Who Writes This

Everything here carries a named author and a review date, because data reporting with nobody attached to it is just an assertion. If something on this site is wrong, there is a person to tell.

The one credential claim we make, and the one we refuse

The author is a data engineer, not a veterinarian or a board-certified animal nutritionist, and says so on her own page rather than leaving it to be inferred. Nothing on this site is veterinary advice. That limitation is the reason the site is built the way it is: every figure traces to a label or an FDA record you can open yourself, so the question is never whether to take our word for it.

It is also why we route medical questions away rather than answering them. Joint, renal, dental and cardiac support, and allergy diagnosis, get no checkmark here at any price — the reasoning is published in full.

How a pick gets made

Criteria first, then results. Every buying guide states the checks a food has to clear before naming a winner, and every check is computed from a verified label by the same code that renders the product page — so a food that qualifies on a guide shows the identical verdict on its own page. There is no editorial override and no scoring model with weights we invented.

Where the data will not support a check, the list is short and says why. Magnesium is disclosed on roughly one cat label in ten, so the urinary page ranks only foods that disclose it and pass. Of the 1,373 AAFCO statements we have read, 235 carry the feeding-trial wording; we report that ratio rather than implying the rest are equivalent.

Independence

No brand pays for placement, coverage, or a better position, and none has ever been offered the option. Some retailer links earn a commission and are marked as such (full disclosure) — but rankings are computed from verified cost per 1,000 kcal and label checks, and the arithmetic does not know which products pay. Where our own pick is the expensive option we say so, and where a cheaper food clears the same bar we say that too.

We cover 50 brands and hold 2,354 verified labels, including brands that score badly on our own criteria. Coverage is not endorsement.

Corrections

Labels get reformulated and prices move, so a figure that was right in July can be wrong by autumn. If something here does not match the bag in front of you, send us the product and what your label says through the contact page. Corrections are made to the underlying data rather than to a single page, so the fix reaches every surface that reads from it — the product page, the guides, the calculators, the reports and the published datasets.

Recall records come from the FDA’s feed on a refresh schedule; for anything urgent, the FDA’s own page is the authority and your vet is the next call.

How the data is collected and refreshed is documented in the methodology; the terms covering reuse are on the terms page.