# no carrageenan, guar gum or xanthan gum.



## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

lotus canned food. i bought some of their dry food awhile back because it's baked (not extruded) but since i hardly give them any dry, i couldn't say too much about it. my cats are pretty much ravenous for ANY dry food since they hardly ever get any. they'd probably eat kellogg's corn flakes if i put it in their dishes. anyway, i wanted to get some canned but they're weren't making it yet (?--i'm not positive about this) but i just got a bunch of it with my last order.

on looks: it's kind of disgusting looking (even for cat food lol) and i will bet that's because carrageenan/guar and xanthan gum are thickening agents used for aesthetic, not nutritional, purposes. it's pretty soupy, for those of you who have cats that prefer the soupiest pate.

i only got grain-free salmon/vegetable pate. my cats like it. here's a video link for a woman trying it out on her cats the first time: 



 
and i could be wrong, but i thought she said if you write to the company and tell them you want to try it, they'll send you samples? couldn't hurt to ask--i'll probably ask for some samples even though i already bought a case, the chicken and turkey types anyway because i don't know that they'd eat that kind.

there are tons of links to cat food types, etc. from this one for anyone interested.


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## spirite (Jul 31, 2012)

Thanks for posting this cinderflower! I considered Lotus at my local natural foods pet store, but I think I didn't buy it because of all of the vegetables (carrot haters, both of my girls). However, based on what you say about how soupy the consistency is, I'm going to buy a few cans and see how they go over. I'd be thrilled to find something to go along with the Pinnacle, since I know that in a few days, they'll decide they don't like Pinnacle anymore. Mine won't touch salmon, so I think I'll play it safe and go with the chicken - and keep my fingers crossed.

I don't know where you buy your food, but at onlynaturalpet.com it's on sale - $1.32 for a 5.5 oz. can. This place is my latest favorite - they have terrific customer service.


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

Finally something without carrageenan and the gums, too bad they aren't available in Sg.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

spirite said:


> I considered Lotus at my local natural foods pet store, but I think I didn't buy it because of all of the vegetables (carrot haters, both of my girls).


i thought twice about it because of all the vegetables too, but i have my trusty old black and decker food processor that i only use for cat food if something is too chunky. fortunately, this doesn't have hunks of carrots in it, and they all three licked their bowls clean first pass so i'd say it's a hit. i also bought some spot's stew grain-free chicken, shrimp & crab and it _does_ have whole peas and hunks of carrots, but i was surprised. they scarf all of it down and don't pick anything out. it has guar gum in it but i don't think that's quite as bad as carrageenan, not sure. and it's a plus if they'll send you some samples. i just e-mailed and asked right now so i don't know yet but they're at lotuspetfoods.com.



> I don't know where you buy your food, but at onlynaturalpet.com it's on sale - $1.32 for a 5.5 oz. can. This place is my latest favorite - they have terrific customer service.


thanks! i'm a total sale shopper @ doggiefood.com. i got a case of 12.5 oz. cans and also 20% off since i ordered over $200 worth at once so i got it for .19 an ounce, so about 1.04 for a 5.5 oz. can. if i shop this site right, i can get almost any food cheaper than fancy feast, which used to be a favorite of my cats. they have since gone over to the other side. someone had a post about the cheaper stuff being digested more easily, but i noticed over time that even with the grain-free stuff, they would get diarrhea or really smelly bm's so i slowly phased it out, especially after i figured out how inexpensively i could buy the better food. doggiefood can be a little slow, but i always order enough to get free shipping and i order enough food at a time so that i never run out anymore.


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## anie (Dec 4, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> i'm a total sale shopper @ doggiefood.com. .


do they have sales on doggiefood.com? I ordered once (was it you who told me about the coupon?  ), everything was fine, so I wouldn't mind shopping there more often. or you just use coupon codes?


