Freshpet Bags: Complete Nutrition Turkey review

All three bags land in our Outstanding band, with the typical fresh food an Outstanding one too, so this range is keeping strong company throughout. The bag portioned for small dogs leads the three on our scoring, with the Complete Nutrition Turkey close behind it. On the Roasted Meals, protein and processing and transparency both read Outstanding, exactly as they do across the rest of the range, and only the smallest of margins separates it from its stablemates.

Ingredients, as declared: Turkey (85%), Potato Starch, Pea Protein, Minerals, Rice Flour, Psyllium Fibre, Celery Powder, Vinegar.

Freshpet's whole idea is the fridge. The food is gently cooked and chilled instead of dried, which means the meat percentages here describe the food as you serve it and not a shrunken pre-cooking figure. Loose pieces also make portioning simple, and there is nothing to thaw between deciding it is dinner time and putting the bowl down.

The meat leads by a distance on every label. Complete Nutrition Turkey declares 85% turkey, and the Roasted Meals pairs 67% chicken with 11% chicken liver. The small-dog bag splits its share between turkey and pork. Liver, where it appears, is the nutrient-dense part of the animal rather than a filler, and it is named to species.

The starch is small and functional. Potato starch and rice flour bind the pieces, and oat flour does the same job on the Roasted Meals. Psyllium fibre appears on two of the labels as a source of soluble fibre for the gut. None of it is present in quantity, but it does mean none of these bags is a grain-free food.

Pea protein is the entry worth understanding. It is a concentrated plant protein left over from pea processing, and it lifts the protein figure on an analysis without adding animal. On the two recipes using it, not every point of the declared protein traces back to the bird or the pig on the front of the bag. It is a common tool in fresh food and nothing to be wary of, though it is worth reading for what it is.

The produce and the seasoning are modest: carrots and spinach in the low single figures, with celery powder and vinegar closing nearly every list as natural preservatives. Garlic powder appears on the Roasted Meals in the sort of small measured amount that sits well away from any concern, and that same recipe adds a little salt. The Roasted Meals uses chelated minerals, the form usually chosen because it absorbs well.

One gap deserves flagging plainly. These labels print protein, fat, fibre and moisture, and none of the three prints ash. There is no sound basis, then, for converting them onto a dry matter footing. Take the as-fed figures as they come instead: protein between 15.0% and 17.0%, and moisture between 59.0% and 74.0%, both of which are exactly what a chilled, gently cooked food should look like.

The shortest and most meat-heavy label in the range: 85% turkey ahead of potato starch, pea protein, minerals, rice flour, psyllium fibre, celery powder and vinegar. Turkey is the only animal named, so this is the bag for a dog kept to a single bird. It comes in the largest bag of the three, and at 215 kcal per 100g it carries the most energy here, so portions run smaller than the rest.

The bags come in a 400g size for the small-dog recipe, a 794g Roasted Meals and an 800g Complete Nutrition Turkey.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through roughly 391 to 528 grams a day depending on the recipe. Those figures come off about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The richer bags feed in smaller portions, so the Complete Nutrition Turkey goes furthest by weight and the Small Dog Grilled Turkey & Pork the least far.