Home / Cat food / Natural Balance / Fat Cats Chicken Meal & Salmon Meal Recipe

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Fat Cats Chicken Meal & Salmon Meal Recipe

Dry food · adult cats

A formulated-to-meet dry food from Natural Balance, lighter per cup than 93% of the dry cat foods we've verified. Price-matched at $3.33 per 1,000 kcal, verified 2026-07-12.

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

$28.98 · 6 lb $0.87/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 № NATURA
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 38.9%label: 35% min typical — the median dry cat food is 39.6%
Fat 10.6%label: 9.5% min no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber 10%label: 9% max higher than 97% of dry cat foods
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate ≈31.7%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 320 kcal/cup3200 kcal/kg lighter than 93% of dry cat foods (median 415)
Daily serving¾ cups
Cost per day$0.87
Bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $3.33 — price-matched to a current retail listing (6-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…").
 Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Full ingredient list not yet verified
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyNot yet verified
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)Not yet verified
BHA / BHT preservativesNot yet verified
Carrageenan (thickener)Not yet verified
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.
 Fish-meal content not confirmed

Safety

FDA recalls — Natural Balance, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 8 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.

✓
Validated for adult catsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
·
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 10% DMNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Chicken content not disclosedWe could not confirm whether chicken is in the ingredient list.
✕
Too many estimated carbs for a low-carb target≈31.7% 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.

Full ingredient list not yet available for this SKU — only the fields verified above are shown. See the source for what's currently confirmed.

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.

Blue Buffalo BLUE Wilderness Adult Cat Indoor Hairball and Weight Control Chicken Recipe
39.6% protein (DM)$2.65 / 1,000 kcal20% less per 1,000 kcal
Rachael Ray Nutrish Rachael Ray® Nutrish™ Indoor Complete Chicken, Lentils & Salmon Dry Cat Food
37.4% protein (DM)$1.39 / 1,000 kcal58% less per 1,000 kcal
Diamond CARE WEIGHT MANAGEMENT FORMULA FOR ADULT CATS
35.6% protein (DM)$1.67 / 1,000 kcal50% less per 1,000 kcal

Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.

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 Mixed

Company-owned plant (Brownwood, TX) AND external co-packers = mixed.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

References a 'PhD small animal nutritionist' but names no individual and states no DACVN/ACVN credential; null per rule.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 44 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 None found

A reproducible PubMed search (author-affiliation field, animal/pet-domain filtered) returns zero indexed papers for this brand name. Not proof no research exists — only that none is PubMed-indexed under this exact name.

source →
Parent company Ethos Pet Brands (co-owned by L Catterton and Nexus Capital Management) ↗ Founded 1989 ↗ Headquarters / plant Burbank, California, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record 1 on record

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