Rex Trulove
Friskies is one of the best-known brands of cat food on the market. It is also one of the best selling brands of cat food and it can be found in grocery stores, supermarkets, pet stores, online, and elsewhere. How does this product stack up in regard to cat health?
Cats are strictly carnivores. This means that in the wild, vegetation makes up less than 1% of their diet. Cat owners need to be aware of this if they want to make sure that their pets are healthy and have a good quality of life for a long time.
Naturally, it is nearly impossible to tell what is in cat food by just looking at it. Thankfully, labeling laws in the US are such that the ingredients must be listed on the label. The amount of each ingredient isn’t given. However, whichever ingredient is the primary substance must be listed first in the ingredient list. The substance that is the secondary ingredient is listed second, and so forth.
The rule of thumb is that good cat food won’t list any vegetable product in at least the first four ingredients since these four ingredients account for most of what is in the food. Having this as a basis for understanding how good any particular brand of cat food is, it becomes simpler to review the cat food.
Friskies ingredients
This is the ingredient list for Friskies dry cat food. To make it simpler, all meat ingredients will be in bold.
Ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, chicken by-product meal, meat and bone meal, soybean meal, beef tallow preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), turkey by-product meal, powdered cellulose, animal liver flavor, soybean hulls, malt extract, phosphoric acid, calcium carbonate, potassium chloride, salt, choline chloride, dried cheese powder, added color (Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 2 and other color), parsley flakes, taurine, calcium phosphate, Vitamin E supplement, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, niacin, manganese sulfate, Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, copper sulfate, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), sodium selenite.
Notice that the first two ingredients are corn and corn byproducts. Cats have particular difficulties digesting corn.
The first meat ingredient is third; chicken byproducts, which would be almost anything, from broth to feathers. It does say ‘meal’, so there is a good chance that it is ground chicken bones. One must look at the fourth ingredient to find meat and bone meal. That is followed by soybean meal, then beef tallow. Tallow is fat, suet, or lard and it is what glue and soap used to be made from.
This means that if you feed your cat Friskies, you are primarily feeding them corn, which is decidedly not good for cats. Friskies does contain vitamins and minerals, but they are so far down on the list that the amounts would almost certainly be tiny. In fact, of the over-40 listed ingredients, only four of them are meat or meat byproducts.
How good is this cat food?
Nutritionally, this cat food isn’t a good one and is only marginally better than nothing. It does tend to be fairly inexpensive, but that is mostly because corn isn’t tremendously expensive. It contains preservatives and cellulose, too. If you aren’t acquainted with cellulose, this is what makes wood rigid. Sawdust is mostly cellulose.
It is difficult to give a comparison with other top-selling cat foods. The reason is that Friskies is produced by Nestle Purina PetCare. This is the same company that produces Alpo dog food, Purina cat food, Go-Cat, Tender Vittles, and Beneful. One shouldn’t expect that any of these would be good pet foods, although they aren’t tremendously expensive. These are all among the best-selling brands of cat and dog food.
Friskies is one of the top selling cat foods on the market. It is better than letting a cat starve to death. However, it also isn’t too difficult to make cat food, either, and homemade is usually healthier and possibly less expensive. There are far better choices on the market, too, though they tend to cost more. The choice, of course, is up to the consumer.
I missed this one completely. Way to Go on the education here Rex. Friskees has no meat in it. None.
Thank you Rex for helping kitties by educating their owners on the dangers of falling prey to this kind of advertising.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that multi-million dollar corporations like Purina will go merrily-along making money at the expense of cats. Cats can live well beyond 20 years unless they are fed a poor diet. A bad diet can cut the lifespan of a cat in half or more. Yet, people have come to see a 12-year-old cat as “old”. At that age, they are in their middle age. They aren’t old.
My cat Sid gave up on dry food a long time ago. His favorite is Friskies wet food. He likes all the meats and the fish. The wetter and the finer the grind the more he loves it. Now I will tell you that the label reads like a chemical experiment but my cat is healthy, bright eyes and shiny coat and very talkative.I cannot afford to buy him anything really expensive and now with moving into an apartment I also have the expense of kitty litter. In Latvia, he had a whole garden to roam about and do his stuff. Any suggestions? Also, I am on foot to the stores and with a rolling cart.
The only difference between the ingredients in Friskies dry and Friskies canned food is that in the canned food, water has been added and the result has been put into a can. It is usually more expensive, but people are basically paying the extra price for the water.
All of our cats except one are indoor cats because a neighbor’s pit bull eats cats. We lost three cats and finally started keeping the rest in the house. For our cats, we use clay-style cat litter. The kitty boxes are simply cheap storage containers that are about two feet by one foot by nine inches tall that we bought at Walmart for something like $3. The cat boxes need to be cleaned daily, using a “pooper-scooper”, but that is only a 2-minute task (a little more than that for us because we have 4 cat boxes).
We change the kitty litter once a week. Even the clay-style litter gets expensive after a while, but we buy it from chewy.com and the price isn’t bad, for 40-pound bags. I think that they are less than $10. For one cat, a 40-pound bag would probably last for a couple of months. We’ve never had to train any of our cats to use it, even those who were originally outdoor cats. We just show them where the cat box is at.
Our daughter prefers to buy clumping-style cat litter, which is easier to clean, but it is more expensive.
I’ve heard that a person can train a cat to use a toilet, but that is something I’ve never tried. Honestly, I’ve never had the time. We’d also probably buy our kitty litter at Walmart, but the nearest Walmart from us is 70 miles. Our Chewy orders are delivered to our door, so we end up saving money by ordering it and having it shipped.
I am very well acquainted with needing to save money. A lot of times, we barely make ends meet. Our rent is $400, and power, water, sewer, car insurance, $30 for phone, and so forth, is another $300. I’ll be retiring in October, God willing, but until then, we have to find ways to save money whenever we can. That is actually one reason I grow a garden each year, to save money. Okay, well, I also like to garden.
I use that rule with everything Rex. The first 3-4 ingredients of any product tells you what you need to know. My cats eat Blue Buffalo dry food.
That is a good thing. The sad part is how many people don’t realize how harmful corn and other vegetable ingredients is to cats.
A lot of the skin allergies they (cats and dogs) have now are from Meat by products. and corn meal.
That wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. It is hard to get through to people that just because an animal will eat something doesn’t mean that it is good for them.