Green Pantry Fresh Food: Low Allergen Skin and Coat Care review

Two of these pouches finish inside our Excellent band, the digestion recipe and the senior one, with the other two a step under them in Good. The middle of the wet shelf already sits in that same Excellent band, since the category scores well. Reaching it takes a pouch with most of its weight in named meat. Transparency reads Outstanding on all four recipes, and protein and processing, nutritional balance and value all sit between Good and Excellent, the profile of a range that does most things well and nothing eccentrically.

What holds the figures steady is the plant base. Carbohydrate converts to between 21.6% and 39.9% of dry matter across the four, where the typical adult wet food runs at 15.8%. These recipes carry more vegetable and more oat or rice than a straight meat and broth pouch. It is also why they are so dense. Moisture runs from 57.0% to 70.0%, under what most wet food declares, so a pouch goes further than its weight suggests.

Ingredients, as declared: Duck (60%), Oats, Carrots, Minerals, Cellulose, Beet Pulp, Plasma, Salmon Oil, AuraGuard (calcium carbonate, citrus extract, maltodextrin, sodium chloride)( 0.1%), Nettle (0.1%), Chamomile (0.015%). Botanicals & Herbs: Chamomile and nettle leaf. Functional Ingredients: Salmon oil, AuraGuard, and Plasma.

Each recipe opens with its animal and a printed share. Gut Health leads on turkey at 60%, Low Allergen on duck at 60%, Low Fat on white fish at 70%. Mobility takes three fish: salmon at 29%, white fish at 19% and trout at 12%. Protein converts to between 28.4% and 36.7% of dry matter, a solid meat-led reading for food fed from a pouch.

The vegetable side gets more attention here than most wet labels give it. Carrots run to 14% on the Gut Health pouch with pumpkin at 10% and sweet potato at 8.2%, and carrots reappear at 8% alongside brown rice at 10.8% on the Low Fat. Cooked carrots bring vitamin A, plus soluble fibre and antioxidants. Beet pulp and psyllium husks add the steady, gentle fibre that most dogs digest without fuss.

Cellulose appears on three of the labels. Purified plant fibre is what it is, and it does not behave like the fibre in whole vegetables. It earns its place by adding bulk without calories. A weight recipe wants exactly that. Recognise it for what it is, a processed fibre supplement, and do not read it as another vegetable.

AuraGuard turns up on all four labels at 0.1% and is unusual in printing its own components, calcium carbonate with citrus extract, maltodextrin and sodium chloride. Plasma sits near it on three lists without naming its animal. The botanicals then change with the job. Slippery elm and fennel sit on the Gut Health pouch, nettle and chamomile on the Low Allergen. Ginger goes in the weight recipe, and turmeric with black pepper on the Mobility. These are all trace level, and none of them is why you would buy the food.

The added panel is dosed on every label, with zinc, manganese, copper and iodine given as chelates and figures printed beside each. Two of the four panels print vitamin D3. The other two list vitamins A and E alone, and there the otherwise thorough labels go quiet.

Duck at 60% on a base of oats and carrots, with salmon oil, nettle and chamomile doing the skin and coat work. Moisture is declared at 57.0%, the lowest here by a distance, which is why it carries the most energy of the four at 170 kcal per 100g and why its portions come out smallest.

£9.65 a kilo, the same figure across all four recipes, sold as a single pouch and in larger packs.

As a guide we start from about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). Feeding then works out at between £4.75 and £6.15 a day depending on the recipe. That corresponds to roughly 493 to 637 grams a day. The label's own guide for a dog of 11 to 20 kg runs from 460 to 916 grams a day across the four.