Soulistic Cat Food Review – What’s Wrong With It?

About Soulistic/Weruva

For information on how we determined these scores, please see our Weruva Review.

Soulistic and Weruva Recalls

Soulistic as a brand has never been recalled. In-fact no Weruva food has ever been recalled in the United States. There has been a single Weruva recall in 2017 for an Australian-only line of BFF cat food.

What Foods Does Soulistic Make?

Soulistic currently makes over 40 varieties of wet cat food. There are both pouches and cans available. Soulistic is available in many texture varieties: “in Gravy,” “in Gelee,” “Pate,” “Moist and Tender” and “in Pumpkin Soup.”

There are several product lines with Soulistic too:

The Original Recipes’ flavors available are chicken, tuna, salmon, shrimp or some combination of these. These foods are available in both pouches and cans.

The Pate foods have a wider variety of proteins. All Pate recipes have chicken and/or tuna but ingredients such as turkey, salmon, beef, lamb and duck are also present in recipes. Uniquely, Soulistic offers Pate in both cans and pouches.

Finally there is the Moist and Tender line of Soulistic foods. These foods are optimized to increase your cat’s hydration. These foods are available in chicken, turkey, duck, beef, lamb and salmon dinner in cans. There are also pouches which have a combination of 2-3 animal protein sources.

Soulistic Wet Food Nutrition Review

Soulistic’s ingredient lists begin with the named protein sources in the foods. All foods include chicken and/or tuna. Original Recipes may also contain additional seafood such as salmon, tilapia or crab too. “Pate” and “Moist and Tender” lines may contain additional meat such as lamb, beef, turkey etc or seafood.

It is somewhat concerning that the majority of Soulistic flavors include seafood. Just as with people, eating large amounts of tuna can accumulate mercury and other heavy metals in the body. Tuna can be a great cat food in rotation with other protein sources, but should not make up the majority of your cat’s diet.

Flavors with a “in gravy” texture include tapioca starch as a carbohydrate source and to create the gravy texture. “In pumpkin soup” flavors also include tapioca starch in addition to pumpkin in order to achieve the correct texture. The two “in gelee” flavors do not have any starches added to them. Most cats do well with tapioca starch in their diet, but it has little nutritional value. Tapioca starch is primarily added to make appealing textures and the food palatable to cats, but that can be just as important as nutrition!

The Pate cans do not have starches in the ingredients, but instead use dried egg to achieve the target texture. Pate pouches use a small amount of potato starch in order to achieve the correct texture.

Soulistic foods include sunflower seed oil in their ingredients as well. Small amounts of this oil are healthy, but the high omega-6 content can easily throw off the ideal omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio. Considering that there are several flavors of Soulistic without a significant omega-3 source, it is somewhat concerning to see the addition of sunflower seed oil without the addition of fish oil as well.

The mineral supplement used in the Soulistic foods is not chelated, except for the “copper amino acid complex.” This means that the minerals (besides copper) are not bound to proteins and are more difficult for the body to absorb. This is not necessarily cause for concern, but chelated mineral supplements are considered the gold standard in pet food, and Soulistic has chosen not to use them.

Nutrients

• Protein, Fat, Carbohydrates

Original Recipes:

The average dry matter protein content in Soulistic’s Original Recipe foods is 59%. The food with the lowest protein content is “Sweet Salutations Chicken & Tuna Dinner in Gravy” at 50% protein on a dry matter basis. The food with the highest protein content, at 72%, is “Shrimply Devine Tuna & Shrimp Dinner in Gelee.”

Fat content is fairly consistent in Soulistic’s Original Recipe foods, ranging from 11% to 15% on a dry matter basis.

Carbohydrate content is relatively high by wet cat food standards. The average dry matter carbohydrate content among the Original Recipe flavors of Soulistic is 23%. This ranges widely, from 12% to 34%. The carbohydrate content appears to be a product of achieving a certain texture for Soulistic. “Dinner in Gravy” flavors have a much higher carbohydrate content than “Dinner in Gelee” flavors.

It appears that there is a good amount of meat in these foods, with carbohydrates not acting as low-cost fillers but instead as critical texture enhancers.

Pate:

The Pate recipes have a much higher meat content and lower carbohydrate than the Original Recipes overall. Protein content is roughly the same as the Original Recipes, but fat content is much higher. Dry matter fat ranges from 20% to 40%. Although this is unlikely an issue nutritionally, fat content this high may upset some more sensitive feline stomachs.

The carbohydrate content in Soulistic’s Pate foods ranges from 3.5% to 12% on a dry matter basis. This is a much more ideal carbohydrate content for a wet cat food than in the Original Recipes. If your cat will eat Pate textures, we would recommend these formulas over Soulistic’s other foods.

Moist and Tender:

As far as protein, fat and carbohydrates go, the “Moist and Tender” line sits somewhere between the “Original Recipes” and “Pate”  cat foods. Protein ranges from 46% to 69% on a dry matter basis. Fat ranges from 10% to 31% on a dry matter basis. Carbohydrates range from 7% to 18% on a dry matter basis. It appears that the formulations for these foods are very similar to the Original Recipes, but they use less tapioca starch and thus have a less thickened broth.

• Phosphorus

Soulistic has a very well controlled phosphorus content in their cat food recipes. Dry matter phosphorus in the Original Recipes ranges from 0.7% to 1.2% with an average of 1.0%. It is very refreshing to see such a well controlled phosphorus level across an entire line of cat food. It is very clear that kidney health was taken into close consideration when these foods were being designed.

The “Pate” and “Moist and Tender” foods have similarly low phosphorus levels, with a few notable exceptions. “Duck and Tuna Pate Dinner,” “Duck Dinner in Gravy,” and “Lamb Dinner in Gravy” all have dry matter phosphorus levels between 1.5% and 2.0%. Still, these would be considered relatively well controlled phosphorus levels. Only one food has a high phosphorus level, “Duck & Salmon Dinner in Gravy,” which has 2.47% phosphorus on a dry matter basis. Since the vast majority of Soulistic’s phosphorus levels are so well controlled, we would recommend taking full advantage of their good formulations and avoiding feeding these specific flavors on a regular basis.

• Omega-3 Fatty Acids

The majority of Soulistic’s recipes include seafood, which is a natural source of the essential EPA and DHA omega-3s. However, there are a handful flavors of Soulistic which do not include any seafood are notably absent of an omega-3 source. Ideally, fish oil should be added to these formulas.