Worst Pet Food Ingredients

[sevenwonders]

Wow, I thought I had a pretty good handle on this topic...

then, I decided to do a search on Dicalcium Phosphate - lots of conflicting info out there on this,

but many of our "favorite" brands use this ingredient.    

Warning: If you are really obsessive about what you feed your Kitties,

you might want to avoid this article - it is driving me NUTS!    

        

   

For the Brave of Heart, the link is below:

It has about 6 pages of ingredients, ranked from their best to worst.

http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_pet_food_ingredients_2.html

 

[pinkman]

I don't really know the controversies of dicalcium phosphate but this article says that carrots and garlic oil are five star ingredients, whereas taurine is a three star ingredient. 

Looks like the article isn't cat-specific so not sure what I should say other than don't stress about what you see on that article? Sometimes we gotta just ignore the "maybes" and know that if our cats are thriving - they are thriving.

 

[raintyger]

Pinkman's right, this article doesn't seem to address cats specifically. For instance:

..."whole ground wheat (5 stars) found in 1% of pet food products analyzed
Is whole ground, very nutritive grain, source of protein, dietary fiber.
 

whole sweet potatoes (5 stars) found in 3% of pet food products analyzed
Nutritive carbohydrates, natural sugars promote energy not hyperactivity.

whole ground brown rice (5 stars) found in 3% of pet food products analyzed
Is whole ground, very nutritive grain, source of protein, dietary fiber.

whole ground oats (5 stars) found in 1% of pet food products analyzed
Excellent grain source, easy on the digestive tract.

whole brown rice (5 stars) found in 1% of pet food products analyzed
Whole grain, nutritive."...
 

 

[raintyger]

OK, I got a little further after noticing it was a two-part article. It seems to be very random on whether or not cat nutrition is taken into consideration. For instance, onions:

. . ."onion extract (1 stars) found in 1% of pet food products analyzed
Onions can be deadly to dogs.

onion powder (1 stars) found in 3% of pet food products analyzed
Can be deadly to dogs, non-nutritive.". . .

So it can deadly to dogs, but no mention at all of what it does to cats.

But for salt:

. . ."salt (1 stars) found in 69% of pet food products analyzed
Used to cover up rancid meat and fat, can cause kidney and heart disease, hypertension -- used to encourage cats to drink, source of sodium chloride.

sea salt (1 stars) found in 5% of pet food products analyzed
Used to cover up rancid meat and fat, can cause kidney and heart disease, hypertension -- used to encourage cats to drink, source of sodium chloride.". . .

I also found this really strange:

. . ."water (1 stars) found in 6% of pet food products analyzed
Used as non-nutritive filler in food. UGH!

water sufficient for processing (1 stars) found in 10% of pet food products analyzed
Robs protein from can food since it is used as non-nutritive filler instead.". . .

 

[sevenwonders]

I agree... there are some very unusual "takes" on some of the ingredients.   

The "ugh" regarding the water is one of my favorites! 

 

[Willowy]

Haha, ugh, that terrible water. . .who would give such a thing to their pet? :lol3:

I don't think that person knows much about what animals ought to be eating. ETA: Eek, she's a pet nutritionist! I hope the article is just written in a way that badly represents her views. Also, I guess she thinks chicken broth or beef broth should be used instead of water. But broth is just. . .water. That you boiled meat in. So I dunno.

 

[pinkman]

I didn't even catch the thing about water... 

I guess we should all eat dry biscuits from now on since water is so bad for us. Especially if it was only found in SIX PERCENT of the foods they analyzed. 

Hm...

 

[raintyger]

Yeah, I wondered about the 6%, too. Where in the heck did that number come from? Only 6% of cat foods have water in them????