Happy Dog Mini Light review

This one settles in our Good band, keeping company with the typical adult dry food. The pillars sit tidily: protein and processing reads Good, value the same, nutritional balance Average and transparency Poor. A light food will always read thin against a general nutrition measure, because swapping calories for indigestible fibre is the entire idea. Carbohydrate estimates at 49.9% of dry matter against the 46.2% typical, and protein converts to 28.3%.

The number that actually matters for the job in hand is energy, and at roughly 316 kcal per 100 grams it sits well under the 357 typical for adult dry food. Moisture is not declared, so the dry matter conversions rest on the 8% figure normally assumed for a kibble. The calorie figure is an estimate, not a printed one.

Ingredients, as declared: Animal proteins* (poultry 16 %, lamb 4 %), maize flour, maize, rice, barley, lignocellulose (5.8 %), fish meal (5 %, of which 50 % salmon meal), meat meal, hydrolysed protein, beet pulp (desugared), oils and fats, apple pomace, potassium chloride, yeasts*, sodium chloride, seaweed*, linseed (0.16 %), dried whole egg (0.1 %), milk thistle, mussel meat* (0.02 %), yucca schidigera*, yeasts* (extract), artichoke, dandelion, ginger (0.015 %), birch leaves, stinging nettle, camomile, coriander, rosemary, sage, liquorice root, thyme, (total dried herbs: 0.15 %). *dried.

Dried animal proteins head the label, poultry at 16% and lamb at 4%, which is the honest way round for a kibble. The water is out of dried meat before it goes in, so the declared figure is near enough what ends up in the bag. Poultry stays a family name and not a bird, though, so the percentage tells you how much without telling you what.

Lignocellulose at 5.8% is the entry that turns this into a light food. It is a purified plant fibre, effectively indigestible, and its job is to take up room without bringing energy along. It does that well. Crude fibre reads 5.5% on the analysis as a result. It is worth knowing it for what it is: a manufactured fibre, not the kind you would get from whole vegetables.

Maize flour, maize, rice and barley follow in a block, so cereal is doing the carrying underneath all that fibre. Desugared beet pulp and apple pomace sit further down and bring a softer, more fermentable fibre that the gut bacteria can actually use.

Fish meal at 5% is half salmon meal and supplies the marine omega 3, with linseed at 0.16% adding the plant form behind it. Dried whole egg at 0.1% is a flourish, and so is mussel meat at 0.02%.

L-carnitine appears in the vitamin list, which is the usual addition on a slimming recipe, and calcium works out at 1.58% of dry matter. The familiar Happy Dog tail, milk thistle and artichoke through to thyme, totals 0.15%, with yucca schidigera and a yeast extract alongside it.

£5.81 a kilo, in 800g and 4kg bags, with the 4kg also sold as a twin pack.

Measured against the standard yardstick, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needing about 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75) would eat around 266 grams a day, which comes to £1.55. Small dogs are the real audience here, and the label asks 45 grams at 2kg rising to 150 grams at 10kg, so start from your dog's weight and adjust as the waistline changes.