Recommend Nutro/Natural Choice cat food?

Question

I am looking for a natural, high quality (high protein and fat), no by-product cat food. Anyone know if Nutro is good? What else is good?

Answer 1

Despite what pet store workers are trained to tell you (and I know from inside info through pet store managers WHY they are trained that way, btw), Nutro is NOT a better food than Science Diet/Iam's, etc. It's better than the el cheapo store-brand foods...I'll concede that....but they break their ingredients down on the label to make it LOOK like they have lower amounts of corn, cereals, fillers, by-products, etc. than the true premium diets.

It's a sly trick used to circumvent FDA labelling requirements...but if you add them all up and put them together as what they really are...Nutro actually has a higher grain/cereal content than better foods. It's like some human foods which list all the separate *types* of sugar (which may not even be easily recognized as such) that they contain individually, just to avoid having 'Sugar' listed as the first ingredient. Science Diet and Iam's aren't playing that game with you.

I can't offer you any official studies...but I can tell you that in my experience (20 years as a DVM in private practice; 27 total years in the profession) cats (and dogs) fed Nutro *generally* (not always) have more medical problems...especially later in life...than pets fed the better foods. Pets fed Science Diet, etc. *generally* have fewer medical problems over the course of their life...which translates into fewer medical bills for you. (Hmmmmm......maybe I shouldn't be telling you this. LOL) <---j/k about that. :-)

Science Diet and Iam's are not perfect, either, however.

Think about it: what do cats in the wild eat? Do they eat corn, grains, cereals, vegetables? Of course not. Cats are the original Atkins and South Beachers....they eat meat, almost exclusively. They are true carnivores, whereas dogs and humans are omnivores. Cats might nibble on a little grass here and there for roughage, but it's not a significant part of the diet they were intended to eat by nature. They can't digest most grasses. I've said for years that we have been feeding cats wrong all this time....which has actually contributed to the escalating cases of obesity and diabetes we've been seeing in cats over the years, imo. Current research is now bearing that out. Balanced low-carb diets are now commercially available, and are marketed toward overweight and diabetic cats. Almost all cats should be fed low-carb, imo...and that's how I feed my own....(um....I mean, the cats who let me live here and attend to their every need and whim whenver they beckon.)

****Disclaimer: I've run into some clients who read things like this and just start feeding meat alone to their cats. DON'T DO THAT. When I say cats are meat-eaters....forgive me and don't read below if you are easily upset by the graphic facts of the natural food chain, as I'm not the one who designed it, LOL. But cats don't sit around and just nibble the meat off of the drumstick and leave everything else. They eat the entire critter, which gives them important nutrients from internal organs (liver/spleen/stomach/kidneys/intestinal tract), bones, skin, etc. Without that, they'll develop vitamin/mineral deficiencies. But if you allow them to eat whole rodents as a staple part of their diet, they'll likely end up with several types of internal parasites. The commercially-available low-carb diets solve both problems, imo.

Don't expect this to be enthusiastically embraced and encouraged by the majority of veterinarians, however (yet.) Nutritional advances are not usually the highest priority of most DVMs when attending continuing education conferences. But mark my words: 20 years from now, low-carb diets are going to be the standard for cats, and I suspect that as a result of that trend, we'll see significant drops in the numbers of metabolic disease processes that are so common now.

Answer 2

Nutro is made by a subsidiary of Proctor & Gamble. I have not bought any of their products for ten years now. In spite of a lot of protests from animal lovers they still use animals (bunnies mostly) to cruelly test to ensure their products are safe for humans and frequently fatal to the bunnies.

I don't think it is a good food either, nor is Science Diet. Go to petinfo.org to read about good cat diets. At www.littlebigcat.com Dr. Jean Hovfe has many articles on cat nutrition one of which is on choosing a commercial pet food.

Answer 3

Nutro its not bad, but like my teacher say look on the ingredient site and look what is made about,the most important is the 1 one, cats dont it yellow corn!!,they eat meat or fish..and soft food its better for them because they need a lot of water in their body..
And the best brand is Eukanova....

Answer 4

mine is into Whiskers. It's also good. Well, sometimes the loacal butcher or someone mite have pet food for sale. Lelt over meat scarps from cutting up meat, which is also good. Mix it up with some vitamins (syrup coz mine never likes pills) and your cat gets a balanced meal.

Answer 5

Nutro is fine, more recommended by breeders than veterinarians. Science Diet is great as well as Eukaneuba.

Answer 6

it works

Answer 7

yes it is very good.. she will do well on it!