I don't think it's exactly a scam, Anon, although I too was taken by
surprise to find out how many of those brands supplied by Menu Foods
were premium brands.  My understanding of the way it works is that the
client company submits their recipe to the manufacturer, and the
manufacturer follows it.  Unless Menu is outright lying (and I believe
they would have ever so much more to lose that to gain by lying) they
follow a large number of different recipes.  

If you compare brands by ingredient list, you find that the premium
brands don't use so many by products and nutritionally "iffy" things
like chicken feet--not that they ever would come out and actually SAY
chicken feet--as do many of the less expensive brands.  Some of the
house brands measure up pretty closely, though.  There's probably less
difference than the premium companies would like us to believe.

To be a careful shopper, you just have to research what all those
ingredient terms mean.  But I have NO IDEA how to avoid the problem of
contamination, especially of ingredients purchased on the international
market.  Premiums are not immune to getting contaminated ingredients;
neither is the food we humans eat.  It's a scary world.  I totally
understand why some people are doing home-cooked pet food, but you know
what?  A lot of people do not do their homework on their pets'
nutritional needs nearly as well as the pet food companies have done,
and some of those animals will not be better off.  It's a very complex
problem, this food thing.  A lot of us are vacillating between near
paranoia and denial when it comes to grocery shopping.

Sorry that this likely doesn't help much, but I think it's the real deal.

Diana

If you or I would eat it, well then I would call it premium.  Premium or
not, one food my cats have always enjoyed were live mice from the pet
store...add bow at Christmas.
But I have had the worry that they would get some virus from this moving
dish....so I stopped.   They may go back on the menu.  If my cats could
talk, they would want them more than the Deadly Kitty brand.

I think the somewhat premium (iams) is good, kittys sh.t hardly smells
and is perfect - it dont make a mess in the litter box.  if I feed him the
super cheap meow mix, his sh.t stinks up the entire house and its
nasty and runny looking, no joke....

Very unscientifically, I look for canned food whose first ingredient is
fish. Right now I'm having good luck with two flavors of Friskies. If
the first ingredient is water, then I don't buy it. I have tried lots of
foods, and I pretty much judge their quality based on the output, as it
were, of my 15-year-old and 13-year-old cats. Right now they have stable
habits, good output, and are very active, so that's what they get to
eat. I have changed foods once every couple years in reaction to changes
in the cat box.

JG

I think one of the biggest problems with this is that the word
'Premium' as used by these manufacturers has no definition. A lot of
people seem to equate it with being made from ingredients that would
be graded as fit for human consumption & unfortunately as we now see,
this is not the case.