Clinivet Adult Light review

This is our Average band, a step below the Good band that holds the typical adult dry food. The why is worth spelling out. Our scoring rewards meat-led recipes and full declarations, and a diet food assembled from cereals around a 14% poultry meal was never going to charm it; protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Poor. What the band cannot see is intent. Fat at 5.4% of dry matter and 337 kcal per 100g are exactly the numbers a weight-loss bowl needs, and judged purely as that tool it is coherent.

Ingredients, as declared: Corn, brown rice (16%), poultry meal (14%), oats, poultry digest, poultry fat, beet pulp, fishmeal, brewers yeast, minerals, dried egg powder, whole linseeds, salmon oil, glucosamine (350mg/kg), methylsulfonylmethane (350mg/kg) fructooligosaccharides (305mg/kg), manna oligosaccharides (305mg/kg), chondroitin sulphate (250mg/kg), yucca extract.

The list opens with corn, followed by brown rice at 16% and later oats, which between them account for the 66.3% of dry matter that is estimated carbohydrate. In a light food that inversion is deliberate. Cereals dilute calories in a way meat cannot, and the payoff is a kibble a dieting dog can eat in satisfying quantity at 337 kcal per 100g.

Poultry meal at 14% carries the protein to 19.6% of dry matter, a concentrated source doing a lot with a little. The poultry name is a category rather than a bird though, and it may not be the same bird from batch to batch.

Fat is cut to 5.4% of dry matter, remarkably low for a kibble, with poultry fat, fishmeal and salmon oil sharing what remains. The salmon oil matters here, keeping some marine omega 3s in a recipe with little room for fat of any kind.

The supplement doses are substantial for a diet food: glucosamine and MSM at 350 mg/kg each, chondroitin sulphate at 250 mg/kg, and prebiotic FOS and MOS at 305 mg/kg apiece. Heavier dogs punish their joints, so pairing a slimming recipe with real joint doses is joined-up thinking. The trace minerals mix chelated and sulphate forms, and no calcium figure is declared.

£3.29 a kilo, available in 4kg and 12kg bags.

Working from the usual maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75), a 15kg adult in moderate condition needs roughly 249 grams, around £0.82 a day. On a weight-loss plan your vet's target intake replaces that estimate.