Fancy Feast Cat Food Review

Fancy Feast cat food was originally introduced by the Carnation Company in 1982 in seven wet varieties. It was possibly the original gourmet brand of gourmet cat food. In 1985 Fancy Feast, along with Friskies and other pet foods, was sold to Nestle. Today Fancy Feast is still made by Nestle-Purina. It comes in over 80 wet food varieties, a dry cat food, appetizers for cats, and broths for cats.

Who Manufactures Fancy Feast?

Fancy Feast is made by Purina, with North American headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. Purina has some 20 pet food manufacturing plants in the United States. We can’t say for sure which of them make Fancy Feast products. Since Fancy Feast makes such a wide range of products, they are probably made at more than one facility.

Fancy Feast Cat Food Recalls 2023

• We did not find any recalls involving Fancy Feast in the FDA database or online.
• We did find this item about a potential class action suit that mentions Fancy Feast by name (along with Purina and Mars pet foods) but we have not heard any more about it. While the subject of the suit is serious (slave labor), the suit itself sounds frivolous since it deals with a system of labor in another country and pet food companies can hardly be held accountable for things that are not in their control. We’ll keep you updated if we hear more.

Fancy Feast Cat Food Coupons 2023

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Fancy Feast Cat Food Review & Analysis

Fancy Feast has been around since 1982. They’re also one of the bestselling cat food brands in the world. They have literally dozens of different products. However your cat likes his food prepared, Fancy Feast probably makes it if it’s dry or wet food. They make the following product lines: Broths, Delights with Cheddar, Gourmet Dry, Gourmet Kitten Food, Gourmet Wet, Gravy Lovers, Medley, and Purely. The foods come in all kinds of formulations: Chunky, Classic, Flaked, Grilled, Marinated Morsels, Minced, Roasted, Sliced, With Gravy, and Without Grain. And you can choose from beef, cheddar, egg, poultry, seafood, and veggie tastes for your cat.

Obviously we can’t analyze all of these products here, even briefly. But we’ll try to look at a few representative foods so you can get an idea of what Fancy Feast foods are like.

Checking online, we found the following foods to be some of the bestselling, highest-rated foods for Fancy Feast:

Fancy Feast Gourmet – Filet Mignon with Seafood & Shrimp and Fancy Feast Gourmet – Savory Chicken & Turkey Formula

These foods are Fancy Feast’s dry cat foods. They are available in three flavors but these two seem to be most popular online. The third flavor is Fancy Feast Gourmet – with Oceanfish & Salmon and accents of Garden Greens. Using the chicken & turkey formula as an example, the dry food has 32 percent crude protein, 16 percent crude fat, 4.5 percent crude fiber, and 10 percent moisture. The first five ingredients are: brewers rice, poultry by-product meal, corn gluten meal, animal fat preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of vitamin e), and ground yellow corn. The food contains added color (red 40, yellow 5, blue 2 and other color).

Fancy Feast Classic Tender Beef & Liver Feast and Fancy Feast Classic Savory Salmon Feast Canned Cat Food

Fancy Feast is possibly best known for its line of classic canned cat foods such as these favorites. Both the beef & liver feast and the salmon feast are paté or loaf-style cat foods. Fancy Feast makes a wide range of these classic canned cat foods. Using the salmon formula as an example, the food has 11 percent crude protein, 4 percent cent crude fat, 1.5 percent crude fiber, and 78 percent moisture. The food has higher than normal ash content for a canned food – 3.5 percent. Canned foods rarely have more than 3 percent ash content. The first five ingredients in the food are: salmon, liver, meat by-products, fish broth, and fish. This food does contain artificial flavors and added color.

Fancy Feast Delights with Cheddar Grilled Chicken and Cheddar Cheese Feast in Gravy

 The Delights with Cheddar line comes in four flavors and the chicken and cheddar recipe is one of the most popular. This is a wet cat food, in gravy, that features bits of cheese. This recipe has 10 percent crude protein, 2 percent crude fat, 1.5 percent crude fiber, and 80 percent moisture. (It’s normal for pet foods “in gravy” to have a higher moisture content than other wet cat foods. They can have a moisture content as high as around 82 percent in some cases. Most wet cat foods are limited to about 78 percent moisture per the FDA.) The first five ingredients in this food are: poultry broth, chicken, liver, wheat gluten, and meat by-products. The food contains artificial flavors and added color.

Fancy Feast Gourmet Broths Variety Pack (24 Pouches) for Cats – 12 Different Flavors – 1.4 Oz Each (2 of Each.)

Since so many of Fancy Feast’s products come in tiny cans, variety packs are very popular. You can buy variety packs for many of their products. We noticed that their gourmet broths were a bestseller online. Fancy Feast Broths contain real seafood and they have no by-products or fillers, according to Fancy Feast. Their broths come in 12 different recipes. Using Fancy Feast Broths Chicken & Vegetables in a Decadent Creamy Broth as an example, the food has 7 percent crude protein, .05 percent crude fat, 1 percent crude fiber, and 92 percent moisture. The first five ingredients are: poultry broth, chicken, tomatoes, fish extract, and carrots. This food contains added color. Fancy Feast Broths are intended for supplemental feeding only.

