Morrisons Chief Tasty Chunks: In Jelly With Chicken (1.2kg) review

Both tins finish in our Average band, with nutritional balance Good on each and value Average. Transparency reads Excellent on the gravy tin and Good on the jelly, while protein and processing comes out Poor on the gravy and Good on the jelly. The typical adult wet food sits well above that, up in our Excellent band. Much of the distance is the meat side of the recipe, where a working list of category terms gives a scoring system very little it can reward. Carbohydrate accounts for much of the rest: an estimated 37.9% of dry matter in the gravy tin and 35.0% in the jelly, against the 15.8% that wet food across the shelf usually runs at. None of that is a safety verdict. What we are reading is a label that asks to be trusted without being read.

Ingredients, as declared: Meat and Animal Derivatives (4% Chicken), Cereals, Minerals, Various Sugars

Meat and animal derivatives opens both lists. The legal definition runs to the fleshy parts of slaughtered warm-blooded land animals, plus the products of processing their carcasses. That is broad enough to hold very good material and very ordinary material, and the label never says which of them is in the tin. The gravy tin at least puts a total on it at 35%, naming chicken at 4% inside that figure, while the jelly tin names its 4% chicken and leaves the total unstated.

The second entry is cereals, every bit as general, covering wheat, maize, rice, barley or any mixture of them. For most dogs this is simply how an everyday tin is written, but if you are steering around one particular grain by name, this label cannot help you do it.

Various sugars are on both labels, put there because dogs enjoy the taste. They come after the minerals, last of all, so the quantity is modest, and the recipe would not miss them.

The analysis reads steadier than the ingredient list suggests. Protein converts to 32.4% of dry matter in the gravy tin and 32.5% in the jelly, a fair showing for food fed from a tin, while fat comes to 16.2% and 17.5% respectively. What stands out is the carbohydrate estimate, 37.9% and 35.0% of dry matter, and that is the share the unnamed cereals are carrying.

Both labels print their added vitamins and trace elements with doses beside them, which is more than plenty of tins manage. The two panels are not the same, though: the gravy tin adds vitamin E and iron where the jelly tin adds vitamin A. Calcium is declared on the gravy tin only, converting to 1.62% of dry matter, an ample level for an adult dog.

Chunks set in jelly rather than gravy, in the larger 1.2kg tin. It carries a little more protein and fat as fed, at 6.5% and 3.5%, works out at an estimated 77 kcal per 100g, and its added vitamin panel includes vitamin A.

The chunks in gravy tin is £2.13 a kilo, in a 400g tin. The chunks in jelly is £1.67 a kilo, in a 1.2kg tin.

Feeding a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition on the gravy tin works out at about £2.52 a day, or roughly 1183 grams. The daily energy assumed is 840 kcal (110 × bodyweight^0.75, the standard maintenance estimate). The jelly tin comes to about £1.82 a day on that same basis, or roughly 1091 grams.