Fancy Feast Purely Cat Food (Wet) Review And Nutritional Analysis

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Here’s a few important points:

• Meat is the first ingredient, and is obviously the main ingredient in the food
• There are no fillers used, excluding thickening agents like xanthan gum
• This is a very high protein recipe. That’s mostly a good thing, but this recipe errs a bit too much on the side of too much protein and too little fat
• Some recipes use “fish broth”, which we count as an unnamed meat product. It’s not a huge issue in these foods, but we would like to know what kind of fish was used

Fancy Feast’s Purely product line includes 4 wet recipes/flavors.

Each recipe below includes its related AAFCO nutrient profile when available on the product’s official webpage or packaging: Growth (G), Maintenance (M), All Life Stages (A), Supplemental (S) or Unspecified (U).

The star rating is a rough average of all of the flavors in a single line of food. If an individual recipe scored lower or higher, we will mark that below, next to the flavor.

• Fancy Feast Purely Skipjack Tuna (M) 3 stars
• Fancy Feast Purely Chicken & Tuna (M) 4.5 stars
• Fancy Feast Purely Seabass & Shrimp (M) 3 stars
• Fancy Feast Purely Chicken (M) 4.5 stars

Fancy Feast Purely Chicken & Tuna was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

 

Ingredient Breakdown

The first ingredient in this cat food is chicken broth. Good.

Instead of using water for processing, chicken broth is added for moisture.

Broth may contain vitamins and nutrients from the original animal (chicken, in this case), that water would lack.

This is usually a sign of a high quality food.

The second ingredient is chicken. Good.

While quality of the individual ingredient can vary, chicken is a very good protein source for cats.

It’s also important to note that chicken contains about 70% water, so when it is processed and cooked for use in cat food, it will become a smaller part of the total recipe.

The third ingredient is skipjack tuna. OK, but with reservations.

Cats may love tuna, but tuna is not the best choice for your kitty.

While it is a good, lean protein that contains healthy fatty acids, it is higher in mercury than most other fish.

The mercury in tuna may be more likely to affect your cat than it would a human, since cats are likely to ingest more on a bodyweight to food ratio.

While a little treat now and then likely won’t hurt, there’s no reason to feed your cat tuna as it’s main protein source, when chicken or rabbit options are plentiful.

Cats may also have allergies to fish.

The fourth ingredient is sunflower seed oil. Good.

This is a decent source of fat for energy and potentially for a healthy coat.

Some prefer meat-based fats, like chicken fat, but sunflower seed oil is not bad.

This recipe includes a number of other ingredients, but once you get down this far, none of them will be in large enough quantities to make a real difference, except for the added vitamins and minerals. 

However, there are still a few things you should know.

Guar gum comes from guar beans, and is a thickening agent.

In small quantities, like those in cat food, it should be a harmless ingredient.

However, some research has shown that including guar gum in a commercial cat food “had a significant negative effect on apparent protein digestibility in many of the cats and tended to depress apparent fat and energy digestibilities.”

While not heavily substantiated beyond this study, it might mean your cat needs to eat more protein to make up for the lower digestibility.

This recipe also uses xanthan gum as a binding agent. While this is usually a harmless ingredient and is used in plenty of cat and human foods, some research suggests that cats with inflammatory bowel disease should not consume xanthan gum.

To read a more in depth article about any of the ingredients listed here, check out our Cat Food Ingredient Wiki (currently under development).

The Catological Verdict on Fancy Feast Purely Wet Cat Food

From top to bottom, this is an above average wet product.

Meat is the first, and just about the only, ingredient.

There are absolutely no fillers added (except for thickening agents, but those are barely “fillers”).

The protein content is extremely high. In fact, it may be one of the few foods where the protein is actually a bit too high. We’d like to see some fat added to this to help get it closer to what a cat would eat in the wild (about 23% on a dry-matter basis).

This is a good example of a wet food to feed your cat.

Since meat is pretty much the only thing in here that isn’t a vitamin, mineral, or thickening agent, it’s obvious that this is a meat-based food, which is great news for your carnivorous cat.

To review, on a dry matter basis, this food is 75% protein, 8% fat, and 3% carbs.

As a group, the brand has an average protein content of 77%, and average fat content of 9%, and an average carb content of 0%.

Compared to the other 2000+ foods in our database, this food has:

• Above average protein.
• Below average fat.
• Below average carbs.

Because meat is the first – and pretty much only – ingredient, and no fillers are used, but we’d like to see a higher fat content, our rating for this brand is 4 stars.

Recommended.

Fancy Feast’s Cat Food Recall History

We do not believe that a recall indicates a low quality food or company, and we respect the fact that sometimes things happen that cause a manufacturer to recall a food.

Usually these things are non-life-threatening, and we think it’s important to take a moment to be thankful about just how few recalls there really are in the industry, considering the enormous volume of food produced.

However, we do believe that a history of recalls may point to a larger issue with a company, and that discerning consumers want to know who they’re buying from, especially when it comes to something as important as the food you feed your beloved cat. 

Here is a list of recalls that have affected the Fancy Feast brand in the past:

• We could not find evidence of any Fancy Feast recalls, though Purina, the parent company, has had multiple over the years

If you want to stay up to date on the latest recall information affecting your cat’s food, sign up to our email list and receive an email every time a recall is announced. We’ll also let you know about any updated ratings, recipe changes, or new cat foods on the market. (Our alert system will be launched shortly, check back soon.)

Where To Buy Fancy Feast Dry Cat Food

We recommend purchasing your pet products from Chewy.com. They continually prove that they walk the walk while talking the talk, and I’ve never dealt with a more dedicated pet-parent base of people than those who work at Chewy. 

Plus, they offer 20% off and free shipping on lots of orders. 

Not Convinced?

Check out our ratings and reviews of the best cat foods in our comprehensive, data-backed guide right here.