Iams Advanced Nutrition Light in Fat Adult All Breed review

This one settles in our Average band, a step below the Good that the middle of the adult dry shelf holds. The distance comes from the calorie work the recipe is built to do, and that work is the whole attraction for the dog this bag is meant for.

Two things keep it where it is. The list opens with cereal, and the meat comes after it. Carbohydrate finishes well above the usual load for a dry food. That is the trade a low fat kibble makes. Take the fat out and the space has to be filled, and here barley and maize do it. That is the entire point of the bag for a dog whose waistline needs the help.

Ingredients, as declared: barley, maize, dried chicken and turkey 17% (including chicken 10%), fresh chicken (10%), maize flour, pork fat, dried beet pulp (2.5%), chicken gravy, minerals (including sodium hexametaphosphate 0.38%), linseed, sunflower oil, fructooligosaccharides (0.2%), fish oil, brewer's dried yeast.

Barley opens the list, and it is a fair choice for the work. Cooked barley digests easily, brings fibre with it and carries useful trace minerals, with maize and maize flour arranged around it. Together the cereals do most of the carrying, which is how the recipe keeps fat down to 10% and still fills a bowl.

The animal side is dried chicken and turkey at 17%, with chicken alone printed at 10%. A further 10% fresh chicken goes in too, and most of its listed weight cooks away. Protein converts to 21.7% of dry matter, on the gentle side for a kibble, and fat to 10.9%.

The fats are chosen with some care. Pork fat is the base, sunflower oil brings natural vitamin E along with it, linseed supplies plant omega 3 and fish oil adds the marine forms a dog uses directly for skin and joints. That last entry is also why this is not a fish free bag.

Two entries work on the gut: dried beet pulp at 2.5% for bulk, and fructooligosaccharides at 0.2% to feed the friendly bacteria. Portions are being trimmed on this food, so fibre doing real work is fibre that keeps a dog feeling fed.

Sodium hexametaphosphate is declared at 0.38% here, a shade more than elsewhere in the range, and it sits in the mineral mix to keep tartar off the teeth. Calcium works out at 1.09% of dry matter, a comfortable adult level, and the vitamin panel is printed in full, with vitamin A at 23000IU and vitamin E at 135mg per kilo.

£2.67 a kilo, sold in 2kg, 3kg and 12kg bags.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition works out at roughly £0.65 a day, on an estimated need of about 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the usual maintenance sum). The label's table asks 235 grams a day for that dog, close to the 244 grams the estimate implies. Where they differ, the waistline settles it.