Mars launched the Goodlife brand in 2007. Mars Petcare, the world’s largest pet care company, owns more than 42 different pet food brands, one of which is Goodlife.
In the beginning, the Goodlife brand manufactured food for both cats and dogs; The Goodlife Recipe, as it’s otherwise known, continued the line of cat food, but later discontinued the dog food. As of right now, they produce cat food only. According to the Goodlife website, “We help your cat live life to the fullest …by using high quality ingredients filled with nutrients and deliciousness.”
It stands as a brand that makes nutrient rich, wholesome cat food, at a more or less budget friendly price.
Other Guides: Authority Cat Food Brand
Types of Goodlife cat food:
While Goodlife currently has a smaller selection of types of cat food, it does have three recipes that adhere to the company’s ‘nutritional promises.’ What are these promises?
- Entirely wheat and soy free
- There’s never artificial ingredients, preservatives, or flavoring
- The main ingredient is always salmon or chicken
While these promises do sound like something every cat owner is looking for, as it turns out, they aren’t the ‘ideal’ recipe to give your cat the best nutrition. Salmon and chicken may be the first ingredients in the food, but these cat food recipes still contain plenty of plant proteins and high-carb plant based ingredients.
Sure, they don’t contain wheat or soy, but the recipes are far from being low carbohydrate, grain-free options. In the past, Goodlife’s promise also included ‘corn free,’ but the brand now uses corn gluten meal to provide protein while reducing costs.
Goodlife recipes may not contain preservatives or artificial flavors, there is artificial color added to the recipe. This serves no purpose for your cat’s health, and can actually cause health problems. The only reason to add artificial color is to make it ‘prettier’ for the cat owners.
A good point to note is that dry cat food isn’t going to provide adequate nutrition, and Goodlife doesn’t have a more hydrating option for cat food. Goodlife cat food recipes are made in Illinois.
Goodlife Cat Food Coupons 2020
Purchasing Goodlife Cat Food
You can choose to purchase Goodlife through Amazon or Chewy, although you can usually find it in larger chain stores.
Customer Reviews
We’ll take a look at one of the most popular Goodlife recipes, and the customer reviews to get a better picture of how the recipe performs. With a 4.8 out of 5 star rating, and 158 user reviews on the Chewy website, the Goodlife’s Real Chicken and Brown Rice Recipe has 96% of its users saying they recommend it.
Here’s what some of them have to say:
Positives
“Having spent a lot on some pretty expensive cat food, I’d recommend this cat food. My cats like this better than previous brands, and it doesn’t seem to upset their stomachs much either. ” – Sam
“I really like the lack of fillers, and the brown rice as an ingredient. I have a couple of indoor cats that can’t get enough of the food!” – Chloe
Negatives
“We tried this food out because it came at a good price for how much we got. Really, one of the biggest problems is the coloring in the food. Why? We don’t even care what it looks like, and even if our cats could see the color they certainly wouldn’t care. It’s basically an unnecessary, fully cosmetic, chemical addition. Unfortunately we had planned on getting a large stock of this, but the needless chemical coloring stopped us.” – Joe
“My cat has never had stomach/GI problems, but we mixed this food with his other recipe to make it easier to switch. While my cat enjoyed the taste, it resulted in a bout of diarrhea; we suspect this is from the grain added to that cat food, since he hasn’t had the problem with grain free food.” – Bianca
Goodlife Dry Cat Food
Chicken is, of course, the first ingredient. Just as promised by the 3 Goodlife nutrition promises. It’s important to note that fresh chicken contains about 70% water weight. And the ingredients are listed by weight. In short, it’s the heaviest, not the most concentrated. Since fresh chicken is mostly water weight, the protein isn’t very concentrated. If Goodlife weighed the chicken after processing it, it almost certainly wouldn’t top the ingredient list.
Related: Soulistic Cat Food Review
Next up: brown rice. While it is better than white rice, your cat is a carnivore. Rice isn’t a good nutrient source. The third ingredient listed is chicken by-product meal. Basically, it’s meal made of various chicken by products that won’t be eaten by humans. This includes things like viscera, chicken backs, and feet.
Fourth on the list is corn gluten meal. It’s a by product created when corn is processed, and it does contain a significant amount of protein. Because of this, it’s favored as a cheap, accessible type of animal feed. While it does add to the ‘guaranteed nutrient analysis’ for protein, your cat is a carnivore, not a herbivore. In short, it’s value is seriously limited for felines.
Fifth comes brewer’s rice. It’s another by product, and it’s just about on rank with white rice.
Next, you can find comfortingly vague ingredients to feed your cat: natural flavor and animal fat. Either of these ingredients can come from any unspecified type of animal.
Next, to add a dash of interest to the food bowl – they add color. There are small amounts of fruits and veggies in either dried or pomace form: sweet potato, cranberries, tomato, apple, peas, potatoes, spinach, and blueberries.
Near the very bottom of the list is fish oil. This is actually great for cat health. Last listed is yucca schidigera extract. This may assist in joint health, and improve the aroma of cat waste.
The recipe contains 26% carbohydrates, 38.5% crude protein, and 14.5% crude fat. According to the brand, a 10 lb cat would consume about $.19 to $.29 in food costs daily.
Recall History
As a company, Goodlife has never had a recall according to public records. However, its parent company Mars Petcare did have some product recalls over the past years.
