The Honest Kitchen Cat Food (Dehydrated) Review And Nutritional Analysis

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The Honest Kitchen Grain-Free Chicken is one of our top 2 choices for best human grade cat food.

Here’s a few important points:

• Dehydrated and finely ground for easy digestibility and bioavailability
• Limited ingredient recipe
• Too many carbohydrate sources to be biologically appropriate

The Honest Kitchen Grain-Free product line includes 2 dehydrated 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.

• The Honest Kitchen Grain-Free Chicken (M)
• The Honest Kitchen Grain-Free Turkey (A)

The Honest Kitchen Grain-Free Chicken was selected to represent the other products in the line for this review.

Ingredient Breakdown

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

While quality of the individual ingredient can vary, chicken is a 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 second ingredient is eggs. Good.

Even though eggs are not meat, they are a highly digestible form of protein.

In fact, they are one of the most complete, bioavailable forms of protein for both humans and cats.

As long as it is not the main protein ingredient, the addition of egg is a quality ingredient

The third ingredient is potatoes. Bad.

These are typically used as filler in grain-free recipes.

They are not biologically appropriate and may cause digestive upset.

The fourth ingredient is sweet potatoes. OK, but with reservations.

Normally sweet potatoes are a good source of carbohydrates and fiber, with less sugar than beets.

However, cats do not require carbohydrates like this, and while it won’t necessarily hurt the cat, it is not biologically appropriate.

It may be hard to digest, and is unnecessary.

The fifth ingredient is organic flaxseed. Good.

Flaxseed provides a quality omega-3 fatty acid source, and nutritive fiber to the recipe.

It can only be digested when the outer shell is removed or destroyed, but the label doesn’t tell us whether this process has been done.

The sixth ingredient is pumpkin. Good.

Pumpkin is a high quality dietary fiber for cats, and is recommended over other ingredients like rice.

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 about.

This recipe utilizes chelated minerals, which may be easier to digest and more bioavailable for your cat. This is usually a sign of a high quality cat food.

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 The Honest Kitchen

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

With limited ingredients, it’s obvious that chicken makes up a large chunk of the recipe, and there are few other ingredients to worry about.

Combine that with the added vitamins and chelated minerals, and it ticks a lot of boxes.

This is a good example of the type of food you should be feeding your cat, though it’s not perfect.

Since this food starts with meat and has an average protein content, we can assume that this is a meat-based cat food, although the egg will boost the protein.

To review, on a dry matter basis, this food is 41% protein, 31% fat, and 16% carbs.

As a group, the brand has an average protein content of 41%, and average fat content of 34%, and an average carb content of 14%.

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

• Average protein.
• Above average fat.
• Average carbs.

Because it is a limited ingredient food with a fairly good recipe, our rating for this brand is 4 stars.

Recommended.

The Honest Kitchen 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 The Honest Kitchen brand in the past:

• February 2013 – Potential for salmonella – 5 recipes affected

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 The Honest Kitchen Dehydrated 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.