Meat Mates have released two new products, causing a few rumblings in the health-focussed cat community, particularly due to their existing line of wet food products being generally highly regarded as healthy, balanced options. We’ve got the lowdown on these new products to save you some time.
Although at the time of writing this post, the new products aren’t available in Australia yet, pictures of the new products have been released on Meat Mate’s website and social media platforms.
Upon inspection, the packaging for these two products refer to the food as:
- Meat Mates Freeze-Dried Coated Cat Food - Grain Free Farm Dinner (lamb, beef, venison, chicken, and fish)
- Meat Mates Freeze-Dried Coated Cat Food - Grain Free Ocean Dinner (salmon, hoki, white fish, and chicken)
You may notice a distinct lack of the dirty word, “kibble”, there. On the Meat Mates website however, they are a little more transparent, and specifically refer to the products by what they really are – “cat kibble”.
This was also confirmed directly by Meat Mates on their Facebook page:
At Healthy Cat, we take a strict no-kibble stance.
Kibble is a highly processed product typically containing small amounts of protein (and usually poor quality protein at that). To ensure it is as cheap as possible for companies to produce, it is instead filled with large quantities of fillers and carbohydrates. Cats, however, are obligate carnivores, and cannot tolerate large amounts of carbohydrates.
Kibble also contains barely 10% water content. Cats generally rely heavily on getting adequate hydration through their food (raw meat has around 75% water content), and a dry diet often leads to a cat being in a perpetual state of dehydration, even if they do sometimes drink from a water bowl.
With all of these concerns combined, kibble is a cheap, profit-focussed feed product that is completely inappropriate for cat health, and can lead to obesity, certain cancers, FLUTD, kidney issues, liver issues, along with many other life-threatening health issues in the long run.
It’s a shame to see Meat Mates, who otherwise previously focussed on producing good quality, species-appropriate canned wet foods (which we do still approve of), bring out a kibble product that goes so far against what they were originally all about. It’s worth noting that this change in ethical direction has only occurred since the company was sold to an offshore conglomerate.
So, without further ado:
