Amazon Meaty Selection in Jelly: Senior review

Our scoring lands this one in the Average band, well below the Excellent band where the typical adult wet food settles. The reason is almost entirely about what the label shows. Transparency reads Good, but protein and processing comes in Poor because nearly every line on the list is a legal category rather than a named ingredient, while nutritional balance reads Outstanding. The numbers themselves are respectable for a wet food, with protein at 48.6% of dry matter and an estimated carbohydrate of 8.0% where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. An Average placement here is a comment on the recipe you are allowed to read, not a warning about the food in the pouch.

Ingredients, as declared: WITH BEEF IN JELLY: Meat and Animal Derivatives 40% (4% Beef), Oils and Fats, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.4% Inulin), Vegetable Protein Extracts, WITH CHICKEN IN JELLY: Meat and Animal Derivatives 40% (4% Chicken), Oils and Fats, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.4% Inulin), Vegetable Protein Extracts, WITH LAMB IN JELLY: Meat and Animal Derivatives 40% (4% Lamb), Oils and Fats, Minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.4% Inulin), Vegetable Protein Extracts, WITH POULTRY IN JELLY: Meat and Animal Derivatives 40% (4% Poultry), Oils and Fats, minerals, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.4% Inulin), Vegetable Protein Extracts.

The list is short and almost all of it is written in category language. Meat and animal derivatives at 40% can draw on any warm blooded land animal and any part of it. The 4% named beside it is the only fixed point, and that is what makes one pouch the beef and the next the lamb. The other working entries behave the same way, each covering a wide field of possible sources. This style of labelling is normal in own label wet food and it is not a hygiene question, but it does ask you to take the recipe on trust rather than read it.

What the analysis shows is better than the wording suggests. Protein converts to 48.6% of dry matter and fat to 29.7%. For a wet food both are strong. The estimated carbohydrate sits at 8.0% of dry matter against 15.8% for the typical adult wet food. Whatever those derivatives are, they are not padding the pouch out with starch.

Inulin at 0.4% is the one functional touch, a soluble plant fibre that feeds the useful bacteria in the large intestine. At that level it is a gentle nudge.

The added panel covers vitamin D3, vitamin E, biotin, zinc, manganese, copper and iodine, printed once for all four varieties with a dose beside each entry. Ash converts to 11.4% of dry matter, which is an ordinary mineral load for a wet food.

£2.78 a kilo, sold as a 4.8 kg box of 48 pouches of 100 g.

As a guide, feeding works out at around £2.81 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to roughly 1012 grams a day, or about ten pouches. The label's own guide for a dog of 15 to 20 kg is 900 to 1100 grams a day.