Why do your fresh frozen gently cooked cat foods have fruits & vegetables? I thought cats were obligate carnivores!

Good question! 

The fruits & vegetables in our cat foods are put through a grinder so they’re not identifiable & do not impact palatability. These diets are 95% boneless meat or poultry. This is currently the highest meat content a diet can have to meet AAFCO formulation requirements. (We know because we tried formulating a 99% meat or poultry cat diet & it wouldn’t meet AAFCO requirements without synthetic vitamins & minerals and currently there aren’t human-grade minerals available for cats so these diets would have been able to be human-grade either!). A 100% meat or poultry diet is therefore not possible under current regulation.

As such, you cannot produce an AAFCO complete & balanced meal without synthetic vitamins & minerals (like ours) unless you use fruits & vegetables or bone for those nutrients. The fruits & vegetables simply provide the required amino acid, vitamin & mineral nutrients a cat requires without adding synthetic vitamins & minerals or bone and still adhere to a carnivore diet at 95% boneless meat or poultry. It also allows these diets to be human-grade since bone isn’t human grade & there’s no human-grade minerals for cats currently available to source. As mentioned, currently, AAFCO profiles do not allow a 100% meat or poultry diet to meet their requirements under the rigorous standards we have for our foods. At 95% boneless meat or poultry we exceed AAFCO food nutrient profile requirements for cats (and dogs) while protecting your pet from the dangers of high calcium, phosphorus, magnesium & ash diets common among companies using bone like raw pet food companies. Our human-grade fresh frozen gently cooked diets are truly the best commercial pet foods available for cats & dogs! 

Takeaway: The tradeoff when formulating pet foods is synthetic vitamins & minerals, bone or whole food recognizable fruits & vegetables if you want to produce a chemical free human-grade diet!