – provided you use treats sparingly, buy the treats your cat loves and don’t worry too much about their nutritional content, they don’t form a significant amount of the cat’s diet. If you are feeding a healthy diet, your cat can afford to have ‘junk food’ treats, just like people!
As far as some favourite treats go, here are a few I’d recommend : Greenies, a little canned tuna (canned in water, not oil), dried chicken flakes, Whiskas temptations, dried tuna flakes. Some cats love little cubes of cheese, or a tiny bit of yoghurt on a spoon (milk isn’t good for cats, but cheese and yoghurt are fine in moderation).
Answer by MechanicalMan
Well, there is nothing wrong with Merrick canned food, so you can just stick with that if you and your cat are happy with it. I would just recommend that you buy the poultry varieties. For dry food, I highly recommend that you choose a food that is grain-free. EVO is easily the most popular. It has also been around the longest, it’s the lowest in carbohydrates, it’s palatable, and it’s actually cheaper than much of the competition.
—————-
catiators has no idea what she is talking about.
Her claim that dry food is inherently “at least half carbohydrates, grains or potatoes” is completely false. There are many grain-free, low carbohydrate dry foods. EVO is only 7% carbs. Those of us who completed third grade math know that 7% is much less than 50%. Merrick uses meat and vegetables as ingredients, while Fancy Feast uses unnamed animal by-products, wheat gluten, corn starch, and soy protein. You’ll have to employ common sense to determine which is healthier for your cat.
Answer by turkish_van
My suggestion to you is not to try so many different can food on your cat. It will spoil him and make him choosy. Seriously, i can say that wet food is not really healthy for your cat. It can spoil your cat’s teeth and he is more likely to get foul breath. I think dry food might be a better choice as it is more nutritious and it is good for the teeth too. But sometimes difference people advocate a mixture of the 2. My cat only eats fresh fish so i do not have a worry for the can food. As for the dry food, i am feeding my cats Royal Canin Indoor 27. I have a cat that has allergic airways and, miraculously, by feeding her royal canin dry food, her condition got better and seldom have allergic attacks. Maybe you can try royal canin dry food.
Answer by Ken
Merick is a great human quality food. Wellness is too, The trick to a great cat food is finding the ones that don’t contain grains like rice or corn. Also, there really is no reason nor should you feed dry foods.
Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health
Contrary to what you may have heard; dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean? Is the first ingrdiant a muscle meat like chicken or meal or other things?
http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Read_a_Pet_Food_Ingredient_Label
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms
The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in
Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, most use horrible ingredients and don’t use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn’t have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck? http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bpo_ch4a.php
Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics.html
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm#Dry_Food_vs_Canned_Food.__Which_is_reall
Answer by J C
Smart lady, wanting to get your cat on a healthy food! I rotate among several brands of premium foods – Merrick is one, along with Wellness and EVO. I also feed EVO dry. As long as you avoid foods with by-products (the waste of the slaughterhouse industry – the left over crap they can’t sell for anything else) you’ll be fine. It’s a matter of finding what he prefers to eat – every cat has a different idea about what is good tasting food.
Wellness makes these pouches of food – no gluten – and they are extremely popular with two of my cats. So if yours is a “chunks and gravy” eater this is worth a try.
Answer by Lilbitoflove
I go with Purina One. You can also get a free sample by checking them out online. I try not to feed wet food to my cats except as a small treat (1 tbsp a day) once they become about a year.
Answer by I Will Tell You Like It Is
natural choice complete care indoor. http://www.nutroproducts.com/ncccprod.shtml
anything you can get at a department store or a grocery store is crap.
Answer by catiators
There is no healthy brand of dry food. Dry food is inherently poor nutrition for cats, because it by necessity is at least half carbohydrates, grains or potatoes. There’s nothing wrong with Fancy Feast. It’s a quality meat canned food with no added grains, fruits or vegetables. Just avoid the kinds with gravy, as they require soy for thickening. Many people will talk about by-products and so forth, but if you’ve ever seen a cat eat a mouse, they don’t discriminate over the “by-products”. They eat it all. Merrick adds a lot of vegetables, which while appealing to people, do nothing for the cat. Carnivores need protein, not vegetables.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
Tags: Brands, Food, Good, Healthy, What
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Healthy Food | admin July 11, 2010
By Bre, July 11, 2010 @ 12:25 pm
Fancy feast is junk food for kitties so he might take a while to get him to eat a healthier brand. I would recommend Purina or Science diet for both wet and dry food you are just gunna have to mix it in slowly and gradually add more of the new food until he’s completely changed over. I feed my cats the greenie treats to help keep there teeth clean.
