| Manufacturer | Nestle Purina |
| Available from | Pet Circle |
Purina (owned by Nestle) make some terrible cat foods. In our Purina One cat food review we’ll take a look at the Adult healthy weight dry food and find out why this product doesn’t make any sense to feed to an animal factually known to be carnivorous.
It’s ironic they offer a dry formula for Urinary Tract Health when cats as desert-dwelling animals suffer urinary tract problems from lack of moisture… from dry formulas.
In this review we’ll take a look at what the cunning folk at Purina say about the product, then we’ll take a look at what Purina One cat food is actually made from. You’ll find opposing ends of the spectrum. So sit down, have a cup of tea, and read on…
Purina One Cat Food Review
What the marketing says
On the Purina website they have some spiel about why you should feed Purina One cat food. The first line is “If you own a cat, you may wonder what the best dry cat food is so you can make sure she’s getting the nutrition she needs.” It’s just a vague statement, and doesn’t necessarily mean Purina One is the best cat food.
They claim their “natural, highly digestible formulas” (ironically with an asterisk * excluding the Urinary Tract Health formula) have real meat as the #1 ingredient. We’ll get to that fallacy in due course, and it doesn’t mean the food has a high meat content. No sirree.
Purina One also has “added vitamins and minerals”, but there’s nothing special about that as all complete and balanced cat foods have to contain essential vitamins and minerals.
For the Healthy Weight formula they boast “Real turkey as the number one ingredient”. It’s such an odd term which springs up quite a bit with pet foods, and it makes me wonder what turkey would be if it wasn’t “real”? Rubber turkey?
Anyway, enough about what the Purina marketing department says, let’s delve into the ingredients…
What the labelling really says
So they boasted about real turkey as the number one ingredient? What they don’t say is six of the top eight ingredients are corn, soy, rice, more corn, more soy, and even more soy. Now that doesn’t sound good for cats as obligate carnivores, does it?
We find 42% protein in the food which sounds good, but 9% fat is low. Given corn is high in protein it makes you wonder how much of that 42% protein is made from less-digestible corn rather than meat? It doesn’t matter that turkey and chicken by-product meal are listed first if possibly all of those aforementioned ingredients are in an equal proportion. It’s possible the two corn inclusions are of equal significance as the meat, and that doesn’t even account for the rice and soybeans.
One of the ingredients of Purina One cat food is natural flavour. What do you think that could be? It’s not very specific…
They’ve added caramel color, as if your cat cares about food colour?
Purina One cat food isn’t sounding good, is it? Is it a food you’ve fed your own cats? If so, let us know in the comments.
Where to buy Purina One cat food
Purina One cat food review summary
It’s surprising how popular Purina One is. Is it because it’s cheap? Or is it because of the clever marketing? From an ingredients standpoint it doesn’t seem very good at all given the amount of corn, rice, and soy in a product supposed to be for carnivorous cats.
So that’s it for our Purina One cat food review. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments! Thanks.
Ingredients of Purina One cat food
Ingredients of Purina One Healthy Weight dry cat food as of February 2021:
Turkey, chicken by-product meal, corn gluten meal, soy flour, rice flour, whole grain corn, soy protein isolate, soybean hulls, dried yeast, cellulose, beef fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols, natural flavor, phosphoric acid, calcium carbonate, L-Lysine monohydrochloride, caramel color, salt, dried carrots, dried peas, choline chloride, MINERALS [zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, sodium selenite], taurine, potassium chloride, VITAMINS [Vitamin E supplement, niacin (Vitamin B-3), Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate (Vitamin B-5), thiamine mononitrate (Vitamin B-1), riboflavin supplement (Vitamin B-2), Vitamin B-12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride (Vitamin B-6), folic acid (Vitamin B-9), Vitamin D-3 supplement, biotin (Vitamin B-7), menadione sodium bisulfite complex (Vitamin K)], L-Carnitine.
Guaranteed analysis of Purina One cat food
Guaranteed analysis of Purina One Healthy Weight dry cat food as of February 2021:
| Protein | (min) 42% |
| Fat | (min) 9% |
| Crude Fibre | (max) 5% |
| Carbohydrates * | (est) 31% |
You should give a logical analysis to back up your claim on that first sentence you wrote: “Purina (owned by Nestle) make some terrible cat foods.”
