Essential Foods Essential Estate Living Pate review

Estate Living earns our Excellent band. Wet food scores well with us across the board, so an Excellent here is the standard of the category rather than an exception to it. What this tin does especially well is naming: 65% of it is lamb and turkey with a figure against every entry, and no category term appears anywhere in the list. Transparency and nutritional balance each read Outstanding, with protein and processing and value at Excellent.

Ingredients, as declared: Lamb meat (26%), turkey meat (24%), turkey hearts (15%), apples (2%), pea flour (2%), 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%).

Lamb at 26% and turkey at 24% share the top of the list with turkey hearts at 15% behind them, and the three together come to 65% of the tin. Lamb is easily digested and highly palatable, and heart is about as nutrient-dense as any part of a bird gets, so this is a well-chosen trio and not a decorative one.

No third animal appears anywhere on the label. There is no fish oil, no unnamed fat, no hydrolysed protein and no meat and animal derivatives. If you are still pinning down what your dog reacts to, and chicken and fish have to stay out of the bowl, that makes the tin genuinely useful.

The working plants are apples at 2% and pea flour at 2%. Behind them sit four berries at 1% apiece, from cranberry and blueberry to goji berry and blackberry, for antioxidants and a little natural sweetness. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 18.7% of dry matter, slightly above the 15.8% that the typical adult wet food carries, and the pea flour and apple are most of that.

Two entries carry no percentage. Lignocellulose is a purified fibre that adds bulk without calories, a deliberate choice in a paté of this kind. Calcium carbonate is the mineral supplement, with calcium converting to 0.91% of dry matter and settling comfortably for an adult dog.

At 0.2% each come spirulina, ginger, marigold, green tea and kelp. They are a herbal signature, not a nutritional plank. The additive panel is dosed in full, with vitamin A at 800 IU, vitamin D3 at 250 IU, zinc at 10 mg, iron at 8 mg, manganese at 2.4 mg and iodine at 0.6 mg.

£9.37 a kilo, in a 400 g tin available singly and in packs of six.

As a guide, that comes to about £7.60 a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition, or roughly 812 grams, assuming about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The label asks for 675 grams a day at that weight.