By Sacha, July 11, 2010 @ 12:59 pm
I would try Hill’s Science Diet or Nutro. Most cat food’s sold are the equivalent of human junk food. Kudos to you on wanting to provide a healthy diet for your cat.
I always fed my cats Science Diet. They all ate the same thing, even when one was prescribed C/D.
By Kat, July 11, 2010 @ 1:52 pm
Canned Merrick is a great place for you to start!
For more good canned food choices you can look here:
http://www.catinfo.org/commercialcannedfoods.htm#Commercial_Foods
Let me share with you what I have learned about feline nutrition to help you make an informed decision on what diet you should feed your cat.
Many brands of manufactured cat foods claiming to be “healthy” really are not. In fact they are made of the lowest ingredients possible. I’m not saying that a cat can’t live off them… just the same as you could live off hot dogs and Mac and cheese forever, but better choices can and should be made for your feline friends. I would not venture to say that any manufactured food is “best” for a cat but a grain free organic wet food would be a good start. Feeding canned is certainly better than feeding dry in all cases.
Cats were never meant to eat dry food, also known as cereals or kibble. We, humans, make them eat it for convenience to us. It has nothing to do with them or their nutritional needs. It’s completely species inappropriate.
In the wild, cats derive their entire liquid intake from their prey. They do not have a thirst mechanism because they don’t need it when eating a species appropriate diet. They get all they need from what they eat. So they do not drink water. Regular ol’ house cats have descended from those same wild cats.
So in a home environment, your kitty does not get the moisture it needs from dry food and it’s almost always in a constant state of dehydration. Water fountains are encouraged to TRY to get your cat to drink more and your kitty may even enjoy it, but it will never meet its water intake needs drinking from a bowl.
Deadly feline illnesses such as diabetes, kidney failure, obesity, allergies, Irritable Bowel Disease (IBD), bladder stones, kidney stones, urinary tract blockages and Urinary Tract Infections (FLUTD), with and without deadly crystals run rampant these days. Cats are not taking in enough water to stave them off. Proper water intake through a species appropriate diet alone can prevent most of these conditions.
Overall, wet is all around better for any cats diet, be it canned or Raw and they should never be fed dry cereal kibble if we wish to most closely match their wild nutritional and dietary needs. Kibble meets our needs… not our cats.
It is also bogus that kibble cleans teeth. DRY FOOD DOES NOT CLEAN TEETH. It’s an old myth that has been scientifically disproved for years, but old-school vets drilled it into people’s heads for so long (and sadly still do) that people still believe it. Cats can not “chew”. They do not have flat “chewing” teeth. Their molars are not for grinding food. They have meat ripping pointy carnivorous teeth. You may see them “crunch” a piece of food once to crack and break it… but they are absolutely unable to chew a hard piece of food. Want your cat to have clean teeth? Give them an appropriately sized raw bone to chew on.
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I personally feed a Raw Meat and Bones based diet to my cats and they are very healthy on it. I HIGHLY recommend it. Once I got the hang of it and felt comfortable with it it’s a snap to prepare. It’s something you might want to consider someday. Cats are obligate carnivores after all and must derive ALL their nutrients from meat based sources. They are unable to absorb them from any other source. Despite thousands of years of domestication they remain strictly carnivorous. True and honest meat eaters and that is what they need most. Protein from meat!
If you are interested in feeding a raw diet some great places to start learning are http://www.catinfo.org/ , http://www.catnutrition.org/ , and http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/ .
If you would like to try raw with your cats and don’t want to get all technical about it but want to try a trusted, time tested and balanced raw diet you can order from http://www.felinespride.com/products/catfood.aspx . I purchased this myself when I first started and my cats loved it!
Another premade Raw you can try is Natures Varity. I personally have never used this but know many people that do and it’s pretty easy to find http://www.naturesvariety.com/content.lasso?page=1507&-session=naturesvariety:D04EC9250597c11908GJS417647E.
If raw is not an option for you please be aware that there are three Categories of manufactured Pet Foods:
-”Grocery store” foods – (Generic Brands and cheap name brands) Those foods found in grocery stores and mass-market retailers are made with lower-quality, less-digestible, inexpensive ingredients and are therefore a cheaper alternative. While easy on the pocketbook, “grocery store” foods normally do not provide your cat with the healthiest, most nutrient-dense ingredients.
