Gentle Dog Food review

This one settles into our Excellent band, a step above where the cold-pressed category tends to land, so it more than holds its own in a genuinely strong field. Protein and processing reads Excellent, with transparency Outstanding. Nutritional balance reads Average. What lifts it is a label that prints a figure against every single entry, names two birds instead of one, and puts the marine oil in at a serious inclusion. The starch is what stops it climbing higher: brown rice level-pegs the chicken in first place, and carbohydrate converts to nearly half the dry matter.

Ingredients, as declared: Dried Ground Chicken Meat (28%), Brown Rice (thermally pre-treated)(28%), Dried Ground Duck Meat (9%), Herring Oil (6.5%), Maize Germ (5%), Rice Germ (5%), Rapeseed Oil (3%), Linseed Oil (3%), Beet Vulgaris (3%), Sea Algae (2%), Dried Vegetable Mixture (parsnip, chard, celery, chicory, parsley roots) (1.5%), Dried Herb Mixture (stinging nettle, fennel, caraway, chamomile) (1%), Dried Egg Yolk (1%), Yucca Schidigera (dried and ground) (1%), Silica (0.8%), Green Mineral Clay (0.6%), Green Lipped Mussel Meat (0.5%)

The percentages are the story here. Every ingredient carries its own figure, from the chicken at the top to the green lipped mussel at the tail, and added together they account for very nearly the entire bag. That leaves almost nothing unexplained, which is rare on any label and rarer still on a food that has to cover a whole life stage range on its own.

Dried ground chicken meat at 28% and dried ground duck at 9% do the animal work, and the word dried matters in both. The water has already gone, so 28% of dried chicken carries far more real protein than 28% of the fresh kind would. Two named birds also give the recipe a broader amino acid base than a single meat could manage on its own.

Brown rice at 28% is thermally pre-treated before pressing, which opens the starch so it digests properly in a pellet that never sees high heat. Maize germ and rice germ at 5% each are the more interesting choices beside it. The germ is the part of a grain that would grow into the new plant. It carries the oils, the vitamin E and most of the B vitamins, and it leaves the starchy endosperm out of the bag.

Herring oil at 6.5% is a large inclusion by any measure, and it is this recipe's clearest strength. Plant oils cannot provide the long chain omega 3 fats directly, and marine oil can. Rapeseed and linseed oils at 3% each sit behind it, covering the omega 6 side and the plant omega 3 side. Between the three, the fat on this label comes almost entirely from named and identifiable sources.

There is real variety in the tail. Beet vulgaris supplies fibre, sea algae at 2% brings iodine and a wide mineral spread, and the vegetable and herb mixtures cover parsnip, chard, celery, chicory, parsley root, nettle, fennel, caraway and chamomile. Inulin comes in with the chicory, and it is a prebiotic, food for the gut's own bacteria. Dried egg yolk at 1% is a concentrated source of fat soluble vitamins, and yucca at 1% is there for stool odour.

Silica and green mineral clay are the two entries most owners will not recognise. Both are mineral materials used in pressed pellets as carriers and flow agents and as a source of trace minerals. They sit at 0.8% and 0.6%, so they are small, and their presence is a formulation decision rather than something to weigh nutritionally.

With no moisture declared, the dry matter figures here work off the 8% a pressed pellet usually carries. On that basis protein converts to 29.1% of dry matter, fat to 11.7% and carbohydrate to 48.5%, a little above the 43.2% typical for cold-pressed food. Energy is 359 kcal per 100g, close to the category norm of 351. No calcium figure is printed. That is the one thing a label this thorough leaves out.

The additive table is published in full, with doses for vitamins A, D3 and E, the B group, biotin, folic acid and niacin. Vitamin C is there too, with choline chloride at 2000mg/kg. The trace elements are all glycine chelates, copper, manganese and zinc alike, forms that are generally better absorbed than the sulphates. The selenium is sodium selenite, which is the form the great majority of makers reach for.

£4.67 a kilo. Bags come in 5kg and 15kg, with the 15kg also sold in pairs.

On the standard maintenance estimate (110 × bodyweight^0.75) a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 840 kcal a day. That is 234 grams a day of this food, at £1.09. Gentle's own chart gives 240 grams a day for a 20kg adult and 120 grams for a 10kg adult.