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

Our scoring reads this as a Good band food, which is a fair outcome given that a slimming recipe and a general nutrition score want different things from a label. Calories have to come out somewhere, so cereal and purified fibre take up the room that meat would otherwise fill, and yet protein and processing, nutritional balance, transparency and value all read Good. None of that makes it the wrong choice for the job it was designed to do. The typical adult dry food lands in the same band, though it is built to hold a dog steady, which is a completely different brief. Judge this one on whether your dog needs the energy taken out of the bowl, and take the band as a sign that the trade has been made carefully.

Ingredients, as declared: Chicken and turkey meal (chicken 10%; total poultry 15%), maize, maize protein meal, pea bran meal, wheat, broken rice, cellulose, digest, dried tomato pomace, flaxseed, animal fat, dried beet pulp, coconut oil (2.2%), minerals, dried carrots.

Chicken and turkey meal heads the list, with chicken pinned at 10% and total poultry at 15%. Meal is the useful form here. It arrives already dried, so its protein goes straight into the finished kibble. Even so, 15% is a modest share of the recipe, and protein converts to 27.3% of dry matter.

Maize, maize protein meal, pea bran meal, wheat and broken rice make up the carrier. Maize protein meal brings concentrated plant protein, and it props the protein figure up noticeably. That is worth knowing if you tend to read a protein percentage as a measure of meat. Carbohydrate is estimated at 41.8% of dry matter, under the 46.2% typical of adult dry food, because fibre has claimed so much of the room instead.

Cellulose is the engine of the whole thing. Close to indigestible and close to calorie free, this purified plant fibre fills a bowl and a stomach without bringing energy along for the ride. Crude fibre reaches 12.9% of dry matter. No standard adult kibble comes near that. Energy comes out at 317 kcal per 100g against a typical 357. That is the mechanism by which the bag does what its name promises.

The smaller entries are chosen with sense. Flaxseed brings omega 3s in their plant form, coconut oil at 2.2% is a quick-burning fat, and dried tomato pomace and dried carrots add fibre and antioxidants at the end of the list. Calcium works out at 0.98% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level.

The mineral panel is dosed in print, with zinc at 131 mg, iron at 74.8 mg, copper at 7.4 mg, manganese at 7.7 mg, iodine at 1.8 mg and selenium at 0.2 mg per kilo. Digest, the palatant that keeps a calorie-reduced kibble worth eating, and the animal fat are the two entries where the label goes quiet on species.

£4.29 a kilo, in bags of 2kg and 12kg.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat about 265 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £1.14 a day. A dog on this food to slim down will be eating less than a maintenance ration, so portion to the target weight, not to the estimate.