We buy most of our cats’ food from Tail Blazers here in Edmonton. It is a wonderful pet food store carrying wholesome, natural, healthy pet food and more. Many of their products are also made in Canada, some right here near Edmonton. I suggest you check them out if you can.
There is the odd occasion where we run out of food and the store is closed or for some other crazy circumstance, we don’t have the time to get there to get our two cats their food. In those instances, we do what we normally do for ourselves in the same situation, we turn to the processed foods.
Our food of choice was Friskies by Purina. I say ‘was’ because as of this post, Friskies is no longer allowed into our house.
The other week I was opening a tin and it seemed rather pink to me. I’m pretty sure the Salmon Dinner was never this pink before so I checked another tin. It was also bright pink. Hmmmm — still sticking to my hunch, I open a third tin and that’s when I was vindicated!
There was a difference and it was very noticeable. As you can see below, I have the exact same product here, but one is a bright pink.
click on image to enlargeSo this got me thinking. Cats can’t tell color. If it smells like food, they will pretty much eat it. So why the need to make it bright pink (trust me, the picture doesn’t even do it justice)?
Why the need to add such an excessive amount of Red 3 colouring to it?
The extra red dye doesn’t make it taste more like salmon does it? Or is the red dye there to make us believe that you just actually put salmon in it?
Just as a side note, ‘salmon’ isn’t the main ingredient here, meat by-products is so maybe they are just trying to make it look like salmon to confuse the cats into eating it — kind of like the way your mother used to put melted cheese on your vegetables when you were younger – hmmm.
And just for your information. The reason this is up there on my consumer watchlist is because I had to clean the bright pink poop out of my cat litter and it freaked me out.
Seriously, I almost called the vet!
So here is my internet apology to our beautiful cats who have been with us for 18 and 14 years. I’m so sorry, I won’t make you eat that ever again!
Friskies, do me a favour and limit the dyes you put in to your food. Then maybe the “100% Nutritionally Complete Cat Food” message you include on your tin will mean something.
Thank you for pointing this out Sheri! If our animals could speak for themselves they would be thanking you too for noticing. Natural food is the way to go!
Nancy
Dyes are one of my pet peeves! (no pun intended!!) I am allergic to some food colouring, and can't eat a lot of hard candy treats because of it. Do things really need to be so bright? I love when products use natural stuff, like beets to alter the colour a bit. Like when I add cranberries to my applesauce….but I wouldn't put food colouring in it!! Great post Sheri!