Hill's Science Plan Perfect Weight & Active Mobility Medium Adult Dog Food with Chicken review

This lands in our Good band, and so does the median adult dry food, which makes how it gets there the interesting part. The analysis is the strong half: estimated carbohydrate at 37.3% of dry matter runs below the 46.2% usual for the category, and protein converts to 28.2% of dry matter. At 321 kcal per 100g a bowlful carries fewer calories than the 357 typical of adult dry food. Very few kibbles manage to take out that much energy and keep the protein where it is.

The protein and processing reading is what keeps it mid table, with cereal and a refined fibre occupying a good share of the list and one or two entries naming no animal. Each pillar comes out Good. The recipe is aimed squarely at a job and not at impressing a label reader, and the pillars describe it fairly.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 9%; total poultry 15%), wheat, pea bran meal, maize, maize protein meal, digest, dried tomato pomace, cellulose, dried beet pulp, flaxseed, coconut oil, vegetable oil, fish oil (1.9%), minerals, animal fat, dried carrots, pork cartilage (source of chondroitin sulphate), crustacean shell hydrolysate (source of glucosamine).

Meat leads here, and it leads in its dried form. Total poultry is declared at 15% in that meal, with chicken pinned at 9%. A meal is dried before it is mixed, so that percentage means what it says once the kibble is baked. Protein lands at 28.2% of dry matter, a decent showing for a diet whose entire purpose is to take calories out, helped along by the maize protein meal sitting further down the list.

Then comes the fibre, and there is a great deal of it. Crude fibre at 13.3% as fed converts to 14.5% of dry matter, far above what an ordinary kibble carries, and it is assembled from pea bran meal, dried tomato pomace, cellulose and dried beet pulp. Cellulose is the entry that raises eyebrows, a refined plant fibre made for the job and not a food in its own right. In a slimming recipe it earns its keep, because it fills a stomach while bringing almost no energy with it, which is how a dog on a smaller ration still feels fed.

Active Mobility is the second half of the name, and the label supports it with sources you can actually point at. Chondroitin comes from pork cartilage and glucosamine from a crustacean shell hydrolysate. The long chain omega 3s that go with them come from fish oil at 1.9%. What is missing is a printed dose for either joint ingredient, so this is steady daily support and not a measured joint course.

The fat side mixes the named with the unnamed. Coconut oil, flaxseed and fish oil are all identified, while vegetable oil and animal fat are not, and digest, the palatant that gives a lean recipe its flavour, names no species either. That vagueness is the main reason a food like this reads plainer than it eats. Wheat following the meat and maize behind it tell you the same story from the cereal side.

Every trace mineral is declared with a figure, from zinc at 126 mg down to selenium at 0.2 mg in each kilogram of food. Calcium sits at 0.91% of dry matter, comfortable for an adult, and dried carrots bring a little vitamin A along with the colour they add to the bowl.

£4.64 a kilo, sold in 2.5 kg and 12 kg bags.

Taking the standard maintenance estimate of about 840 kcal a day for a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition (110 × bodyweight^0.75), that dog would eat around 262 grams a day, which comes to £1.22. Feed to the weight you are aiming at, not the one your dog is at now, and let the ribs under your hand settle any argument with the table on the bag.