Husse Optimal Light review

Our scoring places Optimal Light in the Good band, level with the middle of the adult dry category, and where it gives most ground is nutritional balance, which reads Poor. The food doing its job accounts for nearly all of that gap. Pulling fat down to 9.0% and letting carbohydrate rise to 58.2% of dry matter is how a light kibble is built, and the scoring reads those numbers the same way whatever the reason behind them. The label leaves out moisture and calcium. Those two omissions take a little more off. For a dog being slimmed under a vet's eye, the only dog it was written for, it is still the right bag.

Ingredients, as declared: dried chicken, brown rice, rice, maize, peas, vegetable fibres (5%), linseed, hydrolysed animal protein, animal fat, minerals, dried salmon, salmon oil, brewer's yeast, dried eggs, inulin (0.3%, source of fructo-oligosaccharides), marine algae, glucosamine (500 mg/kg), chondroitin sulphate (500 mg/kg).

Dried chicken opens the list, and that is a better start than it might look. Most of fresh meat is water, and that water goes in the oven. A dried meat in first place means the label figure is close to what actually goes into the kibble. Protein still finishes at 21.0% as fed, or 22.8% of dry matter on the standard 8% moisture assumption, and that is light by design, not by accident.

Brown rice, rice, maize and peas share the starch work. Brown rice holds on to its bran and fibre where the polished kind does not. Peas bring protein and a spread of vitamins along with their carbohydrate, and vegetable fibres are declared at 5%, the only percentage printed among the plants. Between them they push carbohydrate to an estimated 58.2% of dry matter, well past the 46.2% typical of adult dry food. That is precisely how a low fat kibble still gives a dog something to eat.

The weight management additions are dosed and printed. L-carnitine at 400 mg/kg helps move fat to the cells that burn it, and that is why slimming diets use it so often. Taurine is an amino acid a dog's own body normally supplies, and it is added here at 1000 mg/kg as insurance for the heart. Vitamin C comes in at 425 mg/kg.

The joint pair is properly dosed too. Glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate come in at 500 mg/kg each. Dogs who need to slim are very often the same dogs whose joints have been complaining, so putting both on one label is sensible design rather than decoration.

The rest of the list reads clean. Dried salmon and salmon oil supply the marine omega 3s, and linseed adds the plant form. Brewer's yeast is one of the strongest natural sources of B vitamins there is, inulin at 0.3% does the prebiotic work, and marine algae brings iodine. The one broad entry is 'minerals', listed without a breakdown, although the additive panel underneath does spell them out. Iron is at 50 mg/kg, zinc at 65 mg/kg, manganese at 35 mg/kg, copper at 5 mg/kg, iodine at 1.5 mg/kg and selenium at 0.1 mg/kg.

Two absences are worth naming. The label leaves moisture out, so the dry matter column here rests on the 8% figure kibbles reliably sit at, and calcium is not given at all. Neither is unusual and neither changes what is in the bag, but both mean a little more is taken on trust with this recipe than with the rest of the range.

£4.00 a kilo, sold in 7kg and 12kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would take about 225 grams a day at roughly 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate), which comes to £0.90 a day. A dog being slimmed is fed below maintenance by design. Let the label's own table, 120 to 280 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg, and the target weight your vet has set lead the way.