Elevate Cat Food Review (Coles)

Don’t be fooled by other online reviews for Elevate cat food – they’re for American brand Elevate, not the poorer quality cat food you find in Coles. In fact it’s likely they’re using the name Elevate to dupe you into thinking this is good for your cat.

It’s not.

Read our Elevate cat food review to find out exactly why! We’ll take a look at the Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato recipe…

Elevate cat food review

What the marketing says

The first issue we find is the recipe name – Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato. Cats are obligate carnivores so rice and potato are pointless to a cat.

The bag features a picture of succulent chicken drumsticks, freshly cut sweet potato, and a pile of rice. It’s worth noting these ingredients are not representative of what they use in Elevate cat food.

A bold statement is Formulated with Pet Nutritionists, but as rice and sweet potato fail to meet carnivore nutrition 101 we can gather those nutritionists may’ve been more focussed on formulating for profit rather than formulating for the health and wellbeing of your kitty cat.

What the ingredients really say

Interestingly the sweet potato listed on the packaging is way down in 8th position, right next to salt. Salt is listed at 1% so it’s possible sweet potato is also 1%. Given cats have no need for sweet potato that’s possibly a good thing, except we find the more significant ingredients are rice, field peas, soybean meal, and cellulose. Anyone would think cats were vegan based on those ingredients, but thankfully there is some meat in there too.

Chicken meal in Elevate cat food is listed in the #1 spot, but given the recipe name it’s likely rice is an equal amount. It’s also possible field peas, soybean meal, and possibly cellulose are in the same quantity as well, making it much less chicken than we would originally be led to believe. We can begin to understand the protein (and fat content) of Elevate cat food to come more from grains and legumes than from chicken, and that’s not a good thing given these ingredients aren’t as easily digested by a carnivorous cat. A cat’s short digestive tract is geared to digest nutrition from meat, so feeding them inappropriate stuff it will likely come out the other end before being utilised.

A brief note on cellulose in cat foods – it’s a stigmatised ingredient often used in “healthy weight” or “light” formulas because it bulks up the food cheaply while adding zero calories. It’s often a poor quality by-product of the agriculture industry and will offer little for your cat in the way of nutrition. As a healthy weight cat food you may be forgiving of the low 10% fat, but truth is cats gain weight on high carbohydrate foods made of grain and other fillers, whereas animal fats are very good for them. If you have a fat cat, it’s likely from high carbs, not high fat.

So is there anything good about the food, as so far the Elevate cat food review has been very negative?

Well, yes, marginally.

Being high protein (even from legumes) means low(er) carbs, and we estimate around 38%. Although not great, it could be worse.

Elevate cat food is naturally preserved rather than nasty chemicals, so there’s a small plus point. It’s also better seeing the likes of rice and peas to the cereals/cereal by-products/wheat you find in many other supermarket cat foods. That stuff’s just horribly damaging to your cat.

There’s a few trace niceties like flaxseed, carrot, pumpkin, and berries, but they’re way down the ingredients list and they’ve probably been included for the sake of glamourising the ingredients rather than adding nutritional benefit.

If you’re on a tight budget then Elevate cat food may be one of the better options in Coles, but if you’re looking for far better health for your carnivorous pet cat then these are our top rated cat foods in Australia.

We hope our Elevate cat food review has offered you some enlightening. If it has, please help us by sharing this review with others, liking us on Facebook, or offering us 1 like 1 prayer. Thank you.

Where to buy Elevate cat food

Elevate cat food is available in Coles.

Ingredients of Elevate cat food (Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato)

Ingredients of Elevate cat food (Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato) as of July 2021:

Chicken Meal, Rice, Field Peas, Soybean Meal, Cellulose, Chicken Gravy, Poultry Oil, Sweet Potato, Salt, Beet Pulp, Salmon Oil, Choline Chloride, Vitamins [Vitamin A, Vitamin D3, Vitamin E, Niacin, Pantothenic Acid, Riboflavin, Thiamine, Pyridoxin, Folic Acid, Vitamin K3, Biotin, Vitamin B12], Minerals [Iron, Zinc, Copper, Manganese, Iodine, Selenium], Yucca Schidigera, Sodium Tripolyphosphate, Taurine, Carnitine, Flaxseed, Carrot, Pumpkin, Blueberries, Cranberries, Mixed Tocopherols, Rosemary, Spearmint, Green Tea.

Guaranteed analysis of Elevate cat food (Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato)

Guaranteed analysis of Elevate dry cat food (Chicken & Rice with Sweet Potato) as of July 2021:

Recalls of Elevate cat food

There are no known recalls of Elevate cat food at the current time.