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IAMS PROACTIVE HEALTH Healthy Kitten

Dry food · kitten cats

A chicken-first dry food from Iams, denser per cup than 86% of the dry cat foods we've verified. Price-matched at $1.33 per 1,000 kcal, verified 2026-07-12.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference cat 10 lb · updated 2026-07-12

$16.97 · 7 lb $0.35/day as of 2026-07-12 Check price →
Your catupdates every number on this page
10 lb

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 283 dry cat foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № IAMS-P
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 36.7%label: 33% min lower than 67% of dry cat foods
Fat 23.3%label: 21% min no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber 3.3%label: 3% max lower than 89% of dry cat foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈27.8%diabetic-check target <10% typical — the median dry cat food is 30%
Magnesium as fed: not yet verified
why 0.12% DM
A commonly cited veterinary target for helping manage struvite-crystal (urinary) risk in cats is magnesium under roughly 0.12% on a dry-matter basis. This is a general, label-checkable guideline — not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for your vet, especially for cats with a history of urinary issues.
 Not yet verifiedmagnesium no threshold to check — magnesium not in our verified record
Ash 8% assumed — not disclosed on label 8%as used in carb estimate no corpus anchor for ash yet

Calories & cost — for your 10-lb adult cat

Calorie density 484 kcal/cup4015 kcal/kg denser than 86% of dry cat foods (median 415)
Daily serving½ cups
Cost per day$0.35
3-lb bag lasts20 days

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $1.33 — price-matched to a current retail listing (7-lb size), verified 2026-07-12. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real cats in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · Chicken By-Product Meal · Ground Whole Grain Corn · Ground Sorghum · Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols)
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Iams, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 11 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: 283 verified dry cat foods · how to read this label

The fit

For your cat, specifically

Checked for a 10-lb adult cat with urinary health + a low-carb goal — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your cat above and these update.

·
Life-stage coverage not disclosedNo AAFCO nutrient-adequacy statement was found on the label for this SKU, so we cannot confirm adult-maintenance coverage.
·
Urinary fit — can't assessMagnesium is not disclosed on this label, so the urinary/struvite check cannot be run — most cat food labels omit it entirely (only a small share of the cat foods we've verified disclose magnesium at all).
·
Fiber 3.3% DMNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
✕
Too many estimated carbs for a low-carb target≈27.8% carbohydrate (dry-matter, estimated) is over the ~10% DM target some vets use for diabetic/low-carb cats. Estimate only — not a lab measurement. See lower-carb options →

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Chicken, Chicken By-Product Meal, Ground Whole Grain Corn, Ground Sorghum, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Corn Gluten Meal, Dried Plain Beet Pulp, Natural Flavor, Dried Egg Product, Potassium Chloride, Fish Oil (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Choline Chloride, Brewers Dried Yeast, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, DL-Methionine, Fructooligosaccharides, Vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin A Acetate, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Thiamine Mononitrate (source of Vitamin B1), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (source of Vitamin B6), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement (source of Vitamin B2), Inositol, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid), Taurine, Minerals (Zinc Oxide, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide), Rosemary Extract

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Iams is produced at Mars Petcare's owned/operated Mattoon, Illinois plant.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Iams homepage and FAQ (both fetched) did not state any nutritionist credentials. Iams is part of the same Mars Pet Nutrition / Waltham system as Pedigree (which DOES employ PhD nutritionists), but no Iams-specific fetched source explicitly names a board-certified vet nutritionist or PhD nutritionist on staff, so set to null per the no-fabrication rule.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 101 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.

Peer-reviewed research Yes — sourced

658 PubMed-indexed papers carry "Waltham Petcare Science Institute (Mars)" in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered) — a reproducible floor, not a total.

source →
Parent company Mars, Incorporated (Mars Petcare) ↗ Founded 1946 ↗ Headquarters / plant Dayton, Ohio, U.S. (brand origin) ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Iams brand page →