Advice for dry cat food

Question

Is "The Goodlife Recipe" a good brand of cat food or is it no better than the next ?

Answer 1

It's no better than the next.  It just has pretty veggies on the bag.  It would be healthier for humans.

It may actually be worse, on second thought.  Corn is the first ingredient.

If you're going to buy at the grocery store, this isn't the best.  Don't ask me what is though.  I'd be happy to review brands if they're named but I can't tell you off the top of my head what's worst or best.

These are my suggestions 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/pr...

I'm going to chime in with those who have said that wet is better.  It is.  Those who have fed nothing but dry have gotten lucky.  More often than not, even healthy cats start displaying problems as they get older.

Answer 2

You can definitely do better.  When you pick a food, make sure that there are not a lot of fillers or grain, and protein sources should be the first ingredients.  I am a big fan of Taste of the Wild.  It's very well priced for the quality and cats seem to really like the flavor.  They will also be coming out with a canned food version soon if you are interested in switching to canned food.  http://tasteofthewildpetfood.com/

Answer 3

No grain dry food is better the dry food with grains. My advice however would be to not feed any 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_Rea...

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04...

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 grains and carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process.  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.

http://www.catinfo.org/#My_Cat_is_Doing_...

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.    The best food for cats does not contain any grains 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. I would rather feed a middle grade canned food then the top of the line dry food.

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/bp...

Please read about cat nutrition.

                               http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics...

                               http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.ht...

      http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.ht...

Vetinarian diets  The reason your vet thinks so highly of the pet food they sell probably has more to do with money than nutrition. In vet school, the only classes offered on nutrition usually last a few weeks, and are taught by representatives from the pet food companies. Vet students may also receive free food for their own dogs and cats at home. They could get an Iams notebook, a Purina purse and some free pizza.  http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04...

Answer 4

If you have to do dry, go with EVO or Wellness.  High quality foods like these seem more expensive at first, but cats eat less of them (since no "fillers") and they stay healthier, so fewer vet bills.  

To evaluate a cat food, look at the ingredients.  The ingredients are listed by their quantity in the food, greatest first.  So if the first ingredient is either "meat" or "meat by-products," do NOT buy.  What qualifies as "meat" will curdle your stomach.

Let us know if you need any more food advice - good for you for trying to get your cat good food!

EDIT :: (laughing)  or just read Dark Song's post - she's right on the money.  (she posted at the same time I did)

Answer 5

Nope, no good. Also, I'd recommend wet instead of dry.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to dump cheap leftovers in. Will it kill your cat? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent cat foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Whiskas, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Meow Mix.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Felidae, Fromm, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety, Nature's Logic.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you're getting what you're paying for. Less filler material means more concentrated nutrients... this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less p**p!

A great option is to go with an entirely grainless diet. Diets high in grain have been attributed to problems with diabetes in cats. Cats are obligate carnivores, so why should there be grain in their diet? Many of the high quality foods now put out grainless formulas. Some good grainless diet's include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature's Variety Instinct, Orijen, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, and Sold Gold Indigo Moon.

Some of the high end foods can be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness and Solid Gold. If you can't find a food, most of the high quality food brands have websites with store locators on them.

Remember that foods should be switched gradually, especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies.

Another option for feeding cats is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

http://www.barfworld.com/

http://www.rawfedcats.org/

http://www.rawfed.com/

http://www.wysong.net/controversies/rawm...

Now the question is, do you feed wet or dry? Wet is the correct answer. The reason is, in the wild, cats normally get most of their water content directly from their prey items and drink very little. Domestic cats are no different, and because of the fact that they are designed to take in water with their meal, they have a very low thirst drive. Cats often just don't drink enough. This leads to urinary tract infections and crystals. The bit about dry food being better for teeth is a myth and has not been proven in the least. Canned/wet food is better because it more closely mimics the cat's natural diet. More on why canned food is best:

http://www.catinfo.org/  (Excellent cat nutrition information by a vet)

http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/canne...

http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?ac...

Another option to get cats to drink more would be a cat fountain. Cats tend to like to drink from running water and cat fountains see to that need, encouraging cats to take in more water.

More:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_... (Dog food reviews. It's for dogs, but most of the high quality brands also put out excellent cat foods. Anything with five or six stars is a great food.)

Answer 6

sorry I havent heard of it but just had to comment-I get fed up with all the 'dry food is bad' brigade-no, it isn't as part of a mixed diet. our cat was fed on dried food with chicken or turkey most days and lived a very healthy, happy life for 20 years, my other cat is 13 and in perfect health and eats dry prescription urinary diet as he just wont eat wet food. If I actually hear some evidence that cats fed on wet foods live longer and are healthier than those fed on dry then I might take some notice-for now I'm sticking with what I know works.

Answer 7

If you must give your cat dry food (it is terrible for them), try Blue Buffalo.

Answer 8

I don't think it's better than anything else.  My cats hated the sample they sent to me, and wouldn't touch it.

Answer 9

Look on the side of the bag. If the first ingredient is meat and not by-product, you'll be fine. I've done lots of research and feed my kitten Purina One (I may be switching to IAMS though), and both are just okay. They're not wonderful, but my cat already eats and lives better than I do, and all the pets in my family have always been fed dry food only, with excellent results.

Answer 10

I don't think it's a quality cat food.  We tried it when we ran out of food once and the litter box was worse than usual.  We use Premium Edge.  It's a natural cat food but not as expensive as California Natural or others.

Answer 11

I'm not familiar with that food - I do know that Evol is awesome - my cats love it and it's about as close to raw as you can get in a dry food.