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

it might have been you, i know it was someone lol but my brain is like a sieve sometimes.

when i first decided to go 100% canned (or 95-98%, depending on how tired i get sometimes) i looked at wag.com, petflowdirect, naturalpet and doggiefood. even with the monthly deliveries pre-ordered, doggiefood had the best prices of them all as long as you buy over $100 worth at a time. i think with that there's usually a flat 15% discount + free shipping, anything over $200 and it's 20% off.

this is actually not even feasible for someone unless they know what kind of food their cat will eat consistently. the last thing you want is to be donating cases of really expensive food because your cats won't go near it. as far as i can tell, they have most of their merchandise marked down consistently, but they do have specials. if it's something i would ordinarily buy, fine, but it isn't a deal if it's some weird food my cats won't eat. not even weird sometimes, i tried before grain and no deal. nope. they didn't like it. i tricked them into eating a whole case of it by mixing it with weruva . then i never bought it again. i don't mind mixing foods, because i do that all the time to create different flavors so they don't get bored. i don't even really plan it, sometimes i just grab cans and mix for the day. in general, the only time i buy cases of food is when they'll eat it not mixed with anything else.

doggiefood doesn't take back partial cases. the local pet store does, but they're considerably more expensive, don't give a discount when i buy bulk and charge for delivery regardless so that's why i don't get it from them. i liked the store, i just have a limited amount of money to work with.

i did a lot of work going in--for six weeks in may and june i spent about $400 on cat food, trying to find out what they liked. but this was because i was buying single cans of different types and small 3 oz. cans. buying it like that, it's definitely more expensive than fancy feast. but when you can buy in bulk, sometimes it's even cheaper because FF only comes in 3 oz. cans. ever since then i spend approximately $90-$100 on food for three cats. the only food that is always exorbitantly expensive is tiki cat, but i still buy a case (it only comes in 8 can cases) once in a while, then i stretch it with plain chicken weruva. but if you never buy it, your cat will never miss it so . . .

i'll put up all the coupon codes in the right section (lol now that i know where it is) so if someone needs them they'll be there. once you buy from them, they'll send you a million e-mails with codes anyway but there will probably always be new people.


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## anie (Dec 4, 2012)

lol it was me, because i remember our conversation of where your post had been gone  haha! thanks!


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## Ragdoll_Joy (Jul 13, 2012)

I'm so confused...I thought we were supposed to stay away from anything with vegetables since cats are carnivors? Are you saying that the worthlessness of those outweight the stabelizers that keep meat only canned foods safe?! (at least I think that is what they are for...)
HELP!


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## Pandoragem (Jul 15, 2012)

Lotus has agar-agar in it, a polysaccharide made from seaweed (like carrnegean). All canned pet foods use either gums or starches for consistency, moisture and texture. 

For example Fromm 4 star canned has no gums or thickeners but has potato starch which raises the carb level to 30% on a dry matter basis so it's a "pick your poison" sort of thing. 

The only way to get away from starches, gums, or polysaccharides completely is to feed homemade raw.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

Ragdoll_Joy said:


> I'm so confused...I thought we were supposed to stay away from anything with vegetables since cats are carnivors? Are you saying that the worthlessness of those outweight the stabelizers that keep meat only canned foods safe?! (at least I think that is what they are for...)
> HELP!


it's confusing. actually, i don't think there's anything wrong with vegetables and fruits like blueberries and cranberries used for antioxidant properties. what you don't want to see is the carb % being driven up by fillers like corn/soy/wheat/rice. although if a cat isn't sensitive to grains, i've noticed some of the foods like trader joe's and newman's own use rice. i have one cat who is grain intolerant so i just don't buy anything with grain to make feeding three cats less complicated. i mainly started avoiding carrageenan because one of my cats possibly has IBD, so i figured the less of it the better. all of these additives are present in a lot of human food. the seaweed derivatives were originally used in kosher and vegan food because most gelatin came from animal sources.

two of the weruva foods i buy only have xanthan gum, tiki cat has none, not even agar agar, hound & gatos only has brewer's yeast, spot's stew has xanthan and guar but not carrageenan, and wellness has carrageenan (not the core, just the plain old chicken pate type). spot's stew, wellness and the lotus are the only pates i use that have some fruit/vegetables, the rest are all meat. if you want to get very technical, you can write to any company and get the carb content, personally, i just got tired of all the calculating after i found combinations that my cats like to eat.

