How To Start Your Feline Natural Diet? - How to Find the Better-Made Naturally Balance Cat Food

Cat food commercials bombard us with claims of “wholesome” and “nutritious” foods, but can their ingredients really hold up to some consumer scrutiny? And what do they mean by premium and commercial cat food, anyway?

Commercial cat food brands are the ones you recognize through commercials and advertisements. They are also the majority of foods offered at major supermarkets. Premium pet foods were created based on the concepts that commercial pet foods were nutritionally deficient and potentially health hazardous. Thus, premium cat foods contain less carbohydrate fillers, like corn and wheat products, compared with commercial cat foods.

As cats are true meat eaters, they do not need carbohydrates, but pet foods use such ingredients as cheap fillers. Also, premium pet foods will identify the animal source of by-products or meals, for example, chicken by-products or chicken meal. However, commercial cat foods often have animal fat or animal meal, and the source animal can theoretically be any animal that winds up at a rendering plant. (And, if you believe what many natural pet health writers state, that can include anything from road kill to horses to rats.)

The problem with commercial foods using many by-products and corn fillers is that the nutritional value varies in batches and the amount of available nutrients (those that can be digested and used) may not be consistent.

Commercial pet foods also often use the chemical preservatives BHA/BHT; whereas, premium foods will more often use vitamin E and other natural preservative agents.

Premium pet foods traditionally use less by-products (some by-products are fine if you take into consideration that in the wild, cats will eat all of their prey), but the whole protein source—like chicken—should be the major ingredient.

Let’s look at a premium versus canned cat food labels.

Premium Turkey Dinner:
Turkey, chicken, chicken broth, whole eggs, chicken meal, herring, potatoes, carrots, brown rice, natural flavor, apples, alfalfa sprouts, guar gum, herring oil, milk, sodium phosphate, seaweed extract, vitamins/minerals, inulin, sunflower oil, taurine, choline chloride, sea salt

Commercial Beef Tenderloin and Roasted Turkey Flavor
Ground corn, poultry by-product meal, soybean meal, meat meal/meat bone meal, corn gluten meal, animal fat, animal digest, wheat, wheat gluten, salt, water, caramel color, wheat flour, natural flavor, artificial colors, taurine, turkey, BHA/BHT

At first glance, it isn’t difficult to discern that the premium label looks far more appetizing and wholesome. Most of the ingredients are clearly recognizable. There are some ingredients on the premium food list that you might not be familiar list. What’s guar gum? Used in human foods as well as pet foods, it’s a thickening agent. Sodium phosphate is a form of phosphorus, which is a naturally occurring element useful in cell production. Inulin is a polysaccharide (a carbohydrate) that is derived from chicory root and is a food source for beneficial bacteria that grows naturally in the digestive tract.

Now let’s look at the commercial food label. Look closely at the purported flavor—beef tenderloin and roasted turkey. Now look at the ingredient list. Do you see beef tenderloin anywhere? Not named specifically, but there are mentions of meat meal/meat and bone meal, animal fat and animal digest, but from what animals do these meals, fat and digest originate?

Plus, corn gluten meal is not the best protein source and can cause problems in pets that are sensitive to corn products. Offering nearly no nutritional value, wheat gluten serves as a binder. It is the cheap byproduct of human food processing. Caramel color is an artificial color to make food look appealing. Whole corn is a nutritious whole grain product; however, it can cause allergic reactions in pets that have sensitivity to corn products. Soybean meal is a poor quality protein filler. For cats, who are true carnivores, meat is a far better protein source and provides essential amino acids like taurine. BHA and BHT are chemical preservatives that have been banned from human food but are still allowed in pet food.

Also, consider the ingredient list again with the knowledge that ingredients appear in decreasing order by weight. So in the premium food, turkey is the largest ingredient by weight followed by chicken and chicken broth. In the commercial food, ground corn is the most by weight.

When feeding your cat, know that all cat foods are not alike. You must read the labels with a keen eye that can spot the healthy ingredients.

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