Fancy Feast Elegant Medleys Tastemakers Turkey/Chicken Food

Elegant Medleys Tastemakers come in four recipes – tuna & shrimp with wild rice in gravy; turkey & white meat chicken with spinach in gravy; white meat chicken & tuna recipe with wild rice & spinach in broth; and whitefish & shrimp recipe with rice & spinach in gravy. Yum, right? All of the recipes sound great. They are very popular and they get great reviews. We looked at the white meat chicken & tuna recipe. It has 10 percent crude protein, 2 percent crude fat, 1.5 percent crude fiber, and 82 percent moisture (in gravy). The first five ingredients in the food are: poultry broth, chicken, wheat gluten, liver, and wild rice. This food contains artificial flavors and added color.

Considering this overview of Fancy Feast products, we can see why they are popular with so many people and why cats like them so much. You will see some people online who call Fancy Feast foods “junk food” for cats. We disagree. Most of these foods are not four-star dining experiences for your cat. However, they are more like very tasty food that you bring home and toss in the oven or microwave. The foods contain corn, wheat, and soy. They have added colors and artificial flavors. They contain meat by-products. You can buy better, more expensive cat foods. But, considering the price, we think these are good foods. If you want better cat foods you will have to spend more.

Individual Recipe Review Fancy Feast Grilled Chicken Canned Cat Food

Fancy Feast Grilled Chicken Canned cat food is another one of Fancy Feast’s popular foods and we chose it to review. Fancy Feast makes 12 recipes of their grilled canned foods. They come in tuna, salmon & shrimp, seafood, salmon, whitefish & tuna, beef & liver, beef, chicken & beef, turkey & giblets, chicken, turkey, and liver & chicken. The grilled foods are “in gravy,” so we can expect a higher moisture content than with some of the other canned foods.

The grilled chicken recipe has the following first five ingredients: chicken broth, chicken, liver, wheat gluten, and meat by-products.

When canned foods are “in gravy” it’s not unusual to see water or broth as the first ingredient. These foods are allowed to have a higher moisture content to make the “gravy” in the food and that’s what the chicken broth does here.

The chicken broth is probably just the water in which the chicken in the food was cooked.

Chicken is a very good food for cats. It’s 60-80 percent protein and 20-40 percent fat, depending on the parts of the chicken used. It’s also a  good source of Vitamin B6 and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Niacin and Selenium. It even provides omega-6 fatty acid.

The third ingredient in the food is liver. It doesn’t say what kind of liver. We could assume that it’s chicken liver but it doesn’t actually say it’s chicken liver. Liver, in moderation, is a good ingredient for cats, but it’s not something that you want to overfeed your pet. Liver typically has about 63 percent protein, 35 percent fat, and 2 percent carbohydrates. It’s a good source of Thiamin, Zinc, Copper and Manganese, and a very good source of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Folate, Vitamin B12, Pantothenic Acid, Iron, Phosphorus and Selenium.

The food also contains wheat gluten. Lots of pet owners are familiar with wheat gluten because of the melamine recalls in 2007. Wheat gluten itself wasn’t to blame for the problem but gluten from China had melamine added to it in an effort to cheat the buyers. Wheat gluten is a plant source of protein. It’s a natural source of protein and can contain up to 75-80 percent protein. However, we don’t usually like to see it used in pet foods because it’s being used instead of meat. Vegetarians can use it as an alternative to meat and it’s sometimes used instead of soybeans. It’s also used as a binding agent to hold foods together. But, again, it’s not really something we like to see in pet foods.

The fifth ingredient in this food is meat by-products. If you have spent any time at all reading about pet foods then you know that no one likes meat by-products. AAFCO defines them: “Meat by-products is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially de-fatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal feed. If it bears a name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto.” The general rule with pet foods is that you want ingredients to be as specific as possible so you know exactly what you are feeding your pet. In some cases, if you know the source of the lungs, kidneys, liver, etc., that you are feeding your cat, these would be good ingredients. However, when a label says, “meat by-products” you don’t know the source, the kind of animal, or exactly what parts are included.

Other ingredients of interest in this food include: artificial flavors and added color. These are ingredients that consumers are usually warned to avoid. Fancy Feast also uses menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of vitamin k activity) in their foods. They are not the only company that uses synthetic vitamin K and this has become a controversial subject.

So, this food has some questionable/undesirable ingredients and so do many other Fancy Feast products. However, we still think that, considering the price of Fancy Feast foods, these are reasonably good cat foods. You can buy better cat foods that don’t have some of these less than desirable ingredients but you will definitely pay more – in some cases a lot more. That may be beyond the budget of some cat families.

Calorie Content:

71 kcal/3-ounce can

Guaranteed Analysis:

• Crude Protein (Min)    11.0%
• Crude Fat (Min)    2.0%
• Crude Fiber (Max)     1.5%
• Moisture (Max)    80.0%
• Ash (Max)    2.7%
• Taurine (Min)    0.05%

Nutritional Statement

Fancy Feast Grilled Chicken Feast in Gravy is formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO Cat Food Nutrient Profiles for all life stages.

Dry Matter Basis: This food has an estimated 55 percent protein, 10 percent fat, 7.5 percent fiber, and 14 percent carbohydrates. (AAFCO recommendations for protein for adult cats are a minimum of 26 percent and 30 percent for growing kittens; and 9 percent fat for both adult cats and growing kittens.)

Final Thoughts

We believe that you should buy the best food you can for your pets. However, not everyone can buy the most expensive cat foods. We think that Fancy Feast is a better than average brand of cat food that makes food many cats love. It’s also affordable for many people who love their cats. Yes, some ingredients could be better. They could also be a lot worse.