I have four cats. I have spent 20 years reviewing food and supplement formulations professionally — and the moment I turned that same attention to what I was feeding them, I had a very uncomfortable afternoon.
Cat food labels are, in many ways, worse than human supplement labels. The ingredients are more obscure, the standards are less demanding, and the gap between what the marketing says and what’s actually in the tin is often significant.
Here is what I found — and what I changed.
The first thing I noticed: “meat and animal derivatives”
This phrase appears on a significant proportion of European cat food products. It sounds reasonable. It is almost completely uninformative.
“Meat and animal derivatives” is a catch-all category that can legally include any part of any animal — organs, bone, connective tissue, rendered fat, and by-products that would not be used in any other context. The species doesn’t have to be specified. The percentage doesn’t have to be consistent between batches.
A product that says “with chicken” may contain as little as 4% chicken. The rest of the “meat and animal derivatives” can be from any source whatsoever. This is legal. This is common. This is what I had been buying.
“The label said ‘rich in chicken.’ What it meant was: contains some chicken, possibly a lot of other things, we’d rather not say what.”
The cereals problem
Cats are obligate carnivores. Their digestive systems are designed for protein and fat — not carbohydrates. A cat’s liver cannot process large amounts of carbohydrates efficiently, and their insulin response to carbohydrates is quite different from that of omnivores like dogs or humans.
Despite this, a large number of dry cat foods — kibble — contain 30–50% carbohydrates. Often listed as “cereals” or “various sugars” on the label. Sometimes listed by specific grain: corn, wheat, rice, barley.
These carbohydrates are not there for your cat’s health. They are there because they are cheap, they bind the kibble together during manufacturing, and they extend shelf life. A cat food with 40% carbohydrates is not nutritionally appropriate for an obligate carnivore. It is, however, inexpensive to produce.
Cats require high protein (ideally 40%+ on a dry matter basis), moderate fat, and very low carbohydrates. They also require specific nutrients they cannot synthesise themselves — taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamin A from animal sources, and niacin. These must come from animal protein. A plant-based or heavily grain-based diet cannot reliably provide them.
How to read a cat food label — the practical version
The same principles that apply to human supplement labels apply here. Ingredients are listed in descending order by weight before cooking — meaning the first ingredient is the most abundant. Look for a named animal protein as the first ingredient. “Chicken” is better than “poultry.” “Poultry” is better than “meat and animal derivatives.”
Named ingredients are a quality signal. A brand that is proud of what it uses tells you exactly what it is. A brand that uses “derivatives” and “various” is hiding flexibility — the ability to change formulations based on cost without updating the label.
What I changed after that afternoon
I moved my four cats primarily to wet food — which is closer to the moisture content of their natural prey and significantly lower in carbohydrates than most kibble. For the wet food, I look for products where a named protein is the first ingredient and is listed as a percentage. I check for taurine explicitly in the additives section. I avoid anything with “meat and animal derivatives” as the primary protein source.
Are they happy about the change? Three of them adapted immediately. The fourth — who I suspect would eat anything regardless of its nutritional profile — noticed no difference whatsoever and continues to knock his bowl off the counter for reasons I have never fully understood.
The point is not that every cat food is bad or that you need to cook fresh meat from scratch every day. The point is that the label tells you more than most people realise — if you know what you’re reading.
The same rules, applied differently
Reading a cat food label is not fundamentally different from reading a human supplement label. Named ingredients are better than vague categories. Transparency is a quality signal. Short lists with recognisable components beat long lists of unspecified derivatives.
The supplement industry and the pet food industry share more than they’d like to admit — including some of the same cost-cutting habits and the same assumption that most consumers won’t look closely.
Now you will.
Curious what I check for in human supplements too?
The Supplement Insider’s Checklist covers 7 ingredients I’d never buy — using the same label-reading approach. Free to download.
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