Is Friskies Good for Cats? An Ingredient-by-Ingredient Breakdown

What's actually in Friskies?

We analyzed Friskies Surfin' & Turfin' Favorites, one of the brand's flagship dry cat food products. The first five ingredients are ground yellow corn, corn gluten meal, chicken by-product meal, soybean meal, and beef tallow preserved with mixed tocopherols.

The structure is similar to Meow Mix Original Choice (F/18), though Meow Mix now scores lower on our rubric. Ground yellow corn at number one means a grain — not a protein — is the most abundant ingredient. Corn gluten meal at number two means corn appears in two of the top two positions. For an obligate carnivore that evolved to eat whole prey animals, a food built on corn is a biological mismatch at the most fundamental level.

Chicken by-product meal at number three is the first animal-derived ingredient — a rendered product made from chicken parts not used for human consumption. Soybean meal at number four is a cheap plant protein and common allergen. Beef tallow at number five provides fat. Animal digest, appearing further down, is a vague palatability spray made from unspecified animal tissues — the food needs chemical flavor enhancement because the base ingredients aren't appealing enough on their own.

Turkey by-product meal, brewers dried yeast, salmon meal, and ocean fish meal appear lower in the list, contributing small amounts of additional protein. But by their position, they're present in minimal quantities — trace additions to a formula dominated by corn. Shop on Amazon →

The good stuff

Friskies includes taurine, an amino acid that's absolutely essential for cats. Without adequate taurine, cats develop dilated cardiomyopathy and retinal degeneration. DL-methionine supports urinary tract health, which is important for cats prone to urinary crystals. Brewers dried yeast provides B vitamins. The beef tallow uses mixed tocopherols (vitamin E) as a preservative rather than artificial alternatives.

Like all AAFCO-compliant cat foods, Friskies meets the minimum standards for complete and balanced nutrition. Your cat won't develop an outright deficiency on paper. But "technically prevents deficiency disease" is a low standard for a food you're serving daily. The score of 37 reflects partial credit for the named fish and meat meals further down the ingredient list and the natural tocopherol preservation — enough to keep Friskies out of the F tier, but still well below average.

The not-so-good stuff

The headline problem is the artificial colors: Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40, and Blue 2 — four synthetic dyes in a single cat food. Meow Mix uses three. Friskies adds a fourth (Yellow 6), making it the most artificially colored cat food in our database. These dyes exist to make the kibble pieces look different colors to humans browsing the store shelf. Cats are functionally unable to appreciate these color differences. The dyes provide zero nutritional value and add synthetic chemicals to every meal your cat eats.

The corn-on-corn foundation is identical to Meow Mix's structural problem. Ground yellow corn plus corn gluten meal means corn is the dominant ingredient by a wide margin. The protein percentage on the guaranteed analysis might look acceptable, but a significant portion comes from corn gluten meal and soybean meal — plant proteins with an amino acid profile poorly suited to obligate carnivores. Cats need animal-derived amino acids like taurine, arachidonic acid, and preformed vitamin A that plants simply don't provide in adequate amounts.

Friskies and Meow Mix share the same corn-heavy structural problem; despite minor differences in color count, they're structurally near-twins at the bottom tier. The two formulas are otherwise almost indistinguishable — same corn-first structure, same by-product meals, same soybean meal, same animal digest.

How it compares

Friskies' D/37 sits in the below-average D tier of our cat food database, roughly tied with 9Lives (D/38) and somewhat below Royal Canin (D/45). It is no longer the lowest score in the database — that distinction now belongs to Meow Mix (F/18), the only cat food in our current F tier. Both Friskies and Meow Mix come from the same corn-first playbook, but Meow Mix's formula scores lower on our rubric.

The distance between Friskies and an adequate cat food is still substantial. Purina Pro Plan (C/56), Fancy Feast (C/58), Hill's Science Diet (C/60), and Iams (C/62) all sit firmly in the C tier — meaningfully higher than Friskies' D. Fancy Feast in particular flipped from D/44 to C/58 after a recent reformulation, highlighting how quickly a supermarket brand can move once it upgrades its ingredient deck.

The upgrade path beyond the C tier opens up the B brands: Blue Buffalo (B/76), Taste of the Wild (B/76), and Wellness (B/80) all score more than twice as high as Friskies. Purina ONE (D/52) also represents a solid step up for owners on a tight budget, and it's available at the same stores that sell Friskies. The cost difference between feeding Friskies and feeding a genuinely better food often works out to less than $10 per month.

Read the full breakdown in our Meow Mix vs Friskies head-to-head comparison.

The bottom line

Friskies Surfin' & Turfin' Favorites earns a D grade (37/100) from KibbleIQ — a below-average formula with legitimate concerns. A corn-first, corn-second formula with four artificial colors, multiple by-product meals, soybean meal, and unspecified animal digest is still a long way from quality cat nutrition, even if named fish and meat meals and natural tocopherol preservation keep it out of the F tier. Friskies and Meow Mix share nearly identical corn-heavy formulas under different branding, with Meow Mix scoring lower on our rubric. If your cat is eating Friskies, most other brands on the shelf are an upgrade. A modest step up to Blue Buffalo or Taste of the Wild will be a transformative improvement in what your cat is actually consuming. Shop on Amazon →