Are purina, science diet, and iams really bad foods?(see details)?

Question

4 weeks ago this stray arrived at my doorstep and I decided to keep her. I have been feeding her iams,friskies,science diet, and purina cat chow.
My best friend fosters stray cats and kittens. I told her about how about my new cat. She asked me immediatly what I feed her and when I told her I fed purinaiams,and science diet, she said that all those foods have nothing but junk like corn,wheat,soy, and low quality animal parts and other fillers. she told me holistic cat food and occasional raw meat was much healthier.
I'm not sure if I should beleive it or not. She is pretty good with cats and she has owned cats for her whole life as well as exotic cats.(not tigers and lions but bengal and savvanh cats)

i'm not sure what to do. Can I have some opinions?

Answer 1

The only reason vets recommend the bad food is because they are taught to recommend those foods. I would recommend the foods that you don't see on adds on TV like Canidea and Inova Evo the ones that are on adds on TV seem to be the wost.

Answer 2

I can tell you now that Purina and Pedigree are NOT good foods. They are full of chemicals, fillers and no real ingredients. Iams, Science Diet and Eukanuba are better, but not much. Royal Canin IS a good dog food. Many are made breed specific (Labrador Royal Canin) and have ingredients that promote that breeds coat and health. Nutro is also pretty good depending on what type you get. Most of them have chicken or lamb as the first ingredient and have a lot less fillers and chemicals than other foods. You can also try Blue Buffalo. It's right up there with Royal Canin and a little better than Nutro even. Whatever food you decide on make sure that chicken or lamb is in the first 3 ingredients and that by-products/meal/or a lot of rices are not.

Answer 3

Cats can't digest corn, so if it's in the first four ingredients it's just a bulk filler that does the cat no good. The ingredients list on the bags/cans goes from largest ingredient down to smallest.

A 'good' food is one that has three meat sources in the first four ingredients and one vegetable source that's not corn. The meat sources should NOT be by-products (by-products are not good protein sources). This pretty much eliminates most of the supermarket foods.

Yes, raw is good, but getting a good balance of nutrients and vitamins is hard, so feeding a good quality canned/bag food plus some raw is better than using the standards.

They're out there, they're not that expensive, and there's variety.

Chicken Soup for the Cat Lovers Soul (dry food, $9 a bag that lasts a month for one cat)
Wellness (OK, this one's expensive)
Predator
Wysong Vitality (the silver bag, look for 'vitality' not the others)
Royal Canin Siamese 38
Evo (can be expensive, depends on what markup the store took)
Felidae
Check the labels, protein content in dry should be at least 34%. I know Evo dry is 50% but that's too rich for some cats and can cause diarhea.

With canned, I'd go with NutroMax,MaxiCat (same brand, different labels), Evo, Wellness. Check the labels. Protein content should be at least 10%.

Answer 4

It is true, those foods aren't very good for the animals. When talking to the local pet store owner, he was saying that Mars Bars candy owns some major pet food, and the rest are owned by just other large corporations trying to get money that don't care about your pets. The nutritionist that I talked to said that if rice is in the too couple of ingredients, then it's not a good food (they order it by the amount of ingredients are put in it, so if rice was first, the food would be majority rice). I would suggest getting Canidae (sp). That's what I use to feed my animals. The only downfall to it is that they won't sell it at a place like Walmart or a grocery store, you'll have to go look around to see where they sell it around you.
Don't get me wrong, your cat won't get sick from eating the food you're giving her, but it's just not the best food you can give.
Good luck!
ps, I wouldn't ask a vet's opinion about the food because most vets have Science Diet because Science Diet gives them money to sell their food, so most vets will tell you Science Diet. I would suggest going to a Holistic vet or asking an animal nutritionist if you have any questions. Those people have years of experience in animal nutrition, whereas vets only have one or two semesters in college about nutrition.

Answer 5

I was going to respond with my 2 cents, but see that Ken already detailed most of what I was going to say. As a general rule, the typical supermarket foods are not the best quality. They are made with low quality protein and contain a lot of additives, which is thought to be responsible for the skyrocketing cases of kidney failure.
You don't have to go as far as holistic or raw foods. A good compromise is the foods sold in the pet stores with all natural ingredients.
For more information on how the public is brainwashed into believing that the 'name' brand pet foods are healthy and wholesome, read the article at the link below.

Answer 6

If it's a stray it's probably happy to have anything at all to eat. Whatever you're feeding her is definetly better than nothing - just feed her the best you can afford to. They sell a pet food at most wal mart supercenters called Natural Pet that is all natural and not much more expensive than Purina and Iams - give that one a try.

Answer 7

There are people who own cats thier own life and don't know the first thing about what to feed them. That said, the lady is right. You do not, have to go holistic.

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_Read_a_Pet_Food_Ingredient_Label
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 carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. 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.
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. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. 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/bpo_ch4a.php

Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics.html
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm#Dry_Food_vs_Canned_Food.__Which_is_reall

Answer 8

Friskies is not a good food. It is what is considered 'grocery brand" even though you can also buy some "premium" brands Like the ones you mentioned called purina,science diet,and also at grocerie stores... I don't want anyone to get cunfused thinking whatever you buy from a grocery store is bad.... because even the "premium" brands are now sold(not all,but a few) at grocery stores. The premium brands are best food as for DRY cat food goes. The reply she gave about the ingediants make me think she may have only been thinking about the "grocery" brands. I think the term 'grocery brand" came from when all not so healthy pet food came from a grocery store... and the name kinda stuck....
Also,why are you feeding them several different brands? they only need one brand of dry cat food... It's good to mix their diet with can food,and some fresh raw as well like others have suggested. But the "premium" brands are supposed to be the best as for nutrition for dry cat food. I do agree that raw food should be fed also,and soft can food occasionaly like others have said on here. I don't know what holistic food is,and with so many advances in health and medicine,(although I would think holistic means something natural?) It could very well be true what shes saying about it. But i can't give my opinion on it,since I havn't learned much about it. Maybe you already know all about this, I am just explaning because i don't know what you know or don't know,and I am sharing what I have learned . Maybe a veterenarian can better explain the difference between grocery and premium.. if I'm not making sense..hope this helps,if not,I tried after all you asked for opinions ,and that's my opinion based on what I have learned :) If you can afford to feed the cat what she feeds her cats,I don't se why not. It may not hurt your pocket much if you only have one cat anyway. goodluck in your cat food decision.

Answer 9

If Iams was so bad then why do vets recommend it? When my dog is sick the vet prescribes Iam's low residue food. I feed my dog Eukanuba which is also made by Iams.

I think if you purchase food in a supermarket it has a lot of ash in it which can cause kidney disease, especially wet food. I fed both my cats purina or friskies dry food, they lived until 20 years of age. If I did it all over I swore I'd feed a better quality of food the second time around, now I feed my dog Eukanuba. A lot of people like Canidae but I think that's just dog food. Go to PetSmart and ask an associate what you think they might recommend.

Everyone has their own preference of what they like to feed and that's their choice feed what you feel comfortable feeding after researching which one works for you.

Answer 10

Sure you could do all that, but sometimes it isn't realistic. I use Nutro cat food for my cats. One has a really sensitive stomach and she eats anything else she throws up all over the place. I could try a specialty diet, but I don't feel like chasing my cat all over my apartment picking up her vomit.