Denes Light Tins review

Our band for this tin is Good, a step below the Excellent band that the typical adult wet food occupies, and the arithmetic behind that is straightforward. Wheat carries no percentage but sits third, ahead of the pork liver, and the estimated carbohydrate converts to 40.9% of dry matter where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. The declared meat comes to a little over a quarter of the tin. Nutritional balance reads Average as a result, while protein and processing comes back Excellent and transparency Outstanding. For the dog it was built for, that is not a mark against the dinner. Fat at 18.2% of dry matter is precisely what a light recipe should deliver, and an overweight dog eating this gets exactly what the label promises.

We should add that our carbohydrate figure for wet food is a calculation by difference, not a measurement, so it tends to read a little high. Even allowing for that, the cereal share here is the largest of the Denes range.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh pork 12%, fresh chicken 8%, wheat, fresh pork liver 4%, dried chicken 3%, carrots, minerals, herbs (kelp, garlic, and parsley).

The meat is spread across four entries and all of them are named: fresh pork at 12%, fresh chicken at 8%, fresh pork liver at 4% and dried chicken at 3%. Splitting it that way keeps each individual figure small, and together they come to around 27% of the tin, which is the lowest animal share in the Denes range. That is a deliberate choice in a light food, because meat is where most of the fat lives.

Pork carries the recipe and it is a good meat for the job. It is highly palatable, easily digested and still rare enough in tinned food to count as new to a lot of dogs. The pork liver at 4% is the nutritional heavy lifter of the four entries, dense in B vitamins and in copper and iron. It is also what gives a leaner tin its smell and its appeal.

Wheat is the entry that shapes the score. It sits third with no percentage against it, ahead of the liver, and it is doing the work of filling the tin that the meat is not. Wheat is inexpensive and perfectly digestible for most dogs. Intolerance gets blamed on it more than on any other cereal, so keep that in mind where a dog's skin has been itchy before.

Carrots follow with soluble fibre and beta carotene, and the herb blend is named as kelp, garlic and parsley. Kelp is a natural source of iodine and trace minerals, which is useful given how short the printed additive table is. Garlic appears at the small culinary levels this brand has used for years.

The declared additives are vitamins A, D3 and E with copper as cupric sulphate. That is a brief list, and the copper figure here is the highest of any Denes tin at 4.2mg/kg. Zinc, iodine, manganese and selenium are not printed with figures, so the minerals entry in the composition is carrying whatever else the recipe needs.

Sold in 400g cans, individually and in cases of 12.

As a maintenance guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat somewhere near 971 grams a day here, which is close to two and a half cans. That comes from an energy need of about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard estimate) and our estimated energy figure of 86 kcal per 100g.

A dog being fed for weight loss will be on less than that, and your vet's target weight is the number to work back from. As captured, the tin's printed feeding table does not scale sensibly.