Hill's Science Diet Nature's Best

Here are the ingredients for the chicken and rice:

Chicken, Brown Rice, Soybean Meal, Whole Grain Wheat, Chicken Meal, Pork Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Dried Egg Product, Flaxseed, Dried Beet Pulp, Natural Flavor, Cracked Pearled Barley, Whole Grain Oats, Apples, Cranberries, Fish Oil, Peas, Carrots, Soybean Oil, Dicalcium Phosphate, Iodized Salt, Broccoli, vitamins (L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, Potassium Chloride, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), DL-Methionine, L-Tryptophan, Taurine, L-Threonine, preserved with Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid, Beta-Carotene, Rosemary Extract. 

IMO it's a huge step up from other Science Diet foods!  It still wouldn't be my first choice of foods, but it's way better than most!

I don't see how that's any better than say their large breed lamb + rice formula which actually has a meat meal as the first ingredient.

Oh goodie, yet another overpriced product with low grade ingredients. I just don't picture Rover salivating over yummy whole grain wheat, soybean meal, dried egg product and dried beet pulp!

It has both wheat and soy, and rely's heavily on the soy as a protein source.  When you have a meat listed first, such as chicken, you have to factor the weight of the bones and the 70% water, so there is very little meat left there, and chicken meal doesn't show up for several ingredients.  And I don't like th pork fat.  Some dogs have issues with pork so it makes no sense to use it other than the fact it's really cheap.

I'm not saying that I would feed it, but I still think it's way better than other Science Diet foods and a lot of other foods out there. WOW, I just went and double checked the ingredients. It looks like the one I posted was their puppy formula. Look at the difference in ingredients for the adult food! It's worse! Corn gluten meal, animal fat...

I switched our senior cat to Nature's Best chicken and she is doing so much better.  Her kidneys were beginning to fail and thought we would try this food before going on to RX food.  With all the negativities I've read abut SD, it really seems to work for animals with any kidney issues or older pets.  I guess its b/c the phosphorous is lower than most dry foods out there.

cat would probably do far better on a fresh home-made low phosphorus diet that actually had meat in it. Feeding grains and soy to dogs is weird enough, but cats? they should never eat anything other than dead animals. commercial grain-based cat food is probably what causes all the diabetes and kidney failure in pet cats these days.

Molly is a weird cat in that she will not touch people food.  We've tried.

 Actually she's a normal cat.  You have to train kitties young to accept variety, or they will not want anything other than what they are familiar with.  Then there's the problem that you can't starve out a cat.  They can get liver problems from skipping just one day of food.

But there are definitely low phosphate kibble options that aren't bags of overpriced wheat and soy. 

brookcove

But there are definitely low phosphate kibble options that aren't bags of overpriced wheat and soy.

This is how my vet described it to me when we put my old cat Misty on Purina NF (NF stands for Nitrogen Free). On of the by-products of consuming animal protein is the release of nitrogen. It is filtered out by the kidneys and passes out of the body in urine. When the kidneys get old and don't work as fast or as well as they used to, they can't handle the rate of nitrogen they once did. It then backs up in the system causing lethargy and nausea, feline version of the bends. The nitrogen free extract in an NF formula is protein from sources other than animal meat. Protein that does not have nitrogen to release. This takes a load off the kidneys. And my cat lost weight, too. She was so old that eating a lot of protein that she couldn't burn off was being stored as fat. It's actually a case of over nutrition. Left on her own to eat "mice the perfect package of food for a cat," she would have died from starvation when she got to old to chase after them. And she never chased mice. You don't get to eat that perfect package if you can't catch the thing.

And from what I understand, calcium is needed to link with phosphates to make them digestible. Phosphorous is another factor in consuming animal protein.

We can be very careful in what we feed. Certainly we have to, thanks to recalls and China cranking out poison after poison and a number of companies that can't wait to buy that cheap product that is poisoned, but, with the best that we can do, sometime between 10 years and 20 years old, our pets are going to die. I know someone will come along and mention a pet that lived longer than 20 years. That's great. Show me a bunch of them and what they were fed. I mean enough to make a statistically relevant statement. Other than genetics.

If we want to talk natural, then yeah Science Diet is not natural and no, cats wouldn't normally eat pounds of wheat. In Nature, they would have died from being unable to hunt and consume prey. That's natural. Eating kibble is not natural. Getting eaten as prey by a gray wolf is natural. So, I think, having cats the way we do is different than what they might have outside, and what we feed them may have to right wrongs or change things that would normally be taken care of by "survival of the fittest."

You make some good points Ron.  I too have tried homecooked for my cats and they won't touch it.  I use a high protein (45%), low carb food for my cats, and they do get a bit of canned every morning.  But, I had one heck of a time switching the older kitties from crap food, to better quality, because they don't care for variety.  And unlike a dog, they won't eat when they get hungry enough.

Nature's Best?  There's nothing natural about it at all!  Meat is what is natural and ironically it is pretty much absent from the ingredients list.

 As for cats, canned or raw food is very important for their health.  Dry food causes urinary problems.

Dry CAN cause such problems, but doesn't always.