the gums, agar agar and carrageenan are thickening agents, not preservatives. by virtue of the canning process itself, the food doesn't really need preservatives as long as the remainder is refrigerated and used in a timely fashion. if you really wanted to go hog nuts, you could buy mason jars and can your own cat food, but i just freeze mine. 

you can get around it all by only feeding raw meat if that's what you want to do, or you can make your own cat food. the only additives i put in mine are bone meal, nutritional yeast, vitamins a, d (my cats don't like liver) and e, salmon oil and unflavored gelatin. making your own food is cheaper than buying the high-end stuff but more expensive (and a little more trouble, but it's really not a big deal) than buying friskies.

if i can remember correctly, FF doesn't use the gums or carrageenan and all the original pate flavors are grain-free. it's the by-products that make it questionable food, but if that's what your cat likes and wants to eat, go with whatever doesn't make your life unbearable. finding affordable food their cats will even eat is the issue for most people, all additives aside.

i like BPA-free cans primarily because the cats are eating out of cans every day. i don't eat processed food very often so i don't really care for myself, but i think if eaten on a daily basis it could have some negative health effects.

i really not sure why lotus uses agar agar, either, because straight out of the can it's kind of sloshy but if i refrigerate some and warm it up in the microwave, the usual 25-30 seconds i use on the rest of the food turn it into soup, period.


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

cinderflower said:


> if i can remember correctly, FF doesn't use the gums or carrageenan and all the original pate flavors are grain-free. it's the by-products that make it questionable food,


And the fact that they source ingredients from China and use pet quality ingredients not human.


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## Lady's Secret (Nov 14, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> when i first decided to go 100% canned (or 95-98%, depending on how tired i get sometimes) i looked at wag.com, petflowdirect, naturalpet and doggiefood. even with the monthly deliveries pre-ordered, doggiefood had the best prices of them all as long as you buy over $100 worth at a time. i think with that there's usually a flat 15% discount + free shipping, anything over $200 and it's 20% off.


Cinderflower - Do you need coupons to get the 15% or 20% discount? Or is it atomatically applied to your cart when you spend $100 or $200? I've never bought from doggiefood before. But it sounds like a great place to buy from and save money if they always have this discount.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

hi lady's secret,

go here: http://www.catforum.com/forum/36-ca...ct-other-pet-supply-coupon-codes-deals-6.html it's the first sticky in cat chat for pet supply coupon codes and mine is at the bottom on the last page. if you order from doggiefod.com, they will send you the coupon codes for the rest of your life lol but i will continue to put the codes there for people who've never gone.

remember, they don't take back partial cases, and the best deals are on the biggest cans (12.5 oz.) but not all brands come in cans bigger than 5.5 so make sure it's a food your cats like or you'll get stuck. mixing flavors of different brands works really well for me, too, but my cats don't appear to have any reservations about texture. some cats don't like shredded but mine seem to eat anything that is edible.


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## Lady's Secret (Nov 14, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> hi lady's secret,
> 
> go here: http://www.catforum.com/forum/36-ca...ct-other-pet-supply-coupon-codes-deals-6.html it's the first sticky in cat chat for pet supply coupon codes and mine is at the bottom on the last page. if you order from doggiefod.com, they will send you the coupon codes for the rest of your life lol but i will continue to put the codes there for people who've never gone.
> 
> remember, they don't take back partial cases, and the best deals are on the biggest cans (12.5 oz.) but not all brands come in cans bigger than 5.5 so make sure it's a food your cats like or you'll get stuck. mixing flavors of different brands works really well for me, too, but my cats don't appear to have any reservations about texture. some cats don't like shredded but mine seem to eat anything that is edible.


Thanks! They sale several foods I know my cats love. So the next time I order I'm gonna give them a try. Thanks for letting me know about them!


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## spirite (Jul 31, 2012)

doodlebug said:


> And the fact that they source ingredients from China and use pet quality ingredients not human.


Ahhhh!!! Doodlebug, you are seriously limiting my feeding options!  Thank you for that information. I've been working on weaning mine off the FF for several months, and I'm finally getting somewhere (that's undoubtedly because I bought 3 cases a couple of weeks ago). We're down to once or twice a week, so this is just more motivation to cut all of it out unless there's a hunger strike. 



cinderflower said:


> i thought twice about it because of all the vegetables too, but i have my trusty old black and decker food processor that i only use for cat food if something is too chunky. fortunately, this doesn't have hunks of carrots in it, and they all three licked their bowls clean first pass so i'd say it's a hit. i also bought some spot's stew grain-free chicken, shrimp & crab and it _does_ have whole peas and hunks of carrots, but i was surprised. they scarf all of it down and don't pick anything out.


Yep, I bought a mini-processor a few months ago just for their food. I should be getting my cans of Lotus this Friday. Since the girls are once again in fussy phase, I hope they like the Lotus. I tried Spot's and it got the royal turndown - along with all the other brands. :fust


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

> Ahhhh!!! Doodlebug, you are seriously limiting my feeding options! :wink: Thank you for that information. I've been working on weaning mine off the FF for several months, and I'm finally getting somewhere (that's undoubtedly because I bought 3 cases a couple of weeks ago). We're down to once or twice a week, so this is just more motivation to cut all of it out unless there's a hunger strike.


i know, just think back 20 years, thinking "gourmet cat food" was fantastic and they show it served in the little crystal dish to make it so elegant.

here's what made me most resistant to using it: smell it and pretend like someone served it to you. now, not that i would scarf down wellness or (especially) lotus, but against everyone's (even my own) better judgement, i have tasted (and spit out) a couple of kinds: merrick's grammy's pot pie and paw lickin' chicken. it just tastes like people food, except really bland. i'm pretty sure grammy's pot pie is better than what is served in some school cafeterias. and if you can find a number of foods your cats will eat and buy in bulk, it evens out to be less expensive than FF. you have to figure prices by ounces though, you can't go by can. i didn't think i would be able to do it at first, but after two or three months, it's kind of amazing. i feel like it's dumb for me to buy an inferior food when it isn't less expensive than what most people consider cost-prohibitive.

but bringing up the smell and texture of lotus: i was really truly surprised at how my cats get their grub on with it and lick their bowls even. to be perfectly honest, i think it looks a little sickening and it doesn't smell very good either. then again, i got the salmon/vegetable pate so anything with fish in it is generally smelly. (except for tiki cat chicken & wild salmon, and i think that's probably what cats eat every day in heaven lol.)

i've heard a lot of people say their cats don't care for spot's stew--and i didn't even try it at first based on that. who knew my cats would eat peas and carrots? (weirdos.)


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

I haven't tried Lotus cat food, but gave the dog food to Jake a couple times. It looks and smells really disgusting too...gray slop. Jake didn't have a strong opinion about it, so I decided to forget it. 

About cats eating peas...I used to pick up Chinese food from a place that put peas in their fried rice. I'm not a fan of peas, so I would pick them out and push them to the side. One day I was reading while I was eating....Callie jumped up on the table and squished herself down as low as she could go. She snuck up behind my book, like I couldn't see her, and then reached her little paw around the edge and grabbed a pea off my plate. Hysterical. It was too funny to get mad about, so after that we had a little game whenever I had fried rice.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

little . . . round . . . kind of tasty from fried rice, i can see a cat wanting to eat peas when it's put like that. i put peas in my spanish rice and i like them so i never gave my cats a chance to swipe them i guess.

i did notice that some of the companies are putting yams in their cat food for antioxidant properties. i never liked sweet potatoes because of all the stuff people put on them (marshmallows--i know, i'm weird. don't like pumpkin pie either) but i bought some to eat baked and i'm surprised how much i like them. the only thing weird about them is they tend to have tough spots where the skin is more fibrous and there are strange strings, but baci tried to raid my plate so i put it on the floor and he ate the parts i didn't want. just gets stranger and stranger.

i wonder if fibrous yam pieces are as good as pumpkin for hairballs because none of my cats will eat pumpkin.


