Concept For Life Medium Breed Light review

Our scoring settles this recipe in the Average band, a step below the Good band the typical adult dry food reaches. Almost all of the distance comes from choices the recipe makes on purpose. A light diet cuts fat and adds indigestible fibre, which pulls the energy density down and lifts the share of the bag that is doing bulk rather than nutrition. On top of that the fresh chicken loses its water in the oven, the leading poultry entry names no single bird, and carbohydrate still comes out at 47.4% of dry matter. Judged as what it is, a calorie controlled bowl for a medium dog on a diet, it does its job and dresses it with a decent set of extras.

Ingredients, as declared: 26% Poultry Protein (Rich in Chicken, Partly Dried and Hydrolysed), Rice, Maize, 12% Fresh Chicken Meat, Lignocellulose, Dried Beet Pulp (Desugared), Poultry Fat, Linseed, Sodium Chloride, Brewer's Yeast (Dried), Monocalcium Phosphate, 0.2% Yeast Extract (Rich in Beta-Glucans and Mannan-Oligosaccharides), 0.1% Salmon Oil, 0.1% Chicory Inulin, Psyllium Husks (Dried), 0.1% Sunflower Oil, 0.04% Glucosamine, 0.02% Chondroitin Sulphate, Antioxidants.

Poultry protein at 26% opens the list, partly dried and hydrolysed and flagged as rich in chicken. Because it is already dried, that entry keeps most of its weight into the finished kibble, which is why protein still converts to 28.3% of dry matter despite the low fat. Hydrolysis breaks the protein into smaller pieces, generally an easier form for a gut to handle. Fresh chicken at 12% sits further down, past the rice and maize, and most of its declared weight is water that leaves in cooking.

Rice and maize carry the starch, both of them ordinary cereals that suit a dog with no history of cereal trouble. Carbohydrate is estimated at 47.4% of dry matter, close to the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. The calorie cutting here has come out of the fat, and the starch is left where it was.

The fibre is the real engine of this recipe. Lignocellulose is a purified plant fibre, essentially indigestible, and it is used in light foods precisely because it takes up room in a bowl while contributing almost nothing in calories. Desugared beet pulp adds the fermentable kind that gut bacteria work on, and dried psyllium husks bring soluble fibre to help hold everything together. Crude fibre lands at 6.0%, well up on where an ordinary adult recipe would sit.

The weight management thinking carries into the small print. L-carnitine at 100 mg per kilo is an amino acid derivative, printed with its dose. Its role is to carry fat where the burning happens, inside the cells. Gut flora are looked after by chicory inulin at 0.1% and by the yeast extract at 0.2%, where the beta-glucans and mannan-oligosaccharides come from. Brewer's yeast adds natural B vitamins behind them.

The joint pair is small but declared: glucosamine at 0.04% and chondroitin sulphate at 0.02%, useful additions for a dog whose frame has been carrying extra weight. The fats come from poultry fat and linseed, and salmon oil at 0.1% with sunflower oil at 0.1% back them up. The mineral panel is fully dosed, zinc twice over at 100 mg per kilo as the sulphate and another 60 mg as a glycine chelate, and the chelate is the easier one to absorb.

Available in 1.5kg, 6kg and 12kg bags.

For a rough guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would work through about 250 grams a day, on an assumed requirement of 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That estimate is for a dog at a steady weight, so a dog actually being slimmed down should be fed under it and judged by the ribs.