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By Chad, cat dad to Fawn and Arya. I’m not a vet. Recipe names below are copied from the Clean Label Project’s own published lists.
You read that lead showed up in 99 out of 100 cat foods, you looked at your cat, and now you want one thing: the list. Not the methodology, not a lecture about obligate carnivores. The list.
Here it is. All 32 foods the Clean Label Project named in its 2026 cat food study, split into the 16 cleanest wet foods and the 16 cleanest dry and freeze-dried foods.
Quick answer
The Clean 16 is two lists from the Clean Label Project’s 2026 study of 100 cat foods: the 16 wet foods and the 16 dry or freeze-dried foods with the lowest combined contaminant scores, heavy metals included. It ranks contamination, not nutrition, so before anything here becomes your cat’s daily food, check that the label says complete and balanced for your cat’s life stage.
Jump to: the wet list | the dry list
The Clean 16 Wet Cat Food List
Listed alphabetically by brand. Names match the Clean Label Project’s Clean Sixteen wet cat food list.
- Applaws Chicken Breast & Duck in Broth
- Freshpet Tender Chicken & Garden Vegetable Recipe
- Friskies Salmon Dinner Pate
- Instinct Original Grain-Free Pate
- Nulo Medal Series Chicken & Chicken Liver Recipe in Broth
- Nulo Medal Series Chicken, Duck & Pumpkin Recipe in Broth
- Purina Fancy Feast Grilled Turkey Feast in Gravy
- Purina Pro Plan White Meat Chicken & Vegetables Entree
- Reveal Grain-Free Chicken Breast in Broth
- Reveal Grain-Free Tuna Fillet in Broth
- Sheba Cuts in Gravy, Roasted Chicken Entree
- Smalls Smooth Bird Chicken Recipe
- Tiki Cat Chicken & Pumpkin Recipe in Broth
- Tiki Cat Chicken, Pumpkin & Duck Recipe in Broth
- Tiki Cat Chicken, Pumpkin & Lamb Recipe in Broth
- Tiki Cat Chicken, Pumpkin & Tuna Recipe in Broth
Chaddy note: the list names specific recipes, not whole brands. Fancy Feast Grilled Turkey in Gravy made it. That does not mean every Fancy Feast can did, and most of the other cans were never tested at all. The study covered 100 products from 62 brands, so a missing recipe usually means no data, not a failing grade. Buy the recipe on the list, not the logo.
The supermarket names each get their own breakdown in the brand by brand lead check, including what one tested recipe does not tell you.
The Clean 16 Dry and Freeze-Dried Cat Food List
Only two traditional kibbles made this list: Hill’s Science Diet Adult 1-6 Chicken Recipe and Kirkland Signature Chicken & Rice. Everything else is freeze-dried or air-dried, which lines up with the study’s finding that dry food carried roughly three times the lead of wet.
- Bixbi Rawbble Turkey Recipe (freeze-dried)
- Boss Cat Complete & Balanced Boss Pork Recipe (freeze-dried)
- Fresh Is Best Freeze-Dried Cat Food, Chicken Recipe
- Green Juju Duck & Sardine Recipe (freeze-dried)
- Hill’s Science Diet Adult 1-6 Chicken Recipe (kibble)
- Kirkland Signature Chicken & Rice (kibble)
- McLovin’s Purrfect Poultry Recipe (freeze-dried)
- Natural Pet Food Group New Zealand Chicken Feast (air-dried)
- Nulo Freestyle Chicken & Salmon Recipe (freeze-dried)
- Purpose Pet Food Carnivore Duck (freeze-dried)
- Smallbatch Freeze-Dried Meal Bites, Turkey Recipe
- Stella & Chewy’s Duck Duck Goose (freeze-dried)
- Stella & Chewy’s Tummy Ticklin’ Turkey (freeze-dried)
- Vital Essentials Rabbit Entree (freeze-dried)
- Weruva Paw Lickin’ Chicken (freeze-dried)
- Whole Life Nature’s Remedy Recover Stomach Distress (freeze-dried)
Chaddy note: read the bag before you build a diet around this list. Whole Life’s Recover Stomach Distress, for example, is sold as an interim food for cats with upset stomachs, not an everyday meal. Look for “complete and balanced” and a life stage that matches your cat on anything you plan to feed daily.
Quick Picks: The Clean 16 Foods We Would Actually Buy
- Our everyday pick: Smalls Fresh, gently cooked, on the clean wet list, and the food that goes in our bowls every day.
- Best canned pick: Tiki Cat Chicken & Pumpkin Recipe in Broth All four Tiki Cat wet recipes in the study made the list. No other brand placed four.
- Best freeze-dried pick: Weruva Paw Lickin’ Chicken A poultry recipe on the dry list from a brand that is easy to find.
- Feeding kibble? The only two kibbles on the list are Hill’s Science Diet Adult 1-6 Chicken Recipe and Kirkland Signature Chicken & Rice.