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## anie (Dec 4, 2012)

ha! I will be getting lotus food soon, we will see how my cats like it.
I dont try to fool myself that they will go nuts for it - they have never gone nuts for anything good quality  but maybe they will at least try


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

cinderflower said:


> i wonder if fibrous yam pieces are as good as pumpkin for hairballs because none of my cats will eat pumpkin.


Yup...sweet potatoes are an good source of fiber. Chick peas too.


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> i it just tastes like people food, except really bland.


You tasted the cat food? wow! but anyway I'm glad its bland, cos I see salt and sodium whatever added into wet food and just recently, a pet store staff told me not to feed too much wet, cos its salty and I was wondering just how salty it can be.


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## anie (Dec 4, 2012)

snowy said:


> You tasted the cat food? wow! but anyway I'm glad its bland, cos I see salt and sodium whatever added into wet food and just recently, a pet store staff told me not to feed too much wet, cos its salty and I was wondering just how salty it can be.


i accidentally licked my finger once while putting wet on my cats' plates. it was kinda bland. actually i was surprised how bland it was - i always thought it has some flavor, since wet cat food has very "rich bouquet"  it was not salty at all


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

Thank you, another one confirming cat food is bland, so, no cause for worry feeding wet.


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## spirite (Jul 31, 2012)

So doodlebug did Callie actually eat any of the peas?

Years ago when I had my first cat, I was having a bowl of canned peas (don't ask - for some reason, that's what I felt like eating) when she came and swished furiously at my legs. She wouldn't go away, so I put a few on a plate, sort of as a joke, thinking silly cat, go ahead and see. She scarfed them down and wanted more.

With the two current ones, if the food has whole peas and diced carrots, I have to pick them out because they won't even eat around them. They seem to consider them obstacles to the rest of the food on the plate.

Thanks to doodlebug and cinderflower for the warning about the Lotus.

The worst-smelling food I've found so far was the Wellness Core fish one. I don't remember what was in it - herring maybe? Whew.


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## doodlebug (May 13, 2006)

Oh yes, she loved them. She'd eat as many as I'd give her. But then Callie would eat just about anything...her favorite was roasted red peppers. The only thing she ever turned her nose up at was pretzels. She was a stray that I took in and up till the very end (11 years later), she still acted like she didn't know where her next meal was coming from.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

snowy said:


> You tasted the cat food? wow! but anyway I'm glad its bland, cos I see salt and sodium whatever added into wet food and just recently, a pet store staff told me not to feed too much wet, cos its salty and I was wondering just how salty it can be.


to be fair, grammy's pot pie was reviewed online and a woman said she tasted it and "it's not bad," which gave me the idea. i didn't expect to want to eat it myself, i just wondered how bad "not bad" really is. i'm not positive that if you put it in a bowl and salted it, that a person who eats meat would be able to tell it's cat food.

i ended up giving 18 cans of it to the cat care society because the only one of my cats who would eat it is the grain intolerant one and it would make her throw up. evidently, it's kind of true that the stinkier the better. but some of the FF literally makes me gag, and there's absolutely no way i'd dare taste it. paw lickin' chicken is just strips of chicken breast in water and it would most likely pass for people food as well. it's one of the staple foods my cats will always eat, and i mix it with other foods to add variety.

many years ago i was at a party and the woman giving it had a cat. she went in the kitchen to fix food for it, got distracted and left a bowl of cat food on the counter. it was late in the evening, and a really drunk guy wandered over and started eating it with tortilla chips. he was like, "this is really good," and some other people who had seen what it was started laughing and the girl who left it there started screaming, "DON'T EAT THAT!" even after that, i have never ever been tempted to try canned cat food.

but i don't think i can testify there isn't added salt in some cat foods. read the label i guess, but as far as i know, none of the better food has added salt. not that cats don't like it, but they probably get high blood pressure or something from too much. or something. i don't know. and i wouldn't know of any of the brands you can buy in sweden but it will be on the label as sodium chloride.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

