| Website | Whiskas |
| Available from | Pet Circle My Pet Warehouse |
Whiskas has to be the most well known brand of cat food. It’s been around for ever. But is it any good? Read on to find out…
This review is for the Beef & Lamb Flavour recipe, but the other dry foods in the range are formulated exactly the same – go on, take a look! So even before we look at the ingredients we’ve discovered our first marketing trick. They’re not selling different recipes, they’re selling the same recipe in different bags, just with a different flavouring sachet.
Let’s consider cats for a moment. In the simplest of terms, cats are carnivores, their diet should be meat. The Number 1 ingredient in Whiskas is wholegrain cereals. What? We’ve fallen at the first hurdle! There’s a single factual reason why a cat food manufacturer would sell a diet comprised mostly of cereal grains, and that’s profit. It’s not for the well being of your much loved pet. They’re putting profit before your pet, which doesn’t sound very ethical does it?
A cereal diet is rubbish for a cat. Their digestive system is designed to digest meats, not grains. Even as far as grains go this isn’t a decent ingredient. They don’t state what type of cereals, so I pretty much guarantee it will be a mixture of dirt cheap grains like wheat, corn, sorghum, and rice. Waste products.
Thankfully we find a meat ingredient in the Number 2 spot, but it’s not decent meat. It’s meat from a rendering plant. What we’re looking at here is minced up “animals” sold as cheap slop. Quality control isn’t a factor here, so we find anything from diseased animals (tumours intact) to waste meat from other industries to roadkill. Again, profit is the only reason for this ingredient.
Next up we find another cereal ingredient, cereal protein. The protein percentage of the food is 26% which is low for a cat food, and the presence of this ingredient shows they’re hiding a lack of quality meat proteins with a protein source your cat can’t digest.
Poultry digest is another product from the rendering plant. It’s a broth that comes off the animals when they’re cooked up. It’s nasty stuff, but will otherwise give a bland tasting cereal food some flavour.
I’ll finish this review by mentioning the last ingredient on your list. Question yourself, why would your cat care about food colourings?
This is a lousy food low in protein, high in carbs, and low in anything worthwhile.
:offers:
:wheretobuy:
Ingredients
Wholegrain cereals; meat & meat by-products (poultry, beef, lamb and/or pork); cereal protein; poultry digest; all essential vitamins and minerals; amino acids (including taurine); flavours; antioxidants and colours.
Whiskas killed my cat. He was six years old. I was 16 years old. Left home. Very abusive old man. Got my very first kitten. A ginger, called him Rusty. Loved him to bits. Loved being responsible for my very own kitten/ cat. When he was 6 years old he got Kidney failure. Right from my vets mouth. It’s the food your feeding him. I was shattered. I said to her “ How come they are allowed to sell it then?” With tears uncontrollably rolling down my face. She said “ I don’t know? They just can.” He was going to get a transplant but he went downhill too quick. Even to this day, I’m absolutely gutted and devastated!!
Companies can produce food and kill our babies with no consequences or guilt. Makes me sick.
Please, please do your homework..
Kind Regards
Petrina…
Oh shut up just shut up I’m sick and tired of you idiots in this stupid internet fad that going on to websites saying whiskers killed my cat it’s the same story copied and pasted word for word yeah it’s not great cat food but act your age not your shoe size
I don’t know how to add a comment so excuse me if I come threw this way.. If whiskas products come in just pouches we are fully getting ripped off.. calculate 85gc 18 compared to a can 700g x2 your getting ripped of at least $7.00
Hi Becky, it’s as simple as what foods you consider an obligate carnivore should have in their diet. By definition an obligate carnivore should not have some of the ingredients in cat foods such as this.
Proof this was from a Facebook review site 3 yes ago…… Same response different name same abusive old man story it’s a troll story.. whiskas is the worst food in history but come on the story is a copy and paste job that’s been going around since 2015
Whiskas killed my cat. He was six years old. I was 16 years old. Left home. Very abusive old man. Got my very first kitten. A ginger, called him Rusty. Loved him to bits. Loved being responsible for my very own kitten/ cat. When he was 6 years old he got Kidney failure. Right from my vets mouth. It’s the food your feeding him. I was shattered. I said to her “ How come they are allowed to sell it then?” With tears uncontrollably rolling down my face. She said “ I don’t know? They just can.” He was going to get a transplant but he went downhill too quick. Even to this day, I’m absolutely gutted and devastated!!
Companies can produce food and kill our babies with no consequences or guilt. Makes me sick.
Please, please do your homework..
Kind Regards
Paula…
Oh for god sake.. there’s always one yes it’s a crap food but can we stop the whiskers killed my cat crap everytime there is a whiskers review there’s always one whiskers killed my cat review and it’s the same story copy and paste job it’s a crap food the please stop with the whiskers killed my cat crap it’s been done to death
Hi.
Where I live we have very little choice of Cat Food and even less Vet Clinics.
My cat loved Purina Fancy Feast Salmon Pate. I always gave her that. Along with Whiskas Ocean Fish Dry Food.
During Covid, we stopped getting Fancy Feast and I had to switch to whatever was available. After trying different varieties we found that our cat likes Whiskas Wet food as well. So for past 2 years I’ve been feeding her Whiskas.
Now recently she got diagnosed with Liver Tumour ( possibly malignant) and I’m wondering if it’s this food she was taking.
When I started researching, I came to know what cheap grains can do.
Even now, since the Vet suggested Royal Canin Hepatic Diet, I’m shocked that it also has wheat in it !!
I wish I had known earlier I would have never brought Whiskas for my cat.
