Bob & Lush Light & Tasty Wet review

This tin lands in our Average band, and the reason is the shape of the analysis rather than the quality of what goes in. Salmon at 35% is the only animal named anywhere, and transparency reads Outstanding on the strength of it, while nutritional balance reads Good and protein and processing reads Poor. The typical adult wet food sits up in our Excellent band, so the fair reading is a recipe doing a deliberately lighter job than the bulk of the category. The figure pulling the other way is carbohydrate, estimated at 33.5% of dry matter against the 15.8% typical, which is simply the arithmetic of building a light recipe on sweet potato, swede and lentils.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh Salmon (35%), Broth (33%), Sweet Pot[atoes …%], Swede (10%), Lentils (5%), Thickener (1%) and Minerals (1%). Front of tin: "Slow cooked 100% Fresh Salmon, with Sweet Potatoes, Swede and Lentils".

Fresh salmon at 35% leads, and the front of the tin describes it as slow cooked 100% fresh salmon. That claim is about the form of the salmon, not the make up of the tin. Read it as the salmon being fresh, and not the whole recipe being salmon. Protein converts to 30.4% of dry matter, modest by design in a recipe built to run light.

Second on the list is broth at 33%, the one thing left unnamed. Most makers who lead on a single fish also name the broth after it, and this label does not, so a household excluding one particular animal is working with a small blank.

The plant side is where the character comes from. Sweet potato is a high quality starch with far more fibre than an ordinary potato. Swede at 10% adds bulk for very little energy, and lentils at 5% bring fibre and a little plant protein that tends to leave a dog feeling fuller. Crude fibre converts to 7.8% of dry matter, which is high for a wet food and exactly what you want in a recipe meant to satisfy on fewer calories.

A thickener at 1% gives the tin its texture and minerals at 1% close the list. The label does not print an added vitamin and trace element panel, so there are no doses to read here, which is less declaration than the sister Adult recipe manages.

At 87 kcal per 100g against the 97 typical of adult wet food, this is a light tin in the literal sense, and moisture at 77% means most of what your dog swallows is water.

£8.75 a kilo, in a single 400g tin size sold in packs of six.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition comes to about £8.45 a day, or roughly 966 grams, taking maintenance as about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate). That is a little under two and a half tins.