Natural & Delicious N&D Quinoa Wet Medium & Maxi: Senior review

Good is where this recipe finishes, one rung under the Excellent band a typical adult wet food reaches, and the reason is designed in rather than hidden. A senior recipe trades some meat for fibre and some richness for calm digestion, and this one does exactly that. Bulking fibre, a pseudo-grain and sweet potato take up room a straight meat recipe would hand to the animal. Transparency reads Outstanding and protein and processing Good, with nutritional balance Average, which is the gentler recipe showing itself. The food simply sets out to be gentle rather than to win a nutrition contest, and for a dog in later life that is usually the whole idea.

Ingredients, as declared: lamb rack and shoulder (35%), quinoa seed extracted (5%), sweet potato, herring, pork shoulder, powder cellulose, green apple, carob pods, fructo-oligosaccharides, chondroitin sulphate, glucosamine, psyllium husks and seeds, vitamins, minerals.

Lamb rack and shoulder at 35% opens the list, two named cuts where a general meat term would do. Pork shoulder and herring join further down. Between them the recipe draws on three animals, which is generous for a senior wet food, though it does widen the allergen picture more than a single meat tin would.

Quinoa is the label's signature. Quinoa is a seed and no true grain, so a household steering clear of wheat and maize is still catered for. It brings useful protein and fibre alongside its starch. Here it is printed at 5%, with sweet potato behind it, and together with the fibre entries the two push the estimated carbohydrate to 36.0% of dry matter against 15.8% for the wet adult norm. Nothing else separates it from a plain meat pack so sharply.

The fibre package is deliberate. Psyllium husks and seeds bring soluble fibre, carob pods add a firming pulp, and powder cellulose is close to pure insoluble fibre. Cellulose is the one entry here we would rather not see, a low value by-product with next to nothing in it nutritionally. It does precisely what a senior recipe asks of it, though, which is to add bulk without adding calories.

Chondroitin sulphate and glucosamine appear with no doses beside them. That makes them a friendly extra and not a therapeutic one. Green apple adds a little sweetness, carob rounds off the fibre and the fructo-oligosaccharides are there for the gut bacteria.

The added panel is fully itemised and dosed. Vitamin A comes at 4000IU, vitamin D3 at 400IU and vitamin E at 130mg, with choline chloride at 400mg, taurine at 500mg and DL-methionine at 1800mg. Zinc, manganese, iron and copper are all chelated. Taurine printed at a stated level is particularly welcome in a food aimed at older dogs.

Sold in a 285 g pack. No per kilo figure sits with us for it at present.

As a guide, a 15kg adult dog in moderate condition would eat roughly 878 grams a day, working from about 840 kcal a day as the maintenance figure (110 × bodyweight^0.75). The label declares 96 kcal per 100g, so that weight rests on the maker's own energy figure and not on an estimate of ours.