Along the lines of high-carbohydrate grain-based foods with minimal moisture not being species appropriate for factually carnivorous felines?
Hi there! Just saw your article while searching the web for information on problems with Purina One Urinary Tract dry cat food. We’ve been feeding our three cats Purina One sparingly between IAMS, which they love. I picked up a bag of the One Urinary food because I had a $5 coupon for it. Started them up on it after finishing the last bag of IAMS and all three began vomiting the food after eating, and then continuing to spit up yellow goop (the food is yellow-colored, chicken flavor supposedly). One of the cats began begging us every meal for our “human” food and seemed to lose weight, which led to finally figuring out the problem. Thing is, they were raised on Purina and IAMS. They love the IAMS, but apparently the Purina doesn’t agree with them anymore. They do get wet food also and lots of water, so the only thing it could be is the One food. Ordered a bunch of IAMS today and will not touch Purina again.
The more I read about cat food, dry and wet, the more confused i’m getting.
I’m giving my Tom cat Dreamies and Purina dried food but always ensures clean water is available although he never drinks it, just uses the old ‘manky’ stuff around the garden. Price is not too big a problem, but am concerned that I may be inadvertently poisoning him. Perhaps I should stop worrying unnecessarily and just enjoy having him in my life.
Dad is this you? 🙂
Hi Bob, I think the best answer I can give is you can only do your best for him. Some cats live to a ripe old age on Purina. You can however add some fresh meats, organs, odd can of tuna etc, and I’m sure that will go a long way to keeping him happy and giving him some extra nutrition.
Cats may drink garden water (or rain water) because it may contain minerals, or maybe he just prefers it (there’s not a great deal of science in this area). Cats tend to seek out nutrients which they’re not getting, so it’s possibly a sign the Purina/Dreamies are lacking, or perhaps not.
I wish I had known about this website before this. I am so upset about what I have been feeding my 11 year old cat. I hadn’t noticed any thing wrong with her up until the end of last year, which I have found out the manufacturer had changed the recipe. She started pulling out her fur and scratching herself almost silly and some vomiting episodes. The food concerned was Felix by Purina, fish with prawn flavoured jelly. I took her to a vet and they said she had separation anxiety, as my husband had passed and it was taking her a while to get over his death. I took the fish off her and she seemed to get better and after a month or so, I tried Turkey with Game flavoured jelly. She started up again with the vomiting, after only 2 mouthfuls. I took her to another vet who took some scrapings from her skin and a few other tests, which proved nothing. I made contact with Purina Australia, after reading an article about the company in the UK which had many cats getting sick or dying. They told me they would look into my complaint but they are taking their time. I am still feeding her the usual food with no side effects, but bought some Nood and Dine today and just came across your reviews. I’m most upset because I don’t want her to get sick again. I’m only on a pension and I don’t know what to feed her on my budget. I am hoping you maybe able to direct me to the correct food.
Kibble is too small in size for adult cats… they tend to just swallow rather than chew.. not good for digestion.. hilarious considering I brought Urinary Care.
Can you get any of the online pet food shops to deliver to you without shipping? I use Pet Circle but these guys have shipping for me, but not for everyone I’ve noted.
Pet Warehouse.
Budget Pets.
Habitat Pet.
What I do to check is I add a few foods randomly to the cart, I go to checkout, type in a fake name and nearby address and than check shipping. You’ll of course want to make sure that you change to your real address and name when you go to buy the food though haha.
You want to mostly buy wet food for cats, it’s the best for them. Dry food dehydrates them and this is not a good thing. This is how cats get kidney and liver failure and urinary and crystal issues.
Based on a group I’m in Feline Nutrition on Facebook. They say even cheap wet food is better than dry.
1 thing I like about Habitat is you can buy single cans to try out. But this also makes them more expensive. But than you don’t need to buy a whole punnet and if it’s bad at least it’s just 1 can.
I believe none of the others have single can/pouch options. Just Habitat.