What is the Best Grain Free Cat Food?
Why Grain Free and Which Ones To Choose?
Cats are carnivores. They would never eat grains in the wild. They eat some grasses but not grains. Refined grains add tons of extra carbohydrates that cats are not made to process and this leads to weight gain and many other health problems. There are many cat foods that claim to be low fat, high protein, diet, weight control or grain free. There are many expensive brands with these labels but they cost so much the average person cannot afford them! So, what is the best grain free cat food? Is there one that is high quality and affordable!
The Common Brands of Grain Free Food are Expensive!
I have found that the popular brands like Hill’s Prescription Diet which is made for cats with food allergies and intolerances have good ingredients but they are VERY expensive. An 8.5 pound bag is around $60.00 in the U.S.! That is over $7 per pound.
My first cat had horrible food sensitivity. It was very hard to find a dry cat food that he could stomach! We finally found “Solid Gold” brand “Indigo Moon With Chicken and Egg” food. That was our first experience with this great brand. It was the first food that worked for all our cats. It is grain free, natural and has great ingredients like pumpkin, beets and broccoli.
We needed to move our kitties to a diet food so we tried Solid Gold again, this time we got their “Fit as a Fiddle Low Fat: Low Calorie with Fresh Caught Alaskan Pollock”. Once again all the cats loved it and they didn’t have any digestive issues! We have been feeding them “Fit as a Fiddle” for over a year now and they are still loving it every day! This food has no grain and great ingredients like pumpkin, carrots, spinach and watercress as well as the Pollock. There is pea protein so it has some carbs, though no grains.
Superfoods
Both of these varieties of Solid Gold cat food have amazing superfood ingredients like rosemary, thyme, blueberry and cranberry as well as probiotics such as as Lactobacillus Acidophilus and Lactobacillus Casei for digestion.
Can a Healthy, Grain Free Cat Food Be Affordable?
Yes! Solid Gold brand cat foods are around $2 a pound for the 12 pound bags! This is compared to $7 a pound for the popular brands like Hill’s Prescription! That is 350% more! I did not even realize this at first. We were just looking for any food that would work. Now, a year later, we are so glad Solid Gold is affordable! It would be very hard to afford the more expensive food with three 15 pound cats.
Solid Gold also has high protein, kitten and other varieties with ingredients like quail, duck and pumpkin! There is a rabbit variety as well but that did not work for our kitty with the sensitive stomach. If you don’t want grain free, there are varieties with rice such as Turkey, Brown Rice and Cranberry “Furrever Young” for older and less active cats.
If you want to find the best grain free cat food, or the best dry cat food in general, please look at the line from “Solid Gold”!
Hi Jessica,
Thank you for the great post. This is a great info for all the people having cat or cats 🙂
We have currently 4 cats in my weekend house. They are so adorable. I am thinking now of getting this food for them to try and see how they will like it 🙂
Thanks for your recommendation.
Best,
Sunny
Hi Sunny,
I just bought a bag of the Solid Gold brand Fit as a Fiddle cat food at the pet supply store last night. The store employee saw it in my cart and asked how I liked it. I told her I loved it! She said she thinks it is really high quality and likes their philosophy of using superfoods (meaning special nutrients). She said she liked that it has cranberry in it since it is important for urinary health. Her first cat died of urinary problems and she feels it is important to address.
I was thrilled to get such a great recommendation from her and told her about that I recommended it on my website too!
I hope you can give it a try!
Jessica
HI Jessica. Many thanks for this very informative article. I have 2 cats and have been advised by the vet to try a grain free food for one of them who has issues with over-grooming as the vet says it may be due to a food allergy. Do you have any experience of that at all with any cats? I’d love to know as my cat is licking himself almost bald in places? Do you think that grain could be the cause? Thanks.
Hi Gail,
I address some of these issues in the following posts. Please check them out and let me know if you have any other questions. I haven’t dealt with that particular issue though. The post “What is the Best Cat Food for a Sensitive Stomach?” addresses food allergies vs. intolerances and the symptoms they cause. My cat had intolerance whereas it sounds like yours has an allergy.
https://thrivingcat.com/why-do-cats-chew-things
https://thrivingcat.com/what-is-the-best-cat-food-for-a-sensitive-stomach
Thank you for stopping by!
Jessica