> Thanks to doodlebug and cinderflower for the warning about the Lotus.


don't get me wrong, my cats like it. *i'm* the one who thinks it looks gross lol. that would be part of the answer to why companies add the carrageenan, guar and xanthan gum--it improves the way it looks aesthetically to us. cats go by smell. and it smells bad to me as well, but i'm blaming that on the salmon. 

if i ever expected one of my cats to try to cover a food up like poop, it would be that one, but they like it. which is good because it's one of the foods that comes in at .18 an ounce, and even when you find fancy feast on sale, it's usually more than that.


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## SimonCat (Dec 10, 2012)

Go! Grain Free Pate for cats contains no Carageenan or Guar in their new formulas. There are new formulas coming too.


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## spirite (Jul 31, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> but i don't think i can testify there isn't added salt in some cat foods. read the label i guess, but as far as i know, none of the better food has added salt. not that cats don't like it, but they probably get high blood pressure or something from too much. or something. i don't know. and i wouldn't know of any of the brands you can buy in sweden but it will be on the label as sodium chloride.


cinderflower, I'd asked a few months back about salt in cat food because I was seeing it so much. I thought it was weird, but someone said they didn't think it was bad for cats. 

So...guess what food has salt? Yep, Lotus. As well as Castor & Pollux Organix, I and love and you, Blue Wilderness, Nutro Max, NutriSource, and Pinnacle. And of course FF. Oh, and the Hill's a/d food. The only brand currently in my cabinet that doesn't have salt is Avoderm. I know that it's an ingredient in a lot more high quality foods, but since my girls wouldn't eat them, I gave them away, so I can't check any more. 

I feel like it wasn't always this way, but who knows? I wasn't looking until the past few months.

Oh, I understood what you meant about the smell of Lotus.  Cats do really like the stinkier foods though, it would appear. My cans of Lotus arrived today, but the box was sitting outside all day and I think the high temp was 24, so I didn't open them. I hope the food will be ok.


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## scottd (Jun 28, 2011)

Some brands are removing carrageenan because some consumers are trying to avoid it. It's worth noting that the "good" brands aren't using "degraded carrageenan" which is what is causing issues in studies. Undegraded appears to be safe and doesn't concern me too much. That being said, I would prefer if it were replaced with something less controversial.

As far as guar gum and such, it's completely safe and I've not read any literature at all that says it's harmful.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

spirite said:


> cinderflower, I'd asked a few months back about salt in cat food because I was seeing it so much. I thought it was weird, but someone said they didn't think it was bad for cats.
> 
> So...guess what food has salt? Yep, Lotus. As well as Castor & Pollux Organix, I and love and you, Blue Wilderness, Nutro Max, NutriSource, and Pinnacle. And of course FF. Oh, and the Hill's a/d food. The only brand currently in my cabinet that doesn't have salt is Avoderm. I know that it's an ingredient in a lot more high quality foods, but since my girls wouldn't eat them, I gave them away, so I can't check any more.
> 
> I feel like it wasn't always this way, but who knows? I wasn't looking until the past few months.


i never thought about it either. that's another thing i like about doggiefood, if you go to a specific food, there's an ingredient list for all of them.

there is no way i will taste the lotus (lol) so the only one i can say from experience is the grammy's pot pie. it has salt listed as an ingredient, but i can tell you that it doesn't taste of any salt whatsoever. why they add it, if they add so little, doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

it's also added to mideast feast (which i have not tasted) but there is none in paw lickin' chicken (which explains why it doesn't taste like there's any in it haha.) Salt Cassia is listed as an ingredient in the rabbit h & g, but i have a feeling it's a typo and should be salt, cassia (a spice similar to cinnamon).