-Premium foods – (Iams/Eukanuba, Purina One, Hills Science Diet, Nutro and such) Foods often found in grocery stores, pet stores, and veterinarian offices that contain higher-grade ingredients, but still include many elements of “grocery store” food, such as artificial colors, artificial flavors, chemical preservatives, and “filler” ingredients such as corn and wheat products, by-products and even animal digest. Yuck! Premium foods are usually more expensive than “grocery store” foods because their ingredients are sometimes of a higher quality, and are therefore somewhat more beneficial and digestible. But don’t be fooled, some of those same so called Premium brands are sometimes worse than grocery store foods, but they charge prices like they are better. They aren’t!
-Healthy foods – (Wellness, Merrick, Eagle Pack, Drs Foster & Smith) The newest addition to the pet food market – provide pets with the highest quality, healthiest, and most nutritious ingredients. They are typically available for purchase online or direct from the manufacturer. Some better retailers are starting to carry them now. Complete Petmart carries a few healthy brand foods. Foods in the Healthy class contain nutrient-rich ingredients. Formulated to provide optimum health benefits for pets, these foods often use real meat as the primary protein source, carbohydrate-rich whole grains like brown rice and barley and whole, fresh fruits and vegetables. They should not contain artificial preservatives, flavors, or colors. They will almost always be fortified with additional vitamins and minerals, and will use the best natural sources for fatty acids to help build healthy skin and a beautiful coat. Because healthy foods use high quality ingredients, you should expect to pay a little more than you would for other types of pet food. Remember, though, with healthy foods you can feed less since healthy foods are more nutrient-dense than other types of food so it often evens out or cost’s les than feeding foods filled with cheap non-nutritional by-products fillers.
With all that information in mind, when you are choosing a new cat food, study the ingredients. All ingredients on pet food labels are listed by weight. Meaning whatever ingredients are listed first on the list, there is more in there. The first ingredients listed should be whole meat ingredients, protein sources, such as Chicken or Turkey. NOT just the word “meat”! Who the heck knows what that is? The word Chicken Meal is ok, but it should be a secondary ingredient, not first. Meal is the meat dehydrated and ground into a powder.
The ingredients also should NOT include any by-products or animal digest whatsoever. Those are disgusting left over animal parts that are scraped off the filthy floors of meat and poultry plants. They should just go into the trash but they put them into pet food instead. EW!!!! Also make sure there are no artificial colors or flavors. And make sure there is no BHA and BHT used preservatives. These preservatives have been shown to cause cancer in both cats and dogs. Bad Bad stuff and it’s in almost every cat treat on the market.
So, in summery of the ingredients… if you see the words by-products, Animal Digest, the word “meat” alone, Corn, Corn Gluten, Wheat Gluten, or BHA or BHT… stop reading, put down that product and move on to the next.
Be aware that when switching to a Healthy, Holistic or Organic food, you will pay for what you get. Good foods are not cheap. They are pricey and will cost you more than cheaper products, just like steak costs more than hotdogs. But again, you will be feeding a better food and improving the over all health of your pet. This in turn leads to less vet visits for illness now and more importantly later in life in their geriatric years. You will also feed less of this food on a per animal basis because a smaller amount of food contains what your cat needs. Overall healthy wet foods are well worth it, if only for the piece of mind that the ingredients are better for your cat than cheap crap.
You can start your research for a healthy cat food here if you are not ready to try feeding a Raw diet:
http://www.onlynaturalpet.com
If you want to buy in a store, Complete Petmart is a good store and carries quite a few natural, organic, and holistic blends. Also check with your local feed/grain stores.
I highly recommend you take the time to research for yourself, but the information I have given should get you off to a good start. Good luck choosing a new healthy food!
********IMPORTANT*******Don’t forget to switch your Pets food slowly over a period of 10 to 14 days, if you can. Mixing 25% new to 75% old. Then 50/50… then 75% new to 25% old. And finally switch over to 100% new. Take it slow as not to upset their digestive system.
By RuneAmokRedTooth&Claw, July 11, 2010 @ 2:11 pm
Merrick is good. See the What to feed link for other canned suggestions.
What to feed: http://www.catinfo.org/commercialcannedfoods.htm
For dry:
The best of the worst – dry foods: My personal picks are Wellness Core, Innova Evo or Nature’s Variety Instincts. I agree with some of the foods listed here but not all. I am happy to review ingredient lists if requested: http://cats.about.com/cs/nutrition/tp/premdrycatfood.htm
By Mommy to a Japanese Chin♥, July 11, 2010 @ 2:44 pm
cats r meat eaters if they where wild they would be eating raw chicken or things like that u could just cut up raw chicken and give it to them that is the best food for them
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