Boost Fresh Food Trays: Beef review

Five of the six reach our Outstanding band, which is where the typical fresh food sits as well, and the fish tray follows a step behind in Excellent. This range holds its own in the toughest category we score. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency come back Outstanding on every recipe with value keeping pace, and the meat trays sit close enough together that preference should decide, not rank.

The Pork leads on our reading and the Meatfeast follows it. These labels earn their standing by itemising. The meat figure is broken open into its parts, nearly every plant entry carries a percentage, and the oils and prebiotics are declared to a tenth of a per cent. Very few makers write a label this legible.

Ingredients, as declared: Beef 70% (including beef tripe 17%, beef liver 6%), Carrot 8%, Sweet Potato 6%, Kale 5%,Pea 4%, Potato Starch, Linseed oil (0.5%), Fish oil (0.5%), Minerals, Chicory powder (0.1%)

The meat share is the whole story. Five recipes declare 70% and then open it up. The Beef breaks out 17% tripe and 6% liver, and the Chicken splits into 20% chicken meat, 16% liver and 10% breast. The Lamb gives 12% tripe and 6% liver, and the Pork itemises 10% liver with 10% heart. Tripe and organ meat are not padding in that context, they are the nutrient-dense parts of an animal that a muscle-only recipe never touches at all.

The Fish tray works to a different plan, leading with 60% whitefish and adding 10% chicken behind it. It is the leanest thing in the range by a distance, with fat converting to 10.0% of dry matter. That makes it the tray to reach for when a dog needs its calories reined in without its protein being cut back at the same time.

The plants are few and every one is named. Carrot, sweet potato, kale and pea do most of the work, with apple in the Pork, broccoli in the Fish and green bean in the Lamb, and each one carries its own percentage. Potato starch follows as the binder. Pure starch brings little beyond energy, and it sits well down these lists.

Fat arrives from two directions on most of the trays. Linseed oil at 0.5% covers the plant form of omega 3, and fish oil at 0.5% covers the marine form that dogs use more directly. The Fish tray takes another route, doubling the linseed to 1% and leaving fish oil off entirely, since the whitefish is already covering that ground.

Chicory at 0.1% closes almost every list. Its inulin is a soluble fibre, and the good bacteria in a dog's large intestine live on it. The added panel is declared per kilo and dosed in print. Vitamin E sits at 50 mg, zinc at 15 mg, manganese at 10.0 mg, copper at 2.0 mg and iodine at 0.5 mg. Vitamin D3 is at 200 IU on every recipe bar the Fish.

Being gently cooked rather than extruded, these trays carry a lot of water, declared between 72.0% and 80.0%, and they belong in the fridge once opened. That is ordinary for the format, and it is also why the as fed protein figures look small beside a bag of kibble when on a dry matter basis they reach between 42.3% and 55.0%.

Beef at 70%, itemised as 17% tripe and 6% liver, on carrot at 8% with sweet potato, kale and pea behind it. Tripe declared at that level is unusual to see in print, and it is the entry that gives this tray its powerful smell and its pull on a hard-to-please dog.

£8.79 a kilo across every recipe, in 400g trays sold singly or in a multipack of 7.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through between 636 and 743 grams a day, the amount varying with the recipe. That rests on about 840 kcal a day from the standard maintenance estimate of 110 × bodyweight^0.75. That works out between £5.59 and £6.53 a day, the richer trays feeding in smaller amounts than the leaner ones.