Label Guide

Pet food labels are the only window most owners have into what they're feeding. They're also dense, jargon-heavy, and often written in ways that obscure the actual contents.

This guide explains the Considerations pills you'll see on every product, walks through collective labelling, and shows you what to look for when reading any cat food label.

Under the Australian Standard AS 5812^[2] and AAFCO guidelines^[3], ingredients are listed by weight at the time of formulation, before the product is cooked. The Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine notes^[4] that a diet listing chicken (70% water) as the first ingredient may actually contain less chicken than a diet listing chicken meal (under 10% moisture) as the second or third ingredient.

Because ingredients are listed by weight, a manufacturer can change where an ingredient appears simply by dividing it into smaller fractions. A single plant ingredient like corn might be split into ground corn, corn gluten meal, and corn bran, each listed separately. Peas can become peas, pea protein, pea fibre, and pea starch. Each fraction weighs less on its own than the combined ingredient would, so each sits lower in the list, and a named meat can appear first even when the plant fractions together outweigh it.

Splitting is legal and not always done to mislead, since these fractions can be distinct ingredients in their own right. But watch for it. When you see several variations of the same base ingredient scattered through a list, mentally group them back together before judging how much of the recipe is meat. The same caution the Tufts veterinary nutrition team raises about ingredient order^[4] applies here: the order of a list can be arranged, so read the whole list, not just the first ingredient.

Plant protein isolates (sometimes called concentrates) are ingredients where the protein has been extracted and concentrated from a plant source such as peas, potatoes, soy, wheat, or other legumes. These are distinct from whole plant foods like peas or lentils, which appear lower in ingredient lists and contribute relatively modest amounts of protein.

Because plant protein isolates are concentrated, they can contribute meaningfully to the total protein percentage shown on the guaranteed analysis. However, the amino acid profile of plant proteins differs from animal protein. Cats are obligate carnivores and require specific amino acids, particularly taurine^[10][11] and arginine, that are found predominantly in animal tissue. A product with a high total protein percentage derived partly from plant protein isolates may not deliver the same amino acid value as one where protein comes primarily from named animal sources.

KibbleGuide flags products containing plant protein isolates in the Analysis panel so you can factor this into your decision. Look for terms like Pea Protein, Potato Protein, Wheat Gluten, Soybean Meal, or Soy Protein in the ingredient list. For the peer-reviewed research behind feline amino acid requirements, see Why Your Cat Cannot Just Eat Anything.

Common plant protein isolates found in Australian cat food include:

The ingredient list is only half the label. Australian packs also carry a guaranteed analysis panel and a nutritional adequacy statement, and the second of these is arguably the most useful line on the whole pack.

The guaranteed analysis is the small table of percentages: minimum crude protein, minimum crude fat, maximum crude fibre, and maximum moisture under AS 5812^[2]. These are as-fed figures, so they cannot be compared between a wet and a dry food until you strip the water out. For what each number means, and why a high protein figure does not always mean more usable protein, see Guaranteed Analysis Explained and convert any two foods on the dry matter basis page.

The adequacy statement is the sentence that tells you whether the food is a complete diet at all. Look for wording like complete and balanced for a named life stage, for example adult maintenance, growth, or all life stages. A food may instead say it is for intermittent or supplemental feeding only, which means it is a topper or treat and not designed to be the whole diet. The claim is backed in one of two ways: the recipe is formulated to meet an AAFCO or FEDIAF nutrient profile^[3], or it has passed a feeding trial. AS 5812 points to those same profiles as the benchmark in Australia^[2].

The practical check is simple. Before anything else on the pack, confirm the food is complete and balanced for your cat's life stage. A premium-looking front of pack means nothing if the back says supplemental feeding only and you are feeding it as a main meal.