Can you get any of the big online shops to deliver to you or a post office near you? the big ones I use are Pet Circle, Pet Warehouse, Budget Pets and Habitat Pet.
If you can stick to wet food only, that’ll be better as the foods have so much moisture they’ll barely have any carbs. Cancers love carbs.
For cancer mushroom complexes for pets are good, but they do tend to have a smell and flavour and may not be accepted unless well hidden inside of food. For cancer specifically Turkey tail mushroom is listed as the most powerful.
Colostrum can help with immunity boosting and constrains 250+ beneficial nutrients and will help nurture the body in more ways than just one. Protein Australia has a really good product or Morlife. You don’t need the pet version it’s overpriced. Colostrum is well accepted as it’s essentially mother’s milk.
Turmeric activated with pepper and some coconut oil. All 3 have benefits towards cancer, but are not necessarily well accepted by cats due to all 3 having a flavour. Cats are notoriously picky/fussy.
You essentially want to feed a moisture rich diet to cats, it’s better for them and like I mentioned it drops the carb percentage due to water.
Most of the supplements out there are catered towards dogs, if you find something you want to use, I’d ask the makers if it’s useable for cats too. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be, but it’s best to ask just to be sure.
However this website is good and on the plus side they also have colostrum. If you could somehow figure a way out to get an order from them, maybe ask a friend or family member to order the stuff and than bring it to you or something?
https://www.greenpet.com.au/product-category/cat-products/nutritional-supplements-for-cats/optimum-health-supplements/
Flavoring Sachet?
I wish this site was around many years ago, like 10 to 15 years ago. But it just so happens that our cats just recently refused to eat whiskers. They had been eating whiskers most of their life. Whiskers must have changed ingredients or something coz all of a sudden the cats just wouldn’t touch it. They still eat their whiskers wet food though depending on what the wet food reviews are like I might not get it for them any more and switch to something else. I now get them a brad called “Crave” but I honestly don’t know how good it is. Hopefully there will be a review of that brand here. Good Luck All!
Well think about it this way, our version of Crave is the worst in the world. The UK has the best ingredient list, than US, than us dead last. Ours is extremely non descriptive, you have zero idea what your feeding.
Also I’ve been researching dog-cat food, supplements, health etc for 10 years and Pet Food Reviews already existed back than. So he’s been around a lot longer than you think.
Thank you so much for all the reviews! It was so far trying to find reviews based on what we have in Australia (heaps on internet are based on US). Definitely helped me deciding which brand to switch to for my cat (A ragdoll, and I was told to ONLY feed breed specific Royal Canin dry kibbles)
I am also trying to find good wet food so really hoping in the future you will do some wet food reviews! (At the moment I am feeding my cat Weruva Cats in the kitchen range)
Just out of curiosity, since this review mentioned how bad cereal is, I would assume it is equally bad if it’s present in wet food? (e.g Fancy Feast) I used Fancy Feast initially to help the transition from dry food to wet food and it was recommended by friends (Easily obtainable + cheap). Now I am trying to convince them to switch to healthier wet food but they just won’t budge.
Cats don’t need carbs, period, they’re obligate carnivores. The only reason cereal grains are included in cat foods is to increase profit margins. One of the reasons a food such as Fancy Feast is cheap.
Royal Canin have an excellent marketing model as they’re the only company offering breed-specific foods, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re offering the best food for any breed, it’s mostly just marketing. A lot of the foods are mostly corn (they list it as maize), and marginally tweaked to breed-specific needs, whereas other “generic breed” foods still offer the same nutrition.
The Weruva wet foods are pretty good, especially when you mix and match (i.e. some have liver, eggs, etc). Wet foods are generally better than dry foods and use better quality meats. I’ll have to review wet foods at some stage, just a case of finding the time…!
Based off of a guy on dog food advisor who did quiet a lot of research regarding the breed specific and/or prescription diets, he found that the ingredients lists were virtually the same, only the order of the ingredients was different and this made it impossible for the normal pet parent to notice and realise that there is nothing specific about the food and that at the end of the day it’s just overpriced garbage.
He had some quiet interesting facts and discussions it was sad to see him no longer comment, whatever the reason for that may have been.
Generally anything cheap will be trash at the end of the day, with the way cats are they don’t have any need for carb sources like cereals and grains, they don’t even have use for veges or fruits being obligate carnivores but a lot of foods like to fill in the gaps with useless junk to make it super cheap so they can sell it to you for a premium and make a hell of a lot of profit.
Have to be careful with certain wording as well as some food can have as little as 4% meat or no meat at all, usually these are named chicken flavour, but I’ve noticed some foods that used the term and contained full on meat amounts, it’s very confusing indeed.
Thank you for this! All the rescues in our area recommend it so I wondered if there was something I wasn’t seeing!
@Caitlyn: I’ve even seen some vets reccommend it! When my cat was having allergy and hayfever problems, the vet asked what food I was on, and I told her I’d switched to Black Hawk Grain-free due to her allergies. She looked at me puzzled and said, “Oh, I’ve never heard of that stuff. You should stick to something like Whiskas. It’s more well known.”
I almost laughed in her face. Yeah right, lady! I’m not going to give my grain-allergic cat a food that is nothing but grains. Ugh >_>
Hi I just read the breakdown on Whiskers dry food.Absolutely shocking. Is that the same for the Whiskers wet food. Do you have a guide on that as well. Thankyou.
Hi Karen, the Whiskas wet foods are mostly meat/meat by-products and cereal/cereal by-products, which makes for a cheaply produced food with far from optimum ingredients. I only review dry foods at the moment, but may review wet foods in the future.