CSJ Fit 'n' Fast review

The food lands in our Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry shelf. Transparency reads Outstanding here, though nothing on the ingredient list carries a percentage, so the salmon at the front cannot be measured. Protein and processing and nutritional balance both read Average, with maize gluten in the middle of the recipe and the starch side estimated at 51.7% of dry matter. Value reads Good, level with the food overall. What a general score cannot see is the job this was built for. As a simple, energy dense ration for a dog in regular hard work, it is doing something quite specific and doing it.

Ingredients, as declared: Salmon, Maize, Barley, Oats, Chicken fat, Chicken gravy, Beet pulp, Linseed, Maize gluten, Minerals, Salmon oil, Yeast, Dried fruits & herbs (total herbs 1000mg/kg; Blackcurrant, Rosemary, Pomegranate, Milk Thistle, Seaweed, Fenugreek, Spearmint, Parsley, Marshmallow root, Marjoram, Oregano), Yucca schidigera.

Salmon comes first, which in ingredient order means it went into the mixer in the largest amount, though as fresh fish it arrives full of water and a good deal of that leaves during cooking. With no percentage printed against it, there is no way to pin down what it leaves behind. Protein finishes at 25.6% of dry matter and fat at 13.3%, a workable pair for a dry food.

Maize, barley and oats form the biscuit. Barley and oats are the more useful two, bringing fibre and a steadier release of energy, and all three are cooked, which is what makes cereal starch digestible for a dog in the first place. Carbohydrate estimates at 51.7% of dry matter on the declared moisture.

Maize gluten sits just after the linseed. It is the milled by-product of maize used to top up protein without more meat, and a dog gets less out of it than out of an animal source. On a food with a single named meat at the front, it is the entry that changes how the protein figure should be read.

Linseed and salmon oil are the omega sources, one from a plant and one from the sea, which is a sensible pairing since the marine form is the one a dog can use directly. The fermentable fibre that keeps digestion regular comes from beet pulp. Yeast brings mannan oligosaccharides, the prebiotic that feeds a dog's own gut bacteria.

Every plant in the dried fruit and herb blend is named, from blackcurrant and pomegranate through to milk thistle and marjoram, and the blend totals 1000mg/kg. That is more open than a bare mention of herbs. At that total the blend is a flourish and not a working dose. Yucca schidigera sits at the end, put there to soften stool odour.

The sack is 15kg and this works out at £1.51 a kilo.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 218 grams a day, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That comes to £0.33 a day. Hard work asks for more than that, and the label's table gives 145 to 245 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg.