Can Cats Eat Chicken Nuggets?

Chicken is a good source for animal protein. Even, Gray Richter, DVM from Montclair Veterinary Hospital states that “cats are carnivores, so giving animal protein is a must for cat’s good health”.

So, what about chicken nuggets? There are chicken foods too. Right?

Well, the answer to that question is a yes and no and involve lots of concerning points.

But before going for details, Let’s check the short answer for this query.

No. Even cat’s love to eat chicken nuggets, you should not give them to your cat. The ingredients used to make chicken nuggets (other than the chicken) are extremely toxic in long term use.

Yes, of course. There are lots of precautions that you need to take care; before even considering to give them.

Typically, chicken nuggets consist of two major parts.

1. Out topping layer
2. The inside chicken meat part

The unhealthiest part is the outer topping layer. It has lots of food flavours such as;

• Sodium Phosphates
• Enriched Flour
• Bleached Flour
• Niacin
• Reduced Iron
• Thiamin Mononitrate
• Riboflavin
• Folic Acid
• Yellow Corn Flour
• Baking Soda
• Sodium Acid Pyrophosphate
• Sodium Aluminum Phosphate
• Monocalcium Phosphate
• Calcium Lactate
• Spices
• Salt
• Autolyzed Yeast Extract
• Wheat Starch
• Natural Flavoring
• Safflower Oil
• Dextrose
• Citric Acid
• Cornstarch
• Canola Oil
• TBHQ
• Dimethylpolysiloxane

The composition of these chemicals is pretty bad. To be honest, these are not good for even human. Yeah, for us.

It’s super bad for your cat and kitten.

Therefore, if you even consider to give them to your furr ball, then remove the outer topping layer and just give the inside meat section.

There is one more thing to add. The inside part – the meat section, It is not only pure chicken meat.

 It is a mixture of bone fragments, intestines, and blood vessels. So overall nutrition composition could be changed from pure chicken meat.

If your cat happened to eat a bag of chicken nuggets at once, then you need to be careful.

It could trigger some ingestion problems and can lead to some kind of serious health problem.

So, keep an eye of your cat for at least 24 hours. Most of the time, it could be normal.

However, if your cat shows any behaviour change, consult your vet as soon as possible.

If it’s just one or two chicken nuggets, then your cat will be fine. Do not worry.

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Chicken nuggets mostly filled with synthetic ingredients rather than natural ones.

So, their nutrition profile does not provide good benefits. It mostly adds extra toxicity into your cat’s body.

The way of making chicken nuggets is shown in this video. It says that these companies use more fresh items.

But in reality, no one knows the whole truth behind the back door.

The following table shows all the major nutrition elements in chicken nuggets. The data derived from UND Dining services.

Nutrition Profile	Amount per 5 serving (80g)
Calories	224
Fat	14.9g
Cholestrol	33.1mg
Sodium	513.8mg
Carbohydrate	10.8g
Protein	11.2g

As you can see in the table, the only nutrition component that will help your cat is protein.

But, it’s really a bad idea to use chicken nugget to increase the protein amount in your cat’s body. It will increase other toxic element concentration with alongside to protein.

Nevertheless, there are unknown chemical compounds used in the different brands to add their unique tasty to the chicken nuggets.

The long term use of these compounds is a really debatable topic even for human use.

From my point of view, chicken nugget will not add any advantage for your cat’s meal package.

If you are a person who is addicted to quick foods, like these… then you may have chicken nuggets quite frequently.

That means you could probably feed those for your cat too. If you do that up to today, now it’s time to change that.

What you were doing is, slowly making your cat sick. The unfortunate thing is, the illnesses that could arise from this kind of foods are not curable.

It could be cancers or other deadly illness.

Further, the chicken nuggets cook with the vegetable oil. The way of cooking chicken nuggets increases the oil concentrate inside the meat part.

So these oil makes them high in fats and eventually raise clog arteries and slow blood circulation of cats (with long term use).

Nevertheless, these fast foods will make your cat gain unhealthy weight which will further reason for lots of future problems.

If you still determined to give some for your cat, then this is the best way that you could follow.

• Take the chicken nugget and remove their outer coating.
• Then feed the inner meat section.
• Do not feed more than two or three.
• Most Important: Do not feed chicken nugget for your cat more than 2 or 3 times per month.

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Cats and kittens shouldn’t typically eat fatty foods. In fact, given the abundance of synthetics and preservatives in our food, it’s possible that none of it is healthy for humans. Cats frequently get cardiovascular conditions, which can be fatal. The main causes of these diseases are processed foods and deep-fried food.

Maintaining a healthy diet for cats is preferable to adding foods that have negative long-term impacts.

Chicken nuggets are a terrible idea for your cat. Do not feed your cat with chicken nuggets. However, it will not do much harm to your cat if chicken nuggets were given one or twice time per month.

Personally, my advice is to avoid these junk foods as much as possible.