Essential Foods Essential Superior Living review

This finishes in our Excellent band, a step clear of the Good band that holds the typical adult dry food. Two named meat entries open the list, protein converts to 33.9% of dry matter and estimated carbohydrate to 35.5%, against the 46.2% typical for the shelf. Transparency reads Outstanding, protein and processing Good, nutritional balance the same. That is the mark of a recipe built evenly instead of propped up by one headline figure.

Ingredients, as declared: Fresh free-range British chicken and Free-Run Welfare Assured British Country duck (33%), dried chicken and duck (30%), sweet potato, peas, fresh Scottish salmon and trout (7%), linseed, whole egg (5%), chicken fat (5%), potato, chicken gravy (3%), lucerne sprout, vitamins,minerals, MOS (mannan oligosaccarides), FOS(fructooligosaccharides), glucosamine, MSM (methylsulfonylmethane), chondroitin, cranberry, acai, bilberry, mulberry, apple, tomato, orange, pear, carrot, spinach,cauliflower, seaweed, marigold, ginseng, decaffeinated green tea, ginger.

The opening pair is the whole story: 33% fresh free range chicken and country duck, then 30% of the same birds dried. Most of the weight of fresh meat is left behind in the oven, so the finished kibble rests on the dried entry, and at 30% that entry is high enough to carry it. Protein reads 33.9% of dry matter.

Chicken is the most common meat in British dog food for sound reasons. It is palatable and easy to digest, and it stays consistent from batch to batch. Dogs turn out intolerant of chicken more often than any other meat, and only because they meet it so often. Duck alongside it broadens the recipe a little, although the two birds are always declared together.

Chicken fat at 5% is named to species rather than hidden behind a term like poultry fat, so you know precisely which animal it came from. Animal fat is also the form of energy a dog handles best. Whole egg at 5% and chicken gravy at 3% add protein and taste on top.

The plant side is sweet potato, peas and potato with no grain in the recipe at all, and lucerne sprout adds a little fibre. Estimated carbohydrate lands at 35.5% of dry matter, comfortably below the 46.2% a typical adult dry food carries.

The panel is dosed in full, and every trace mineral is chelated. Taurine comes in at 1,500 mg. Zinc and iron are at 50 mg, manganese at 35 mg, copper at 15 mg, iodine at 0.96 mg and selenium at 0.3 mg per kilo. MOS and FOS are prebiotics for the gut, rosemary extract is the preservative, and glucosamine, MSM and chondroitin appear without amounts beside them. Calcium reads 1.75% of dry matter.

£6.75 a kilo, sold in 2.5kg and 10kg bags with multipacks of each.

A 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate) would eat roughly 227 grams a day of this one, which is £1.53. The bag's own table puts the same dog on 153 grams, so use the two as brackets and let condition settle where inside them your dog belongs.