Question
Every grain-free cat food I've seen is filled with vegetables like sweet potatoes and peas. Why is this? Why don't they just put more meat? Are there 100% meat product cat foods, wet or dry?
Answer
Why are vegetables put into commercial cat food?
There's two reasons: cost and perceived health benefits.
First, plant proteins are cheaper than animal proteins. When the food costs less to produce, the profit margin can be higher for the company.
Second, people are accustomed to believing that vegetables are healthy (because for us, they are). Cats, on the other hand, cannot digest plants. Plants are not healthy for cats, they are filler. Since people buy the food, it's marketed to us and not to our cats directly.
Does any cat food contain 100% meat
Not quite. Cat food is required to contain a number of vitamins/minerals to make up for nutrients that are lost in the processing (cooking) of animal proteins.
In addition, dry foods cannot contain a large percentage of meat because they do not hold together into kibbles. Kibble is a cereal (I believe it's often spray-dried) and so requires some amount of plant material to act as glue. The highest meat content I've ever seen in a dry food is 87% (Evo Cat and Kitten).
Canned foods, on the other hand, can be almost entirely made of meat. I'm familiar with Evo's venison and duck varieties, which are 95% meat and are particularly good for cats with allergies since they have a very limited ingredient list (though my cat who has allergies doesn't like them and we have to put something else on top). There are several smaller companies that make 90%+ meat canned foods (I suspect the manufacturing is easier than high meat dry foods), I'm just not very familiar with them.
There are also smaller companies that make frozen 90%+ meat frozen foods. I'm able to find them in my local organic market's freezer section.
Answered By - Zaralynda