Grain free cat food must sell well… but is it always better than any other cat food?
Somehow, the biggest secret of the cat food industry has spread out. Cats should not eat grain! It was kept secret for decades, to sell “complete and balanced” cat food, which contains grain, grain, grain, a small amount of meat, and a ton of flavor enchanters, to make your cat believe it’s edible.
Today, instead of trying to deflate the truth, pet food industry have chosen to respond. They now put large “GRAIN FREE” labels on packages, to appeal people who now know. Unfortunately, in most cases, that label is a big, fat lie!
No, we don’t mean they lie about grain not being in there. There aren’t, but that does not make this food a tiny bit better than one stuffed with grain. Why? The answer is in the ingredient list.
We don’t need grain free. We want carbohydrate free!
We ourselves make a genuinely grain free cat food for our cats. The recipe we prepare most often could be easily frozen and sold commercially if we wanted to make business out of it. Or we could also add a preservative and sell it as a canned food. There’s nothing wrong with it, there are natural preservatives, as well.
Ingredients of our REAL grain free cat food would read as follows: Chicken meat, chicken hearts, chicken bones, chicken liver, eggs, salmon oil, taurine, Vitamin B, E.
Did you notice how short the list is? That is how any cat food ingredient list should be. Most, however, take up lines and lines in the fine print.
Bad news about this ingredient list, it’d be very expensive if prepared commercially (yet it costs about the same as medium quality dry food, when prepared at home). And high price is not something that sells well.
But how do you achieve grain free recipe, without making its price skyrocketing? Commercial cat food producers have several tricks up in their sleeve.
They have not simply taken the grain out, they have chosen to replace them.
Most common choice is potato or soy. They are not grain, but they serve the same purpose as grain in the food. They, first act like a binding agent in dry foods, but most importantly, they serve as filler, so the food costs less per can.
And yet, while replacing grain with potato genuinely gives the right to label the cat food as “grain free”, you have to remember, cat’s need potato as much as they need grain. None of it. Always, check the ingredients, and don’t believe slogans.