A Bag of Cat food Says Chicken Flavored. Is this for real?

Question

When it says Chicken Flavored on a bag of cat food does it really taste like chicken and do cats know what chicken really taste like?

Answer 1

Yes it is chicken flavored. I don't know if they know what chicken tastes like, but they will catch a bird and enjoy it. When I buy fish flavored ,you can faintly smell that scent, and my cats like that kind the best.

Answer 2

I buy cat food called Chicken Soup For the Cat Lover's Soul. It is a holistic cat food and my male cat loves it. If you look at the ingredients on the bag, the 1st ingredient is chicken. This is real chicken and not flavored. Don't buy any that says flavored.

Answer 3

If it says chicken-flavored it has little or no real chicken in it. Whether the cats can taste the chicken or not it is necessary that they have real meat in their food - not meat flavoring.

I hope that will warn you away from this food. Wholesome cat food should be 60% real meat - not by-product meat nor meat flavoring.

Answer 4

In the sense that it's "flavoured", yes, probably it has added flavouring that might or might not taste like what we think of as "chicken" (like a boullion cube). I'd guess it's more for your benefit, though, as it's likely to have something in it that will make it smell like artificial chicken flavouring to YOU (as per "chicken in a biskit" type snacks), since the food is really marketed to you and not to your cat, since your cat can't buy food for itself.

The arena of pet food is not well regulated. As long as the main meat ingredient of "chicken" dog or cat food is some part of a chicken, then they can say it's chicken pet food, even if it's more than half wheat and has the bits and pieces of a hundred other types of animals in there (often helpfully called "meat by-products"). It certainly doesn't imply that the food is made of what would be considered edible "chicken" by humans. It also doesn't guarantee that the food is nutritionally balanced.

Grocery stores sell pet food to make extra money. They do this by:
1) appealing to your senses as a human, as you're the person buying the food, nevermind that foods that appeal to animals probably would be considered disgusting by humans; and,
2) by selling foods that taste good to pets, and are marketed as such. To do that, the foods are often loaded with fat and salt to make them taste better - it's like McDonalds for animals. Your grocery store has no interest whatever in keeping your pet healthy and giving them a diet that will let them live a long healthy life. They just want you to buy food the cat will eat because by golly "They'll eat this, guaranteed!" even if it's crap.

But then, I guess we don't always feed ourselves that healthfully, either.

I'm a veterinary nurse, and I'd never feed my cat food that says it's "chicken flavoured". But that's just my opinion.

Answer 5

Don't bother tasting it. I have and I can't tell that it tastes like chicken, unlike most other things people tell you to try. "Go on, eat it. It tastes like chicken." Not this stuff.

Still, if it has meat, chicken, fish, beef as the first ingredient on the label, that's a good thing.

Kev

Answer 6

It may have some kind of chicken broth that is dehydrated for flavor. Just make sure that you read the label and DO NOT feed your cat anything that has by products or corn in it.

Answer 7

Yes. If you read the ingredients, that are listed on the package as with any food product, you will see chicken in some form or another.

Answer 8

why dont you taste it. i know i have left chicken out and my cats have definitely attacked it. :) it also depends on how much chicken flavor is in the brand. use science diet they use high quality ingredients.

Answer 9

....well.....ive heard of chicken flavored cat food from a can...but from a bag...ewww!

Answer 10

real chicken FLAVOR but not real chicken