Pet Food Labels

[mwallace056]

How can you tell if a particular food is good whether it's wet or dry? what do you look for? what do you avoid? any other advice?

 

[LTS3]

Have you seen these?

How To Choose The Right Food For Your Cat
How To Choose The Best Dry Cat Food?
What Makes The Best Canned Cat Food?
Grain-free Cat Food – What Does It Mean?
How To Choose The Right Food For Your Cat
Choosing The Right Food For Your Cat - Part 2

Besides looking for grain-free and real meat, some people look for gum and starch and gluten free due to concerns about those ingredients. Others avoid menadione and other ingredients.

 

[KarenKat]

I learned a lot from this e-book. It lists good/bad ingredients, explains label terminology so you understand what you are buying and has a lot of chapters on the pet food industry as well as the author's "approved" brand list, which is where I started from buying canned food and then once I understood what to look for expanded to include other brands:
The basic premise is meat in the first 5 ingredients, and as few fillers as possible. there are a lot of other ingredients that are on people's list as a hard no, and mostly we pick and choose what we want to avoid based on our feelings towards it and our individual cat's preference and health.

 

[MissMolly08]

It's kind of personal choice. Corn, wheat and soy are deal breakers for me. I look for meat (even if it's by-products) as the 1st ingredient. I look for low CARB, not necessarily grain free. A lot of grain free foods just use a ton of peas or potatoes in the place of rice and such. Not any better. I don't mind by-products, gums or carrageenan.

I feed my cat canned Friskies and while many people seem to consider it a "bad" food, I don't see anything wrong with it. It has rice but it's such a small amount. It is lower carb than some high-end "grain free" foods. It has by-products but it's MEAT and animal protein which cats needs so...

 

[maggiedemi]

For canned food, lately I have been buying my cats Friskies and Fancy Feast Pate, and they seem to do better on it than the gravy ones. For dry food I am still feeding the cheaper stuff, but Tractor Supply has some healthier ones that I might switch to.