Hill's Prescription Diet Metabolic Stew for Dog with Chicken & Vegetables review

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and animal derivatives (chicken 1%), derivatives of vegetable origin, vegetables (3.1%), cereals, vegetable protein extracts, seeds, minerals, oils and fats, various sugars, eggs and egg derivatives.

The name puts chicken up front and the label puts a figure on it. Chicken is declared at 1%, inside a leading meat and animal derivatives entry that is not broken down any further. Behind it come derivatives of vegetable origin and then vegetables at 3.1%, followed by cereals, vegetable protein extracts, seeds, minerals, oils and fats, various sugars, and eggs and egg derivatives.

Various sugars on a stew label is normally about the sauce and how appealing it tastes rather than about nutrition. Potassium alginate is declared at 5g as a technological additive, the seaweed-derived gelling agent that gives this format its texture. Keeping a dog keen on a controlled diet is a real part of making one work, which is why makers build a food this way.

Past that 1% chicken and the egg, nothing on the list names a species or a grain. An owner cannot run an elimination trial from a label like this, and if a diagnosed intolerance sits behind your dog's diet then the vet who chose it is the person with the fuller picture.

With moisture declared at 79.9%, the as-fed figures read small and the dry matter conversions say more. Protein at 5.8% becomes 28.9%, fat at 2.3% becomes 11.4%, and crude fibre, also 2.3% as fed, becomes 11.4% of dry matter. The carbohydrate estimate is 8.5% as fed and 42.3% of dry matter, and energy sits at 70 kcal per 100g. Keeping calories low per spoonful is the whole brief of a slimming stew, so that energy figure is the intention behind the food rather than a fault in it.

Calcium lands at 1.0% of the dry matter. The dosed additions are modest in a food this wet, iron at 8.4mg, iodine at 0.3mg, copper at 0.8mg, manganese at 1.8mg and zinc at 26.6mg.

Portions for this one are better taken from the practice than from the pack, since a slimming ration is worked back from where your dog's weight should be heading. Whether the stew is the right shape of food for that plan is for the vet to decide.

The single pack size is 354g.