Essential Foods Essential Contour Pate review

Our Excellent band is where Contour finishes. Wet recipes tend to score well with us, so an Excellent puts this tin among good company rather than out on its own. The meat does most of that work, at 65% of the tin across four named animal entries, with protein converting to 43.2% of dry matter. Nutritional balance and transparency both read Outstanding, and protein and processing and value both Excellent. Estimated carbohydrate comes in at 15.4% of dry matter, near enough the 15.8% the typical adult wet food carries, and that is where the apple, the pea flour and the added fibre show up.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck meat (25%), chicken meat (19%), chicken hearts (12%), chicken gizzards (9%), apples (2%), pea flour (2%), salmon oil (1%), cranberry (1%), blueberry (1%), goji berry (1%), blackberry (1%), lignocellulose, calcium carbonate, kelp (0.2%), green tea (0.2%), marigold (0.2%), ginger (0.2%), spirulina (0.2%).

Four animal entries open the list and together they come to 65% of the tin. Duck at 25% and chicken meat at 19% lead, then chicken hearts at 12% and gizzards at 9%. Organ meat like that is dense in the minerals and B vitamins a dog needs. Giving it its own printed line, with no category term to hide behind, is the honest way to write a label.

Plants take up little of the tin and are mostly there for interest: apples at 2%, pea flour at 2%, then cranberry, blueberry, goji berry and blackberry at 1% each. Roasted peas are milled to make the pea flour, and it brings iron, calcium and fibre in the modest amount used here. Plant protein never does the job that animal protein does, and in this tin it is not being asked to.

Lignocellulose and calcium carbonate are the two working entries without a percentage. The first is a purified fibre used to give a food bulk without giving it calories. That is a fair choice in a tin aimed at keeping a dog trim, even if fibre from whole vegetables reads better. The second is the calcium source, and the calcium it delivers converts to 0.91% of dry matter, a comfortable level for adult maintenance.

Salmon oil at 1% is the small entry doing real work, carrying the long-chain omega-3 that plant oils cannot. Kelp, green tea, marigold, ginger and spirulina follow at 0.2% each, and they are there for character more than nutrition.

Every line of the additive panel is dosed, with vitamin D3 at 300 IU, zinc at 12.5 mg, iron at 10 mg, manganese at 3 mg and iodine at 0.8 mg. Vitamin A is printed in international units alongside them. Fat converts to 27.3% of dry matter, which with the energy density is what makes this a satisfying tin for a busy dog.

£9.37 a kilo. The tin holds 400 g and is sold on its own or in a six.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 764 grams a day, working out at about £7.16, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label's own guide asks 585 grams a day for a dog that size.