What “Clean 16” Actually Means
In 2026 the Clean Label Project, an independent nonprofit, bought 100 cat foods from 62 brands off the shelf and sent them to a lab for heavy metals and other contaminants. The headline number was lead in 99 of the 100. Cadmium turned up in 96 and arsenic in 94. Almost nothing came back clean in the absolute sense, so the study ranked foods against each other instead. You can check the details yourself on the Clean Label Project’s cat food study page.
The Clean 16 is the result of that ranking: the 16 wet foods and the 16 dry or freeze-dried foods with the lowest combined scores across all of the study’s test panels. That is not the same as the lowest lead. A food can make the list on its overall score without topping any single metal. Wet and dry were ranked separately because wet food carried roughly a third of the lead of dry, so a single list would have been all wet food.
If you want the six findings that mattered most and why poultry beat fish, I broke the whole study down in heavy metals in cat food: what the 2026 study found. This post is the list.
Three Things the Lists Tell You
Price is not purity. Kirkland and Friskies are on here. So are foods that cost several times as much. Plenty of premium foods with beautiful packaging did not make either list.
Poultry keeps winning. Chicken, turkey and duck recipes dominate both lists. Fish-forward recipes are rare on them, which matches the study’s bigger finding that seafood recipes carried about 18 times the mercury of everything else.
Consistency is rare. Every Tiki Cat wet recipe in the study made the list, all four of them. Nulo, Reveal and Stella & Chewy’s placed two each, and most brands placed one. These results apply to the named recipes only; unlisted recipes may not have been tested at all.
What the Clean 16 Does Not Tell You
This is a contamination ranking, not a nutrition ranking. A food can be low in heavy metals and still be a poor everyday diet, and the study did not score protein quality, moisture, or whether a recipe is complete and balanced. Treat the Clean 16 as a filter you run your shortlist through, not as the shortlist itself.
It is also one round of testing, from a single batch of each product. Formulas change, suppliers change, and the next round will reshuffle names. I will update this page when a new list drops.
Chaddy note: if your cat is on a prescription diet for kidney, urinary or digestive issues, do not swap it for something on this list without talking to your vet first. Lower lead is not worth a flare-up.
How to Use the List Without Losing Your Mind
Start with the format you already feed. If you feed wet, pick from the wet list and favor the poultry recipes. If you feed dry, the honest move is to shift at least part of the day to wet or fresh food, because the lead gap between formats was bigger than the gap between brands. If you must stay dry, the two kibbles on the list are the two kibbles on the list.
Then rotate. Two or three recipes from the list instead of one means no single supplier’s bad batch becomes your cat’s whole diet. For the bigger picture on protein, moisture and life stage, my guide to cat food without heavy metals and what we feed ours walks through it.
Eating well and still wild at night? That is a play problem, not a food problem. Start with our indoor cat boredom fixes or grab the free Fix Kit.
What We Feed Ours
Smalls. It is fresh, gently cooked, poultry-forward, and has a short ingredient list, which is the exact profile the study rewarded, so seeing its Smooth Bird recipe on the wet list confirmed the pick rather than changing it. If you want to try it, start with Smalls.
Their small kibble portion goes in a puzzle feeder, so lunch takes some hunting. The feeders we use are in our cat enrichment toy roundup.
Check our work: the source for every name on this page is the Clean Label Project, via its study page, its list of all tested products, and its Clean Sixteen wet list.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Clean 16 cat food list?
The Clean 16 is two lists from the Clean Label Project’s 2026 study of 100 cat foods: the 16 wet foods and the 16 dry or freeze-dried foods with the lowest combined contaminant scores across the study’s test panels, heavy metals included. It is a contamination ranking, not a nutrition ranking.
Is Fancy Feast on the Clean 16 list?
One recipe is. Purina Fancy Feast Grilled Turkey Feast in Gravy made the wet list. The list names specific recipes rather than whole brands, and most other Fancy Feast flavors were not tested.
Is Smalls on the Clean 16 list?
Yes. Smalls Smooth Bird Chicken Recipe is on the wet list. Smalls is the food we feed our own cats.
Which dry cat foods are on the Clean 16?
Only two traditional kibbles made the dry list: Hill’s Science Diet Adult 1-6 Chicken Recipe and Kirkland Signature Chicken and Rice. The other 14 are freeze-dried or air-dried foods.
Does being on the list mean a food has no lead?
No. Lead was found in 99 of the 100 foods tested. The Clean 16 had the lowest combined contaminant scores, which is not the same as having the least lead specifically, and none of them were lead-free. Across formats, wet food averaged about a third of the lead found in dry food.
The Bottom Line
Pick a poultry recipe from the wet list, confirm it is complete and balanced for your cat, rotate two or three of them, and stop paying for packaging. If kibble has to stay, Hill’s Science Diet Adult 1-6 Chicken and Kirkland Signature Chicken & Rice are the only two that made the cut. And if you want the one we chose, it is Smalls.
