Tesco Kitten Complete dry food - actually complete?

[exlibris]

Hi all,
I read a post some time ago whereby someone was feeding their cat 'complete' food, but it turned out not to be. I'm a bit paranoid having read that. We're primarily feeding our two dry, with intermittent wet, chicken or tuna. So, if this isn't complete, then I'm not feeding them properly. Winston 'The Unstoppable Stomach' is always guzzling, but this is probably just because he's a growing male - but it might be because his diet is lacking.
As someone was able to answer that other post, I wonder if someone could you tell me if this stuff is missing anything important? I've copied all the bits and bobs below.
Thanks to anyone who can help.
Sarah.



Composition: Meat and animal derivatives (14% chicken), cereals (14% rice), vegetable protein extracts, oils and fats, derivatives of vegetable origin, fish and fish derivatives, yeast, eggs and egg derivatives, minerals, vegetables (1% vegetables).

Additives: Technological additives: Antioxidants

Nutritional additives per kg: Vitamin A 20000 IU, Vitamin D3 1300 IU, Vitamin E 332.5 mg, Vitamin C 175 mg, Copper (as Cupric sulphate, pentahydrate) 9.75 mg, Iron (as Ferrous sulphate, monohydrate) 100mg, Iodine (as Calcium Iodate, anhydrous) 2.7 mg, Manganese (as Manganous oxide) 20 mg, Zinc (as Zinc sulphate, monohydrate) 113 mg, Selenium (as Sodium selenite) 0.2 mg, Taurine 1800 mg, Lecithine 5g

Analytical Constituents:
Protein 34%
Crude fibres 2%
Fat content 22%
Inorganic matter 6.5%
Calcium 1.1%
Phosphorus 1%
Omega 6 5.1%

[booktigger]

It may well be complete, but I'd look for a better quality dry and you might find he needs less, they need more of the poorer quality foods to get enough nutrients. Just remember to mix it gradually

[Mollycat]

In order to check if that is complete you would need the full analysis from Tesco including every trace mineral and vitamin and compare it to a full list of RDA of each item on the list. There are lists out there claiming to be just that but they are quite different, as I discovered when I was researching Hills diet foods. To add to the confusion some lists are in micrograms/milligrams/grams and others are in IU international units, and yet others go by the weight of the cat not the food. So good luck unravelling all that lot!

In the end I think I got an answer but not from an RDA list - from the fact that most vitamin A poisoning cases are cats fed too much raw liver and that the food in question has the same level of vitamin A. According to the best RDA I could find that makes around 17 times what a cat needs, definitely potentially toxic. Hills won't respond to my emails.

My personal thoughts are, rotate different foods and the average should work out right, especially with cheap foods. As a bonus your cats will be flexible enough to accept different foods should they ever need a special diet, the manufacturer change the recipe or your local shop simply run out of the favourite flavours. And accept sudden changes without the headache of transitioning, too. I think it's an important skill for a cat to have.