Home / Cat food / Smalls / Smalls Fresh Ground Cow (Beef Recipe)

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Smalls Fresh Ground Cow (Beef Recipe)

Fresh food · all cats

A beef-first fresh food from Smalls. Cat-food pricing isn't in our corpus for this SKU yet, so cost-per-day isn't shown — the composition numbers below are fully verified.

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

≈ $3.50–$5.00/day estimate — brand's published pricing Order direct →
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. Corpus dot-anchors currently cover wet and dry cat food only — this is a fresh food, so anchors are omitted below as the corpus grows.

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

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%, so as-fed numbers are on two different scales. As-fed values shown small. How the conversion works →

We only publish numbers verified from official label sources; we haven't verified this label yet. The guaranteed analysis exists on the package — it just isn't in our verified record so far.

Protein Not yet verifiedlabel min: —% anchor coming as corpus grows
Fat Not yet verifiedlabel min: —% no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber Not yet verifiedlabel max: —% anchor coming as corpus grows
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate Not yet verifiedneeds protein/fat/fiber anchor coming as corpus grows
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 not yet verified, no default available Not yet verifiedash no corpus anchor for ash yet

Calories & cost — for your 10-lb adult cat

Calorie density Not yet verifiedkcal/kg anchor coming as corpus grows
Daily serving—
Cost per day—
Bag lasts—

No cost per 1,000 kcal yet: we haven't matched this cat food to a store listing. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two claims exist: formulated to meet a profile, or fed to real cats in an AAFCO trial. Which is stronger, and how rare it is →
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)beef · beef liver · green beans · spinach · water sufficient for processing
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
A preservative added by a fish-meal supplier need not appear on the finished label, so no label can prove its absence. Why we show gaps →
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Smalls, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 1 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (secondary) · anchors: coming as our fresh/freeze-dried corpus grows · 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 not disclosedNot selected for your cat, and not confirmed on this label either way.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Chicken-free recipeNot selected for your cat — but relevant if chicken sensitivity ever comes up.
·
Low-carb fit — can't assessEstimated carbohydrate needs protein, fat, fiber and ash to compute, and at least one of those is not disclosed for this SKU.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →

beef, beef liver, green beans, spinach, water sufficient for processing, dried yeast, tricalcium phosphate, canola oil, potassium chloride, salt, magnesium proteinate, choline chloride, taurine, dandelion greens, dried kelp, zinc proteinate, iron proteinate, cod liver oil, niacin supplement, vitamin E supplement, copper proteinate, vitamin A supplement, manganese proteinate, thiamine mononitrate, d-calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, vitamin D3 supplement, riboflavin supplement, vitamin B12 supplement, folic acid, sodium selenite, biotin

1 ingredient in this list is ones we hold sourced evidence on , and none of them is contested in the veterinary literature.

  • Taurine (supplemental) · ingredient 13NeutralA sulfur amino acid that dogs can normally synthesize from methionine and cysteine, so it is not classically essential for them. However, some breeds (e.g., golden retrievers) and some diets are linked to low taurine status and dilated cardiomyopathy: an observational study (Ontiveros 2020) associated non-traditional, largely grain-free diets with taurine deficiency and DCM-consistent echocardiographic changes in golden retrievers, though causation and mechanism remain under investigation.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The five 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 Co-packed

Smalls uses third-party USDA-regulated kitchens rather than owning its own plant. cats.com references a USDA kitchen in Chicago.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Smalls claims its formulations were 'developed by a PhD in animal nutrition,' but that person is unnamed and there is no explicit statement they are full-time staff (could be a consultant). The named individual, Dr. Sarah Mitten, is described only as a veterinary advisor with no ACVN/ECVCN board certification or PhD credential attributed.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 10 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.

Publishes quality-control testing Not found

Batch-testing claims exist only in third-party reviews. Web search quota exhausted.

Peer-reviewed research None found

PubMed lists no animal or pet paper with Smalls in an author address. Not proof no research exists — only that none is indexed under that company name.

source →
Parent company Smalls ↗ Founded 2017 ↗ Headquarters / plant New York, NY ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

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