Some dry food is actually freeze-dried, a process manufacturers use to keep ingredients fresh (especially with raw food) without risking bacterial contamination. Dry food, or kibble, has the advantage of staying fresh longer, which may make it a good option if your cat likes to graze at her meals over the course of the day. Wet food is lower in calories, so some vets may recommend it if your cat is struggling to maintain a healthy weight. Other vets disagree, arguing that dry food encourages cats to drink more water and that there’s little scientific evidence to promote the link between wet food and healthier kidneys. Because cats naturally drink little water, some vets prefer wet food since its higher moisture content keeps cats hydrated, which may help prevent kidney disease. Before choosing one form over the other, ask your vet what they recommend for your cat’s particular needs. The two main forms of cat food are wet and dry. “Anxieties about grains, and carbohydrates generally, in cat foods are not based on real science and should not be the basis for selection of a cat food.” “Grain-free foods can be nutritionally excellent or terrible, and the presence or absence of grains themselves says nothing about the health impact of the diet,” McKenzie says. You may notice that some cat foods are labeled “grain free,” but vets are wary of this marketing term as it doesn’t tell you much about food’s actual nutrition. But it’s best to ask your vet if they recommend a specific composition for your cat’s needs. Jennifer Berg, founder of Tribeca Veterinary Wellness, says “more protein than fat, then very little of any kind of carbohydrate is what we feel is probably ideal.” Jennifer Coates, a veterinary expert at the online pet-supplies retailer Chewy, agrees that cats need more protein than many other species and stresses that the protein “should be sourced from animals.” And veterinarian Lisa Pierson has compiled a thorough, publicly available Google spreadsheet of the nutrient profile for hundreds of cat-food flavors if you’d like to see an individual formulas’ nutritional breakdown. However, some vets are more specific in their recommendations. “There is a range within which cats can thrive, and individual cats all have slightly different needs,” he says, adding that “nearly all commercial diets fall within these ranges.” For the most part, McKenzie says that’s okay since all food that meets AAFCO standards will provide a sufficient amount of all macronutrients. Unlike with human food, you generally won’t find a nutrition label on your cat’s food breaking down the specific quantities of carbohydrates, fat, and protein it contains. We’ll get more into it in the criteria below, but note that some of the determining factors will depend on your cat’s specific needs (often related to their age), while others are more subjective (as cat owners know, picky felines often have their own unexplainable preferences).
To help you find the best cat food for your pet, we’ve consulted McKenzie and 16 other experts to walk us through 16 options and explain why a cat owner might choose one brand or type of food over another.
You can’t have a recall for a product you didn’t test.” “You might see one of the big brand names of cat food have a recall, but they have a recall because they got tested. “In many cases, the testing of the ingredients, or the end product, is not as thorough,” Bales says. hunting feeder, stress that small brands aren’t necessarily any better than the big names you’re used to seeing on the shelves of pet stores. McKenzie, along with Liz Bales, who created the expert-recommended Doc & Phoebe’s Cat Co. “Compared to the haphazard diet of whatever prey and scavenged dead things feral cats can find, our pets have an excellent source of nutrition in conventional commercial cat foods.”īut even with that comforting guidance, there are hundreds of cat-food brands and even more formulas to choose from. If you’re like me - overwhelmed by the options out there from grain-free and raw to freeze-dried - veterinarian Brennen McKenzie, who blogs about science-based pet care at the SkeptVet, may help put your mind at ease: “The reality is that there is no one ‘right’ food, and most cats can thrive on a broad variety of available diets,” he says. Choosing the right food is a major part of that equation, and wading through a sea of marketing claims can make it a surprisingly difficult task.
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As a cat owner, I’m constantly thinking about how to keep her happy and healthy.
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