when making my own, no salt is called for. the problem i have is that i am unable to exactly duplicate some of the canned foods. they like the chicken flavored one i make fine--they lick their bowls, but i even bought a can of salmon thinking maybe i could duplicate the napili luau, and no such luck. because i don't eat meat or fish and am not familiar with the way a lot of human food looks, i was so shocked when i opened the can of salmon. it was GROSS. and not just because i wouldn't eat it, it completely looked like cat food and i'm not exaggerating. mideast feast looks better than the can of human salmon. they put the little vertebrae in it from the spine and people actually like to eat that! crunch crunch crunch. anyway, my cats apparently felt the same way about it. i even just put some of it plain in my cat's dishes, and they wouldn't eat it. now THAT should be telling for human fish lol.

left with things i can make, turkey is an option i haven't tried, pork butt might be (an inexpensive cut of pork--i'm not buying pork chops to feed my cats), none of my cats have ever been enamored of anything beef flavored but i could try. i'm not buying lamb or veal, and i'm pretty sure any of the human grade fish i could buy is too expensive. if i could make friends with some hunters, i could easily get venison, elk or pheasant because colorado has a lot of wildlife. i should try to find some fishermen too because there are LOTS of trout in mountain lakes and rivers. it would be freshwater, and how polluted the water is i wouldn't have any idea. i know coors likes to say, "made with fresh rocky mountain spring water," but i also hear people say how awful it tastes LOL. runoff from mountain snow shouldn't be that bad but you never know (acid rain in california and fecal rain in greeley and acupulco).

all this reinforces my reluctance to trust any processed cat food. i eat as little processed food as possible because try reading a label. it's horrible. and it's not that much trouble to make a lot of cat food at once and freeze it. i *know* (aside from weruva and probably tikicat and h & g) that they are adding "secret ingredients" to make it taste better. and we'll never find out what any of those are. as far as salt for cats though, i think it probably takes a lot to cause them problems. and how much are they putting in it? i guess i could write to all the ones who do add it, but i'm kind of sick of writing to pet food companies. i think i'll go to some vet sites and try to see what they say about salt.


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## cinderflower (Apr 22, 2012)

scottd said:


> Some brands are removing carrageenan because some consumers are trying to avoid it. It's worth noting that the "good" brands aren't using "degraded carrageenan" which is what is causing issues in studies. Undegraded appears to be safe and doesn't concern me too much. That being said, I would prefer if it were replaced with something less controversial.
> 
> As far as guar gum and such, it's completely safe and I've not read any literature at all that says it's harmful.


but how are we supposed to know which are degraded or not? does it state that on the label?

as far as guar or xanthan gum, the tiki cat i buy doesn't have any of that in it, and i believe the two weruva brands i buy only use xanthan gum. i just wonder why any of it is necessary at all. if it's for appearance sake, they might as well skip it. none of the home made cat food recipes call for any of those, although the one i use does include unflavored gelatin. it's to make it hold together better, i suppose. i'll skip it on the next batch and see what happens.


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## scottd (Jun 28, 2011)

cinderflower said:


> but how are we supposed to know which are degraded or not? does it state that on the label?
> 
> as far as guar or xanthan gum, the tiki cat i buy doesn't have any of that in it, and i believe the two weruva brands i buy only use xanthan gum. i just wonder why any of it is necessary at all. if it's for appearance sake, they might as well skip it. none of the home made cat food recipes call for any of those, although the one i use does include unflavored gelatin. it's to make it hold together better, i suppose. i'll skip it on the next batch and see what happens.


You have to ask them, it's not usually on the label. They should be able to give a simple yes or no answer to whether or not they use degraded.

It's for texture. It basically does what you do with gelatin. Some companies have good results with tapioca powder too. They use it to make it more palatable for the kitties.


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## snowy (Aug 23, 2012)

cinderflower said:


> many years ago i was at a party and the woman giving it had a cat. she went in the kitchen to fix food for it, got distracted and left a bowl of cat food on the counter. it was late in the evening, and a really drunk guy wandered over and started eating it with tortilla chips. he was like, "this is really good," and some other people who had seen what it was started laughing and the girl who left it there started screaming, "DON'T EAT THAT!" even after that, i have never ever been tempted to try canned cat food.


Sorry, I can't help bursting out in laughter, this is really very funny.


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