Freshpet Select Rolls Grain Free review

This roll sits in our Outstanding band and so does the typical fresh food, and that pairing is worth explaining rather than taking for granted. No format scores higher with us than fresh, so a recipe that lands level with the middle of that field is doing very well indeed. Protein and processing, nutritional balance and transparency all read Outstanding here.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken (69%), Potato Starch, Potatoes (6%), Spinach (3%), Minerals, Pea Protein, Rice Flour, Psyllium Fibre, Celery Powder, Vinegar.

The headline is chicken at 69%, and that is all the animal content there is. This is a chilled, gently cooked food, so that figure describes what actually goes in the bowl. It is not a pre-cooking weight that shrinks in the making, and it is a high share by any measure.

The grain free name deserves a straight answer. Rice flour is on the list, in a small amount and well down the order. Rice is a cereal grain, so a dog that genuinely needs grain kept out of the bowl is not served by the name alone. Nothing about the roll is worse for it. This is simply a case where the pack and the ingredients tell slightly different stories, and the ingredients are the ones to trust.

Potato does the starch work in two forms. Potato starch binds the roll together, and whole potatoes at 6% add fibre and potassium along with their starch and a little vitamin C. Spinach at 3% is the only green, psyllium fibre supplies a soluble fibre that helps a loose gut firm up, and celery powder with vinegar finish the list as natural preservatives.

Pea protein is worth understanding. Left over from pea processing, it is a concentrated protein, and it raises the protein figure on the analysis without adding meat. Some of the declared protein here does not trace back to the chicken. In a recipe already 69% chicken, it tops the figure up and does not stand in for the animal.

The analysis reads well for a food this wet. Moisture is declared at 67.0%, and on a dry matter basis protein converts to 36.4% and fat to 33.3%, with carbohydrate estimated at 13.6%, a light starch load. Fibre is the figure to notice, converting to 9.1% of dry matter, which is generous and comes mostly from the psyllium, so change over gradually. Energy runs at 181 kcal per 100g.

The added panel is short and printed: vitamin E at 60 mg, with manganese at 2.2 mg, zinc at 16.4 mg and iodine at 0.12 mg, plus copper. These are sulphate and iodide forms rather than chelates, the everyday choice, and each one carries a figure of its own.

The roll is sold in a single 700g size.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition gets through about 464 grams a day, working from roughly 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Most of the weight in a fresh food is water. That makes the number much bigger than a dry food would show for the same energy.