McAdams Sensitive Medium/Large Breed review

Our scoring settles this in the Good band, the wide band most adult dry food occupies, and it sits around the middle of it. The recipe does its actual job well. One animal, no grain and a list short enough to check properly is exactly what an owner working through a sensitivity wants in front of them. What the scoring picks up on is the construction underneath. The meat headline counts fat and gravy in with the meat instead of standing on meat alone. Tapioca adds starch and little else, and close to half the dry matter ends up as carbohydrate. Transparency comes back Outstanding. Protein and processing reads Good, nutritional balance Poor. Fair enough for a recipe that is clear about what it holds without being especially rich in it.

Ingredients, as declared: Whole British Free Range Turkey with Turkey Fat and Gravy (64.5%), Sweet Potato (25%), Tapioca (6.5%), Lentils, Minerals, Vegetable Fibres, Algae Oil, Prebiotics (FOS (0.15%), MOS (0.15%)), Yucca Extract, Dried Marigold, Hand Cut Irish Seaweed (0.03%), Dried Orange, New Zealand Green Lipped Mussel, Camomile, Carrots, Cranberries, Spinach, Tomatoes, Lavender, Dried Rosemary.

One entry at 64.5% covers the whole animal story here, turkey with its fat and its gravy, and that single line is the reason the food exists. For a dog whose skin or gut has been reacting to something unidentified, a recipe with one named species and nothing else to confuse the picture is genuinely useful. Turkey is a mild meat that digests easily, and in its raw state it is lower in fat than chicken. The caveat is in the wording. Meat is counted together with rendered fat and gravy, so lean muscle meat is not what that figure measures.

Sweet potato at 25% and tapioca at 6.5% carry the carbohydrate, with lentils behind them. Sweet potato is the better half of that pairing. Its starch comes with fibre and micronutrients. Tapioca, by contrast, is nearly all starch and does a filler's job. Lentils add fibre and plant protein, with a spread of B vitamins. Between them the plant side takes carbohydrate to 49.5% of dry matter, with protein at 22.8% and fat at 15.2%.

Algae, not fish, is where the oil comes from, which is unusual and useful. It supplies the same long chain omega 3s a fish oil would, without a fish appearing on the label, so a dog you are deliberately keeping away from fish can still get them. Marine content has not disappeared altogether, though. Hand cut Irish seaweed is declared at 0.03% for its iodine and mineral spread. New Zealand green lipped mussel sits further down the list as a shellfish, so a household avoiding shellfish should know it is there.

The digestive support is straightforward and sensible. Prebiotic FOS and MOS are each declared at 0.15%. They are food for the bacteria of the large intestine, not for the dog. Vegetable fibres help hold the stool together on a rich food. Yucca extract has a long history in recipes like this for softening stool odour, and camomile is a traditional settler. None of them are dosed heavily, and none of them are pretending to be medicine.

Nothing in the mineral panel is left to guesswork. Zinc and iron are both declared at 48 mg per kilo, manganese at 34 mg, copper at 5 mg, iodine at 0.96 mg and selenium at 0.19 mg. The food is preserved with mixed tocopherols, the natural vitamin E based antioxidant, and no synthetic preservative is used. Calcium is not declared on this label, and neither is moisture, so the dry matter column is worked from the standard kibble assumption.

£13.00 a kilo, sold in 2kg, 5kg and 10kg bags.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition needs about 230 grams a day, assuming around 840 kcal a day (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). That works out at £2.98 a day. The label's own table asks 150 to 250 grams for a dog between 10kg and 20kg, and the waistline settles any difference.