Best Freeze Dried Food For Cats

Stella & Chewy’s is a Wisconsin based pet food company that is all about natural, healthy diets for cats and dogs. Their Freeze Dried Chicken Dinner Morsels are a complete and balanced meal you can give to your cat every day.

Stella & Chewy’s Chicken Dinner Morsels contain a whopping 98% chicken meat, organs and ground bone. They contain only a minimal amount of carbs and barely any filler ingredients. The fifth ingredient listed is pumpkin seeds, which are added as a source of fiber. Further down the list are fenugreek seeds, dandelion and dried kelp. All of these ingredients are generally used as homeopathic remedies for various ailments in humans. They are considered safe for cats to eat, especially the low amounts that are found in Stella & Chewy’s Chicken Dinner Morsels.

However, it should be noted that they have not been proven to have the same beneficial effects in cats as they do in human beings. Cats get their energy solely from animal protein and fats, and any fur, tendons or bones that they ingest act similarly to plant-based fiber in human diets. In that sense, any plant-based or artificial ingredient can be considered a filler ingredient.

That being said, Stella & Chewy’s Freeze Dried Chicken Dinner Morsels contain very little compared to pretty much any other commercial cat food. On top of that, they are also the only freeze dried cat food we reviewed that did not contain any seafood, whether it be as a source of protein or a supplement (fish oil).

This cat food does contain a higher amount of phosphates than our other recommendations, which can be problematic if your cat has chronic kidney disease or renal insufficiency. However, the increase in phosphorus is balanced with an increase in calcium. If you are worried that your cat is taking in too much phosphorus, take them in for a blood panel and consult with your vet about possibly adding a phosphate binder like Epakitin. I give this to my cat every day mixed into some probiotic cat yogurt, and she is doing great.

What we love most about Stella & Chewy’s in general is that they are a very reliable, trustworthy company that uses responsibly sourced, premium ingredients. And they actually listen to their customers!

After a 2018 product change that added a lot of unnecessary fruits and vegetables to their freeze dried cat foods, cat owners all around spoke up. And Stella & Chewy’s listened. They removed the fruits and vegetables and are now again selling purely animal-based freeze dried cat food. Win!

Nulo is another company born out of the love for pets and the realization that traditional pet foods are basically just fast food. Nulo strives to give pet owners a healthier option by creating more nutritious products formulated with the help of veterinarians and animal nutritionists.

Nulo Freestyle Freeze Dried Raw Turkey & Duck Recipe is an excellent, high protein cat food. It does have a significantly higher fat content than the other products on our list, so it is less suitable for cats that are less active or need to lose weight. However, if you have an especially active cat or a cat that has trouble maintaining their weight due to an illness, the extra calories are a welcome addition.

Nulo Freestyle Freeze Dried Raw is supplemented with probiotics to support your cat’s immune system and digestive tract. It also contains cranberries, probably as a means to prevent feline urinary tract infections. While cranberries do seem to have some potential health benefits for humans and mice, the scientific evidence for this is thin at best and not definitively proven to be applicable to cats.

This product also contains salmon oil as a source of omega-3 fatty acids. These act as an anti-inflammatory and contribute to a healthy, shiny coat. However, if your cat has seafood allergies, you should obviously not feed it to them.

If you are looking for a limited ingredient freeze dried cat food, Vital Cat Freeze Dried Duck Mini Nibs from Vital Essentials is the one to go for. The bitesize nibs consist of duck, duck and more duck. They are supplemented with herring oil to make sure your cat gets all the fatty acids needed to keep her healthy. But if your cat has seafood allergies, this food is not an option.

Vital Cat Duck Mini Nibs are low in fat content, high in fiber and contain an acceptable amount of carbohydrates. This makes it a great option for cats that could stand to lose some weight or need digestive support.

The only real downside to this product that we could find is that Vital Essentials does not give a full nutritional analysis of it on their website. They do provide a list of vitamins and minerals with their quantities. However, this list hasn’t been updated since 2018 and it doesn’t explicitly state the exact amounts of carbohydrates and ash, which is what we are most interested in.

The rules and regulations surrounding pet foods produced in the US formulated by AAFCO are subject to change, generally not enforced and not necessarily in the best interest of animals. As a matter of fact, AAFCO members include people from the pet food industry, so they’re not exactly unbiased.

One change we observed quite recently is that cat food manufacturers are no longer required to disclose the amounts of carbs and ash in their foods. As a consequence, most of them don’t anymore, which seems kind of suspect. In our opinion, a pet food company that claims to be all about pet health should be open and honest about all of their ingredients, even if the regulations don’t require them to be.

Feline Natural Chicken & Lamb Feast is high in protein with a very low carb content. It consists of 99% real meat ingredients, including New Zealand green-lipped mussel, and  supplemented with flaxseed and dried kelp. Of course, mussels are seafood, and not all cats seem to tolerate them as well as more common seafood ingredients like salmon or tuna. Even if your cat hasn’t shown symptoms of seafood allergies before, keep an eye on them after feeding them this food. If they start vomiting or have diarrhea, it could very well be an adverse reaction to the mussels.

Some cat owners report that their cats aren’t interested in this food at all. In most cases, this concerns cats who are so used to the grain-filled junk food they’ve been eating for years that they have become addicted to it and are turned off by the smell of freeze dried food. Which is a foul one, I’ll admit.

If your cat is really old and set in their ways, you might not be able to get them to accept such a drastic change in diet. Your best bet is to make the transition slowly. Mix only a bit of the freeze dried food in with their old food so that they can get used to the smell. Or use an in-between-food that is closer to their old food in terms of ingredients, before switching them to a high protein freeze dried food like Feline Natural.

Primal Pet Foods is another pet food company striving to provide cats and dogs with an all natural, species-appropriate diet. Or they claim to be, at least. Their Chicken & Salmon Freeze Dried Nuggets consist of 90% animal-based ingredients, topped with 10% organic produce and supplements, including kale, yams, apples and broccoli. It contains salmon oil and cod liver oil, which are possible allergens. On top of that, it also contains coconut oil, which can cause diarrhea and gastric issues in cats. All of this puts them at the bottom of our list.

Nevertheless, Primal Freeze Dried Nuggets are relatively popular among cat owners and their cats. They come in a wide variety of flavors, which is perfect for finicky cats that don’t like to eat the same thing twice. The high amount of plant-based filler ingredients likely make this food more appealing to cats that are used to grain-filled dry foods.

As such, Primal Freeze Dried Nuggets are a great transition food for cats that are not quite ready to say yes to other freeze dried foods. However, we do advise you to switch to a better, more healthy freeze dried food once your cat is used to it. The added sugars from the produce in Primal Freeze Dried Nuggets will put your cat at risk of becoming diabetic, so this is definitely not a food you should feed them long term.

And as far as pet food companies go, we are less impressed with Primal Cat Foods than we are with any of the other manufacturers on our list. Their customer service is oftentimes unreachable, they do not respond to email requests and their company values seem to lack real substance from a healthy cat perspective. They apparently find it more important to let us know that they support workplace diversity, than to make any mention of veterinary or scientific validation of their products. All they tell us is that they are made with love. Great. I’ll tell my cat.