Fancy Feast Cat Food Review
Fancy Feast are a Purina brand. There are currently two class action lawsuits in the US involving Purina, the first with their Beneful dog food allegedly making thousands of dogs sick (our review of Beneful would shed some light), and the second involving fish ingredients found in Fancy Feast sourced from slave ships with abysmal working conditions and human fatalities.
If that hasn’t put you off buying Fancy Feast then read on…
Fancy Feast review
For this review I’ll focus on the Gourmet Tuna, Prawn, Mackerel, and Crab recipe as it sounds divine. I love gourmet food, don’t you?
Wait, hold on. If you look at the ingredients we find there’s no prawn in the food. There’s no mackerel, and no crab either. What’s going on? The reality is these are just flavourings, like when you buy a pot of noodles and add a sachet of powder to add “flavour”.
What we really have is a mixture of processed “not for human consumption” meat product, derived from the remains of chickens, cows, sheep, fish, and whatever else can be thrown in the pot to produce the cheapest meat and meat by-product ingredient possible. There’s very little quality control and it definitely isn’t what I’d consider “gourmet”.
The next THREE ingredients are grain, and after that we have soy. They’re not even decent grains, they’re cheap and nasty inclusions of wheat (one of the top causes of allergies) and corn, corn gluten meal (inflates protein levels), and soy (yet another cause of allergies). All these ingredients provide next to no nutrition for a cat and will cause more harm than good. They’re included to increase the profit margin of the Purina company, nothing else. We know that cats are obligate carnivores, so we don’t need rocket science to tell us they shouldn’t be eating this stuff.
Animal tallow comes next, an ingredient which would turn your stomach if you saw it being made. It’s a product from the same process that gives us the meat and meat by-products in the #1 spot.
I’ll finish the review by mentioning the very last ingredient – food colourings. That ingredient alone should be a red flag.
There’s nothing fancy about this food. Don’t buy it.
Where to buy?
Fancy Feast is a popular brand in Australia and is therefore available at many retailers.
Ingredients
Sample ingredients of Fancy Feast cat food:
Meat and meat-by-products (chicken and/or beef and/or lamb) and fish and fish by-products (salmon and tuna); wholegrain wheat and/or rice; corn gluten meal; wholegrain corn; soybean meal; animal tallow (beef and/or lamb); essential vitamins, minerals and amino acids and/or salt; natural flavours; and food colours.
I have benefitted greatly from this website and have changed the way I feed my cats and dogs. I own a fodder store, so also I’m trying to educate my customers a bit, particuarly about the tricky way things are marketed.
I have compared all of the different brands I am able to purchase through my wholesale supplier with your reviews. I’m horrified at very expenive brands that I thought were decent, being so low scoring. Particuarly Ivory Coat (the Rep keeps visiting me raving about his products).
Anyway, I have 3 cats, 2 will eat anything, but now have Meals for Meows dry food and Applaws tins. One cat, however will not eat anything except Fancy Feast Salmon flavoured dry food. This is how I found your site a while ago. By searching for reviews on this particular food.
Can you tell me, what ingredient it maybe that is included in this food to make it so palatable. How can I wean my cat over to the better quality food? It’s almost as though she is addicted to something in Fancy Feast and not as easy as it sounds. She won’t even eat any other flavour of Fancy Feast.
Hi Sarah,
Black Hawk might be worth looking at? Since they opened a new manufacturing facility a couple of years ago it seems quality has been really good, and it’s a well priced option for most I think. It’s a shame about Ivory Coat, but the negative reports keep on coming in – it’s therefore not a manufacturer I have faith in.
As for Fancy Feast – ingredients like tallow, and of course meat content, entice a cat to eat it even if it’s also made from wheat and other poor inclusions your cat can’t really digest. But the reason cats don’t transition easily is because they get confused when offered a different food. I read somewhere many years ago it was possibly a slight form of autism, but the trick is patience. Transition gradually, and persist!
I’ve had my cat on Fancy Feast for a couple of months now and she has become increasingly ill to the point where she is listless and disoriented. Sleeping in her litter box and urinating on my desk!
I noticed and change in her behaviour, for the better, as soon as I took her off it and fed her raw meat. Will be throwing the remaining Fancy Feast in the bin.
Wow
So helpful and informative!
Thank you so much for sharing
There’s some cat treats on Amazon that state certain seafood but they don’t actually contain any either it’s all just added flavours.
Similar to pedigrees meatier formula not actually being meatier just adding flavour that’s all.