The only thing fancy about this food is it's marketing.

The canned food is merely average, with the original formula Gourmet Chicken Feast containing both "meat by-products" (and if they can't tell you what animal these byproducts came from, the possibilities are horrifying) and "poultry by-products." By-products are waste product, folks. Animal bits unfit for human consumption. They can range from slaughterhouse scrap to blood clots to diseased carcasses to downer livestock to roadkill. Yes, roadkill.

The dry food is even worse. Cats are obligate carnivores. This means that all of their vital nutrition is meat sourced. Cats in the wild eat exclusively meat, and domesticated cats in captivity need meat based foods. High protein, high nutrient, high quality meats.

So what fancy meats does Fancy Feast start off their Savory Chicken and Turkey dry food formula with? Free range chicken? Wild turkey? Nope.

Brewers rice. Little tiny broken fragments of rice considered waste product from beer companies. That's the first ingredient. This means that there is more rice (and ultra-processed, nutrient void white rice, at that) than any other ingredient. A rice based food. For a carnivore. And sold as a chicken and turkey formula? Maybe they meant rice, chicken, and turkey?

So the free range chicken and wild turkey are next, right? Well, probably not. The second ingredient in this formula is poultry by-product meal. It COULD be parts of chickens. It COULD be parts of turkeys. It also COULD be parts of seagulls or pigeons. Poultry by-product meal means that this random waste meat from unknown avian sources. Beaks, feathers, feet, bones, diseased carcasses, unformed eggs, and other nasty bits of anything that flies, ground into a pulpy mass and then dried. YUMMY!

Are the chicken and turkey next? Nope, not even close. Next we have corn gluten meal. Corn is undigestible in an obligate carnivore gastrointestinal tract, and corn gluten is protein derived from that undigestible corn. Corn protein. For an animal that needs to subsist on meat. Also, for the record, corn is one of the top allergens for cats, causing immune suppression, dry, flaky skin, lusterless coats, itchiness and infection.

Now they've gotta include chicken and turkey, right?! Oh, how wrong you are. The next ingredient in Fancy Feast Gourmet Gold with Savory Chicken and Turkey is animal fat. Again, if they don't tell you what species of animal it came from, it likely means that you don't want to know... but I'm gonna tell you anyway, because I'm a perverse S.O.B. Animal fat is rancid fat rendered from diseased, dysfunctional, or damaged carcasses of unspecified origin, including roadkill. Again, yes, I'm serious. Roadkill.

By now, you must know free range chicken and wild turkey aren't listed next. What IS listed next is more corn. Ground yellow corn, to be precise. Have you ever peeked at your feces after eating a meal including a side of corn? If so, you know that humans (as omnivores, built to digest vegetable matter) cannot digest corn. Do you really think that carnivores meant to subsist solely on meat can?

Those are the top five ingredients in the food, and comprise 95% of the total volume of the kibbles... and there was not a single worthwhile ingredient listed among them. Fancy, indeed!

My cats go NUTS for this stuff. All I have to do now is show them the Can. They freak out and stalk me like mad until I feed them!!

My cats seem to like it, but it causes my fat Calico to throw up.

.

  Purina FancyFeast Gourmet - Cod, Sole and Shrimp (Pate)

          Ingredients: Cod, liver, meat by-products, fish, fish broth, sole, shrimp, artificial and natural flavors, guar gum, added color (Red 3 and other color), potassium chloride, salt, thiamine mononitrate, Vitamin E supplement, calcium phosphate, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, Vitamin A supplement, copper sulfate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, niacin, Vitamin B-12 supplement, riboflavin supplement, calcium pantothenate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), Vitamin D-3 supplement, folic acid, potassium iodide, biotin.

Ingredients wise I rank this product a 2.. Doesn't smell bad.. Bailey my kitten ate it up (not a picky eater - has eaten everything ive given her so far - which earns this product a rank of 3..) But Liver,Meat By-Products and fish outranking Sole and Shrimp is a concern.. I don't recommend buying this food as daily supplement.. Only feeding quarter of a small can, as a treat once and a while.. I consider this type of food a McDonalds for my kitty..

Ingredients: Brewers rice, poultry by-product meal, corn gluten meal, beef tallow preserved with mixed-tocopherols (form of Vitamin E), ground yellow corn, soybean meal, animal liver flavor, fish, shrimp, phosphoric acid, calcium carbonate, natural and artificial flavors, potassium chloride, salt, brewers dried yeast, choline chloride, added color (Yellow 5, Red 40 and other color), natural filet mignon flavor, zinc sulfate, taurine, ferrous sulfate, manganese sulfate, Vitamin E supplement, niacin, Vitamin A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, copper sulfate, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), sodium selenite.

I remember the old commercials for Fancy Feast wet cat food, where a person would clink a deluxe crystal glass with a fork, and this gorgeous fluffy white cat would come and eat Fancy Feast out of the glass (or cup, whatever).  That certainly was an effective campaign to make people think the product is high-class, that's for sure!  So when I got the 2 cats I have now, I was surprised that they actually made dry food!!  Well it had to be good stuff, right??  Let's see....

This is the only food I've seen that has brewers rice as the top ingredient.  For those who haven't read other reviews, brewers rice is the leftover rice after the brewing process at alcohol distilleries.  It's bought cheaply by pet food makers.  It's worthless nutritionally.  Then we have "poultry" by-product, which tells us they don't want to divulge just what bird they got the yummy by-products from.  Corn gluten meal is third, which again is nothing more than the most worthless part of the already worthless corn.  Pure beef fat is next, which anybody can guess probably isn't the preferred type of fat for a cat (or human for that matter) to eat.  The next 2 ingredients are pure filler (ground corn and soybean meal).  So the question is...what exactly *IS* deluxe about this food?

Well, the question is answerable with one word:  nothing.  If you have that aforementioned glass though, I'll definitely take it.  Don't buy this food though, no matter how great the cat on the package looks.