Hill’s Science Diet Cat Food Review

It doesn’t take much science to understand wheat, corn, and rice aren’t applicable to an obligate carnivore, yet all of these grains feature in Science Diet for carnivorous cats. It makes you wonder why they tout the word “Science” so readily, but science is a very loose term and doesn’t have to have much relation to the product. Researching how much grain to give a cat without comeback for any ill effects happens to be science. Just sayin’.

Vets religiously defend this brand. Perhaps that stems from Hill’s longstanding involvement in veterinary studies, or scientific research initiated by Hill’s readily believed without scrutiny, or it could be because Science Diet is actually better for cats than the many nasty chemically-preserved cereal by-product cat “foods” you can buy at the supermarket. But on a fundamentally basic level, wheat, corn, and rice are indisputably not suited to an obligate carnivore.

Let’s delve a little deeper into the Adult 1-6 formula which targets an age range where the likes of renal failure hasn’t reared it’s ugly head (yet).

The three main ingredients are chicken (weighed prior to cooking off approx. 70% moisture), wheat, and corn. Once cooked the chicken will be relatively lackluster, making the wheat and corn more significant. Wheat happens to be one of the most prominent allergens, particularly from wheat mites, and corn is an ingredients linked this year (2020) to canine megaesophagus due to crop disease.

It’s not often considered, but cats generally eat to satiate. They don’t over eat. So why do we see so many Fat Cats (like the guy in the pic)? If you give a cat a meat diet they’ll never be fat, but if you force them to churn through a food full of grains to get the nutrition they need from the sparse meat content, then they’re forced to over eat. They can’t process grains, so the carbohydrates turn to sugar causing weight gain, diabetes, organ failure, and so on.

There’s little good to say about this food from an ingredients standpoint. It’s not a diet we would logically consider feeding a carnivore. But what would you expect from a company like Colgate-Palmolive as the conglomerate behind Hills.

All I can say is this – cats are carnivores, feed them meat. It’s not a hard concept to grasp.

This food gets a marginally higher rating than supermarket junk, but it’s still ridiculously priced for what is essentially a bag of wheat and corn targeted at a carnivorous animal.

Ingredients

Chicken, Whole Grain Wheat, Corn Gluten Meal, Chicken Fat, Chicken Meal, Dried Beet Pulp, Brown Rice, Chicken Liver Flavor, Calcium Sulfate, Lactic Acid, Potassium Chloride, Fish Oil, Soybean Oil, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of Vitamin C), Niacin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Oat Fiber, Mixed Tocopherols for freshness, Natural Flavors, Beta-Carotene, Apples, Broccoli, Carrots, Cranberries, Green Peas.